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The cold-blooded murder of Paterson Police Officer Tyron Franklin was the last straw for city Police Director Mike Walker.
The 23-year-old rookie was off duty when he was shot several times and killed by by an ex-convict from Irvington at Broadway Fried Chicken – a short walk from the river. It was the first police killing in crime-ridden Paterson in 10 years.
It also made Walker determined to find a way to unite the dozens of police agencies along and near the 80-mile-long Passaic River, which is notorious as it is because of all this summer’s flooding.
His answer came from, of all places, the Paramus Police Department.
Detective Rob Von Schalscha, while working with an elite State Police intelligence unit, noticed that several of the borough’s retail crimes were tied to violent criminals up and down Routes 17 and 21 and the Garden State Parkway – all within a few miles of the river.
“At the same time, we had several serial robbery sprees take place that were solved by multi-jurisdictional task forces in the region,” former Paramus Deputy Police Chief Jim Sheehan told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Walker and Sheehan got together, along with Bill Fraher, then a Paterson deputy chief. A few discussions later, the prosecutors from Bergen, Passaic and Morris had created a pilot program centered on criminals who live near the river.
Long story short: Law enforcement officers at several agencies in New Jersey are pooling their resources and intelligence into The Passaic River Corridor Project, which aims to crack shootings, robberies, burglaries, auto theft and organized retail theft in an area that stretches across 83 municipalities in six counties.
It might sound like a lot, but there are really only six cities in the zone and dozens of “urban centers” located just outside them.
The team members will participate in monthly briefings, while compiling and analyzing crime stats as if their borders didn’t exist, Sheehan told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
“New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country,” he said. “Nearly all of the [targeted municipalities] are even more densely populated than the state as a whole.”
Most of them are filled with unemployed poor. Nearly a third have some type of gang-related trouble, usually involving weapons and violence.
Examining the corridor project is like studying American history, with a minor in New Jersey dynamics.
Simply put: Major highways run east to New York and southwest to Philly — there’s your ease of transportation. The state, although the fifth smallest in the union in size, has nearly 600 municipalities. Sharing information is more than a challenge.
By the numbers: A little more than a quarter of the state’s population lives in the corridor, but – get this — 47% of the state’s murders and manslaughters happen there, as do roughly 27% of rapes, 41% of robberies, 33% of aggravated assaults, 28% of burglaries and a full half of all motor vehicle thefts.
The Passaic River rises in the middle of Mendham in Morris County, then wends its way toward Paterson, where it cascades over the Great Falls before rushing through Fair Lawn, Elmwood Park, Garfield and Clifton on its way to Wallington. It passes Passaic, Clifton, Nutley, Belleville, Rutherford, Lyndhurst and North Arlington, and, later, Newark, Kearny and Harrison. It meets the Hackensack River at the north end of Newark Bay.
A U.S. Department of Justice grant is covering the cost of organizing the PRCP – including paying for computers, software and other technology.
Walker and Sheehan, although both retired, are still actively involved in the project. Fraher remains the point man.
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