Reimagining public safety means reinvesting in the public | Opinion – nj.com

By Linda McDonald Carter

I was almost 13 in the summer of 1967. I remember it as particularly hot and humid. I lived in the E.W. Scudder Homes Public Housing Projects, one of many buildings in a public housing community in the Central Ward. I grew up around Black and Puerto Rican families, working-class factory workers, maids, taxi drivers, beauticians, barbers, laundry workers, laborers, dishwashers, and babysitters.

This is my Newark, before the rebellion, before drugs and guns were brought into our community. I remember the Central Ward as a close-knit neighborhood with lots of jobs, resources, and opportunities for success. We were a family where no one went hungry or unhoused.

In recent years, the city has embraced progressive approaches to community policing by prioritizing violence prevention and a working relationship with the community. But as we reimagine public safety in Newark, its important to remember these tools are not new or foreign to our city. In reality, its a return to our roots; back when public safety was an investment in the public.

Growing up, drugs, guns, and homelessness were foreign concepts. A Home Economics class could turn into an apprenticeship with the neighborhood seamstress. Folks relied on historical cultural skills, their talents, and the survival skills that helped our ancestors navigate through the Atlantic Slave Trade, chattel slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and the Great Migration. We took care of our community. This was the Newark Central Wards Black community. A thriving ecosystem within itself.

On July 12, 1967, everything erupted. After years of disrespect, dehumanization, and mistreatment outside the Central Ward, the Newark Rebellion began. I remember seeing police sharpshooters positioned on the roofs of the projects, aiming into our apartment, and my mother yelling for us to get down on the floor.

I remember hearing the older men in the neighborhood say that the National Guard was told to shoot to kill. I remember the same army tanks I saw in Vietnam news footage surrounding Scudder Homes. I thought to myself, Are we the enemy like the Viet Cong?

In the aftermath, numerous commissions convened to examine the root causes of the Newark Rebellion and other similar uprisings across the country. President Lyndon Johnson and former New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes both held special commissions which concluded that addressing racial tensions, economic inequality, social disparities, and police brutality were necessary to prevent similar civil disturbances.

However, instead of heeding these recommendations, the Johnson administration ramped up policing under the guise and justification of the ongoing War on Crime. His Republican successor, President Richard Nixon, continued the escalation during the War on Drugs.

Year after year, police departments received federal funds that ballooned their budgets from $10 million to more than $300 million annually, triggering poverty, inequality, and racial oppression in my hometown while scapegoating local residents to justify the militarization of police.

This is one of the reasons I became an attorney and eventually opened my own law firm, not necessarily to practice law and make money, but rather to help make a difference in my community. As a lawyer, I could assist with interpreting the language of law and providing direction on how to navigate and negotiate the justice system.

Its also why I joined with Lisa Hendricks-Richardson, Rhonda Pope Stephenson, and Vanessa Williams Powell, to form one of the first and largest African American womens law firms in New Jersey, Richardson, Stephenson, Powell and Carter, LLC in 1996.

All weve ever wanted is to live in peace. We wanted to live in a nice home, make a living wage and take care of our families. So as we look to the future of public safety, its important to remember there was a time in our history where people didnt routinely struggle with poverty, and crime was isolated. There was a time where resources for advancement were well-funded and readily available. And our community flourished as a result.

Newark will always thrive when it invests in its people. An investment in the people is the best money youll ever spend.

Linda McDonald Carter has been an advocate, historian and active member of her native Newark for more than five decades. Linda is the eldest of six brothers and two sisters; aunt of 17 nieces and nephews; grand-aunt of over 20; and the wife of a cool husband.

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Reimagining public safety means reinvesting in the public | Opinion - nj.com