Word: bookers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Booker is obsessed with the murder statistics. While Booker and McCarthy discuss a recent homicide investigation in the mayor's office, the creases on Booker's forehead increase tenfold. He admits to posting a murder target for 2009 on his bedroom wall, a practice that he knows is somewhat morbid. (Booker won't share the number he wishes Newark to beat.) Booker has dumped the 4 a.m. chases, however. "I made a deal with Garry that as long as the crime numbers are going where they are going," Booker says, "I will not get in the police cars anymore...
...Booker's tougher policing methods are not getting rave reviews from all residents. "It seems like the cops hate us," says DeAndre Breeland, a legal aide who lives in the South Ward. On a late-June night patrol, two cars from the Newark police department's street-crime unit zipped through some of the city's most notorious neighborhoods, slowing down to check on groups hanging out on stoops and flashing lights to make sure there was no funny business. The glares from Newarkers said it all: Get out of here. Of course, these same detractors didn...
...Booker sticks up for his guys. "We have gotten far more aggressive, and appropriately so," he says. "We allowed in our city a high level of tolerance to build up to things that are objectionable. You should not have people dropping trou and urinating on the side of a road. You can go on. I'm sorry, but that is breaking...
Moving Beyond Murder A small but passionate band of Booker critics is standing on the steps of Newark's city hall early one evening, rallying against a city plan to create a municipal water authority. Among the agitators is Amiri Baraka, a prominent, controversial African-American poet and activist. Baraka, 74, has won a trunkful of literary prizes but was essentially stripped of his New Jersey poet-laureate title after penning a post-9/11 poem that was denounced as anti-Semitic. The writer, who was reared in Newark and still lives in the city, is a voice from...
Baraka is asked to evaluate Booker. "I give him credit. The homicide rate has gone down," says the poet. "But I don't know if you can judge the quality of life in a city by just the homicide rate. Where is the employment? Where is the education? What is in it for the residents...