This year's victims: Young men

Of the 12 homicides that took place in the first four months this year, seven of them, or 58 percent, occurred in April. They included two consecutive weekends (April 19 and 20; April 27) in which there were four separate incidents that claimed the lives of five men.

This year's murders are different from the ones that earned the city a lot of negative attention two years ago. Back in 2006, there were several domestic homicides within families.

But this year has been marked by several individual violent gunshot murders in the street, especially of young men.

Among those were the murders on April 19 of Damien Williams, 28, died after being shot once in the chest near the corner of Grant and Rose avenues; Ramon Francisco Morales, 21, of Glenwood Avenue, who died after being shot during an armed robbery at the northeast corner of West Side and Highland avenues, and on April 20, Kwaun Martin, 24, of Claremont Avenue was killed in a shooting on Orient Avenue near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

Mayor Healy responds

Mayor Jerramiah Healy last week said April was an aberration.

"While we did see an increase in homicides during April of this year, our statistics show that for the first half of the year, our homicide rate is actually stable," he said. "Whenever there is an increase in any violent crime, our police commanders review the statistics and add patrols to the areas where the crime is taking place. This procedure is known as Comstat and has been extremely successful for us."

He added, "When we had a slight increase in homicides in April, greater police presence in the troubled areas brought the numbers back down."

Healy said, "But even so, one homicide is one homicide too many and the goal of this City Council, this administration, and this Jersey City Police Department is to make this city and these streets as safe as possible. We realize, though, that in this city, or any city, suburb, or rural area, crime is always going to be a top concern with the citizens and a top priority of the governing body."

Rape down, robbery up

For the first four months of the year, there were 13 rape incidents citywide as opposed to 20 in the same period of time last year - a 35-percent decrease.

Another downward trend is that there were 281 aggravated assault incidents as opposed to 320 last year, down by 12 percent.

Robbery was up. There were 397 robberies in this year's first third, as opposed to 357 in last year's first third - an 11-percent increase.

For the non-violent crime category, the increases were seen most in arson cases, up 32 percent with 37 for January through April 2008 as opposed to 28 during that period last year.

There was a 26 percent increase in burglaries, with 502 as opposed to last year's 399. There was also a jump of 15 percent in larceny/theft with 1,302 this year compared to 1,129 last year, and a 5 percent hike in car theft, with 364 cases compared to 346 last year.

More police coming

Comey said he was pleased that violent crime went down in the first quarter of this year. However, he was alarmed by the rash of homicides that took place during the two violent April weekends.

Comey also said there were several significant arrests in connection with burglaries that took place in downtown Jersey City around Tenth Street in February.

There is more help on the way, he said.

"We will have 20 police officers coming out of our academy, and by the end of this month, they will be out doing patrols under the supervision of a sergeant," Comey said.

Comey is also pleased that the City Council approved an application at their Wednesday meeting for $1.6 million in state UEZ (Urban Enterprise Zone) money that will pay for 30 new officers, who are entering the city's police academy later this summer and graduating in December.

Those officers will start on the police force in January 2009.

Also according to Comey, the Police Department will introduce some new police initiatives to deal with crime in the Booker T. Washington and Montgomery Gardens housing complexes in Downtown Jersey City, where there have been several fatal shootings in recent years.