The Ruins of Trenton

Following their Nov. 7 press conference the Trenton Police Department has been providing a detailed crime map of the city for residents on the city's officials Web site.

It does paint a more thorough picture than what has been released previously, but it remains to be seen how quickly these more timely releases will help in addressing any ill will generated by the department's past practices.

According to some city activists heavily involved with the police in their communities, the new relase of the maps and detailed crime information is a practice that has never happened consistently in the past, despite comments to the contrary by police officials last week. It should have been implemented long ago, for the sake of relations between the the police and the city government and the residents.

Police officials at the conference said they have always made these maps readily available to residents at Citizen's Police Advisory Committees, in an attempt to rebuke allegations of secrecy and withholding of information claimed by Trentonian reporter Jack Knarr last week.

Mr. Knarr's anonymous police sources spoke of the downgrading of crimes and other nefarious practices the department has been using to warp the the picture of Trenton's public safety issues, but the department last week said this is not a standard practice at the department.

The downgrading of crime may not be occurring as often as Mr. Knarr's article would have it seem, but it is widely reported by police sources that this does happen occasionally, and the timely release of all crime data by Trenton police would have been the best defence against the Knarr column.

People in Trenton know what is going on around them. To say it is not happening, and to paint a rosey picture and tell us that "our crime is similar to that of Secaucus and Morristown" does nothing but breed doubt and paranoia among residents.

And those mental states are highly fertile for dissent and dissatisfaction that will continue to boil and bubble until they explode, probably around the next election.