Jersey City officials touted declining homicides and shootings, while lower tier crimes such as thefts, assaults, and stolen vehicles are on the rise, during a press conference at public safety headquarters this morning.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“You see a clear trend downwards: This will be the first year ever in which we achieved single digits in homicides, which we are very proud of,” began Mayor Steven Fulop, recalling that he and Ward F Councilman Frank “Educational” Gilmore were among those who celebrated a summer with no murders at a September presser.
“There’s a lot of people who deserve credit, of course the police department, but I want to highlight the community member partnerships and the prosecutor’s office all being a key part in this trend. For the first time, this year we have a lower homicide rate than New York City.”
He went on to say that Jersey City has the lowest homicide rate of any city their size or larger east of Texas.
This year to date, Jersey City has just six recorded homicides, compared to nine in 2023 and 12 in 2022. To that end, there have been 29 shootings in 2024, while there were 49 in 2023 and 52 in 2022.
The mayor also indicated that the city is following NYC’s lead in utilizing the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which is rapidly replacing CompStat and uniform crime reporting (UCR).
“The NIBRS system is much more granular, much more involved, captures a lot more detail about the crimes that are occurring and is now the required throughout the country,” explained Public Safety Director James Shea.
“So, with a lot of work, we had to increase our unit that does our CrimeStat reporting from two to seven, and we had to put a lot of overtime into it, but with a lot of work, in January of this year we were able to switch to the NIBRS system.”
He also noted that the numbers have been posted on the Jersey City Police Department website quarterly, which they will continue to do.
“Where we’re seeing challenges is toward the bottom of the chart. I tend to go with a doctor’s theory: A doctor told me one time that there’s no such thing as minor surgery, minor surgery is surgery occurring to someone else,” he indicated.
“We feel the same way about crime: There’s no such thing as a minor crime, because if it happens to you or one of our citizens, it’s major. The crimes at the lower end, stolen vehicles, regular theft, package theft, that kind of thing, we’re still struggling with.”
In 2024 thus far, Jersey City has recorded 806 stolen vehicles, up from 629 in 2023, with 4,125 thefts (there were 2,913 last year).
Aggravated assaults are currently at 986, up from 789 in 2023, which Shea attributed to state bail reform laws.
“These crimes are not committed by multiple people, they’re committed a lot by a very few people. And where they used to stay in jail, now they don’t, they get out,” he stated.
“An example I used, just the other day we arrested somebody for a theft in the morning. We released him on a summons, we arrested him at the very same location for doing it again three hours later.”
Other data released publicly today included removing 214 illegal guns from the streets in 2024 (211 last year), two fatal traffic deaths as Vision Zero remains a priority (zero in 2023), and police and fire personnel numbers.
The police department is down 74 officers, from 913 to 839, consistent with national trends, while the fire department went up slightly from 658 to 684, Fulop noted.
During the question and answer session with the media, Shea went into the particulars of why he would not honor Ward C Councilman Rich Boggiano’s request to release the annual CompStat and UCR stats.
“As I said, we release the same numbers we release to the federal government: If I release two different types of numbers, you won’t be able to compare them. For example, NIBRS I said is much more accurate,” he declared.
“I’ll give you an example: If somebody committed a home invasion, went into your home and robbed you, that would be a robbery because in the old CompStat system, the federal government wanted the highest possible crime counted. So it would count as a robbery. Under NIBRS … that will now be counted as a robbery and a burglary because somebody entered your home – and an assault because someone assaulted you.”
Responding to another question from HCV, Fulop, a Democratic candidate for governor, gave some of his thoughts on bail reform, calling back to his statewide public safety plan he unveiled just under a year ago.
“I’m a supporter of bail reform: Nobody should be incarcerated because they can’t pay to be released. I think the state needs to do a little more resources as it relates to the judicial process, I think what Jim said as well, and I think that we need to expedite the repeat offenders through the system a little bit more efficiently and quickly,” he replied.
“We need to have a list that targets those people that are quickly moving through the court process so that they can be adjudicated rapidly, the ones that are repeat offenders again, and again, and again and I don’t think New Jersey does a good job of identifying those people.”
Finally, Shea, who admitted he’s “an eternal pessimist, attributed working more more closely with prosecutorial agencies, CCTV systems, creating a ceasefire unit, and in turn removing firearms from the streets to lowering homicide and shooting rates.
“I like this trend: When I get three years (of a drop in homicides), it’s better than one year, I see it going in the right direction and I’m cautiously optimistic, or a pessimist, that we can keep it going.”
Gilmore and Ward A Councilwoman Denise Ridley were present at the event, as were several ranking police officers and firefighters.
The crime data released today can be viewed on the city’s public safety page.
