On the South Orange and Maplewood Borders, New Precinct Focuses on Community Policing

Since being appointed in May, Acting Police Director Samuel DeMaio has touted community policing as the number one way to reduce crime in Newark. The city's top cop has put his words to action and opened a precinct in Newark's West Ward to better relations between police officers and local residents.

The precinct is a renovated, red-brick building on Irvington Avenue (next to Fine Fare and Colosseum Gym) in the Vailsburg neighborhood,directly across the street from Maplewood, and a parking lot away from South Orange. The precinct is home to the city's Vailsburg Task Force — a unit solely responsible for that neighborhood. The precinct, though, also houses the department's Safe City unit, which targets violent "hot spots" throughout Newark. 

"This is going to be a group of officers dedicated solely to the Vailsburg area," DeMaio said Friday, after the precinct's opening ceremony. "There's certain areas of the city that ... need to have a smaller group of officers handling the neighborhoods. It's just a great thing for the community."

Village President Alex Torpey and South Orange Police Chief Jim Chelel attended Friday's ceremony. "Anything we do on either side of the South Orange/Newark border to keep our residents safe will help each other, and we must take every opportunity to work together in leading our communities towards success," said Torpey. " I think the new precinct will be great for Newark and great for South Orange, and it was important for me and Chief Chelel to attend the opening on Friday to show our support for these important partnerships around public safety."

Torpey and Chelel are scheduled to meet with Newark Police Department Captain Steve Yablonski, captain of the new precinct, as well as with neighborhood association coordinators.

Before the precinct opened, officers working on the Vailsburg Task Force responded from the city's Fourth Precinct at the corner of 17th Avenue and Livingston Street, nearly four miles away in Newark's Central Ward.

When the decision to make the building a precinct house was announced in late May, Maplewood Mayor Vic DeLuca voiced his support. "This is a very positive development," DeLuca told Patch in May. "For years that was an underutilized facility that was caught up in a Newark political struggle. I look forward to speaking to our police chief about ways in which Maplewood and Newark can work together in that neighborhood. It will be a real plus with our efforts to revitalize the Irvington Avenue shopping district and to heighten public safety in the adjoining residential neighborhoods."

Likewise, Maplewood Chief of Police Robert Cimino also was pleased with the announcement.

"While I have not yet been contacted directly on the opening of the new precinct, Maplewood and Newark Police Departments have been coordinating policing efforts in a variety of ways for many years, so I expect that coordination to expand with the opening of this precinct," Cimino said in May. "I know Director DeMaio to be a results-oriented police executive and a great law enforcement partner. I’m sure that both agencies will capitalize on the new policing opportunities presented by having a precinct so close to the Maplewood border."

Bertha Freeman, the president of the Ivy Hill Neighborhood Association, a block group in Vailsburg, said West Ward residents have been promised a precinct in that location for at least four years.

"We've been working on this many years ... we held a march in the rain years ago demanding what had been promised to us and, today, it's just remarkable," she said. "To know that it's here ... you're sort of on pins and needles to know that work has come to completion."

DeMaio, who was a former commander of the Vailsburg Task Force when it was at the Fourth Precinct, told an audience of roughly 40 city officials and residents Friday that opening a precinct in Vailsburg was a "no-brainer" decision, "That's what this building was intended to be."

He said the new precinct also has paved way for partnerships with Irvington and East Orange police for patrols on the city's border during weekends.

Newark Councilman Ronald C. Rice, who represents the West Ward, said the precinct will help DeMaio's community policing effort.

"This is a fruition of a long time coming ... not just a precinct, but a community precinct," he said Friday after the ribbon-cutting ceremony. "We want young people to come here. We want children to come here. ... This is a community that's not only coming back, but one that's stabilizing itself ."

DeMaio said the Vailsburg neighborhood has not seen drastic increases in crime, but most recently is wrestling with a spike in burglaries, "It's not the violence. The spike we're seeing right now is burglaries during the day time and the officers dedicated to this area are going to have an impact on that."

Newark Police Department Capt. Steven Yablonsky, who was the executive officer of the Fourth Precinct, now oversees the Vailsburg Task Force. "I can honestly say it's the highlight  of my 26 years on the force," he told the crowd Friday. "I've always wanted to be involved with the community in this type of environment where we're located in the heart of the community."

DeMaio said his goal is to have the precinct become a 24-hour operation within a year, but said it initially will operate 16 hours. Yablonsky said the shifts are from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., seven days a week.

DeMaio said the department is exploring other parts of Newark that could use similar community-engaged initiatives, such as the city's Weequahic, Forest Hills and Ironbound neighborhoods, but said Vailsburg is priority, "As we work hard every day with the mayor and the council to try to get some of our officers back that we laid off … this is going to grow even larger."

Listen to an audio broadcast from the opening.