TRENTON – Faced with a record spike in murders the last two years, Trenton is turning to a new committee to help solve the decades-old issue of gun violence.
Mayor Reed Gusciora signed an executive order Monday forming an 11-person advisory committee – the state’s largest modeled after initiatives in Phoenix, Oakland and Perth Amboy – that he hopes is an incubator for “fresh ideas” in the fight against rising bloodshed.
The announcement comes months out from Trenton’s municipal races in which Gusciora seeks re-election to another four-year term.
“Whether I’m here or not in the fall, this is a committee that should be here in the future. To do nothing is not an option,” Gusciora said at a news conference. “One mayor cannot do this alone. Two people, a mayor and a police director can’t do this.”
Trenton broke a record for homicides with 40 in 2020, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic that led to a record surge in gun-related homicides across the country.
More than 19,000 people died by guns in 2020, up from about 14,000 the year before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overall, homicides rose by 35 percent the first year of the pandemic, the agency said, to the highest level since 1994.
In Trenton, the trend held true again in 2021, with the city tying the grim milestone set the year before.
The advisory committee, called the Citizens Health and Neighborhood Grown Engagement, or CHANGE, will hold monthly community meetings and issue biannual reports to the mayor’s office and council with recommendations on how to curtail the epidemic of gun violence.
The group is focused on issues ranging from talent retention and recruitment to police use of force. Board members will serve for years three years and seek input from eight agencies, including liaisons from Congresswoman Bonnie Watson’s office and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office.
“This is a force multiplier for the plans that I’ve set up,” Trenton Police Director Steven Wilson said. “With the help of the public, this is how we get it done better. We can’t do it alone. All these things have to work in conjunction and are married together.”
The capital city has seen an increase in disputes between warring neighborhood factions that police said has replaced once-prominent street gangs such as the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings.
Authorities have cracked down on these groups in recent years, claiming they’re responsible for the majority of drug trafficking and violence in the capital city.
Gusciora has said the turf disputes between them resembled “Lord of the Flies” with each group attempting to assert supremacy over the streets.
The CHANGE group hopes to pore over systemic issues that have been problematic for decades in Trenton, such as poverty, failing educational systems, lack of employment opportunities and an erosion of trust between citizens and the police, heightened by high-profile examples of police misconduct across the U.S and in the capital city.
“Every time someone is killed it triggers me,” said Regina Thompson-Jenkins, a newly appointed committee member whose son, Tre Lane, was gunned down in 2012. “Even then it’s 10 years for me, it feels like yesterday when this happens. I need another mother not to feel like I do. It’s a traumatic effect.”
