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(NEWARK, N.J.) -- It's the most populous city in New Jersey with over 280,000 residents and regarded as one of its most dangerous. Crime has plagued the city for decades and in 1986, there were more than 40,000 index crimes, a trend that would continue into the 1990s. Meanwhile, through the early to mid-90s, each year, about 10,000 of those crimes were violent, according to New Jersey State Police Uniform Crime Reports. But Newark is trending downward, in a positive way, about 30 years later following those peak numbers.
Ras Baraka was elected as Newark's mayor in 2014 and taking over at a time when the city saw 112 murders the previous year, the most in 24 years. In addition to an increasing murder rate, the U.S. Justice Department issued a 49-page report of an investigation that began in May 2011, into abuse and misconduct within the Newark Police Department, just weeks after Baraka took office.