“Newark Police officers did not fire a single shot during the calendar year 2020, and the city didn’t pay a single dime to settle police brutality cases. That’s never happened, at least in the city’s modern history. At the same time, crime is dropping, and police recovered almost 500 illegal guns from the street during the year, NJ.com reports.
“This is significant,” says Aqeela Sherills, head of the Newark Community Street Team, a group of mostly former offenders who work to defuse violence in the city’s most violent wards. “It speaks to how reform has really taken hold in the city.”
According to the article, after a Justice Department investigation initiated in 2011 led to a Federal Consent Decree with the local police department, revisions in police tactics led to MAGA cops bailing the department for other jurisdictions.
“They hired more Black and brown officers, began training programs based on best-practices, required any officer who uses force in any way to report it in detail, and for the supervisor to review it. The bad cops were suddenly outed.”