Irvington’s Mayor Tony Vauss and Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers announced a major reduction in crime in the first four (4) months of 2016. During that time, there was an 83% decrease in shootings and no homicides from December 2015 through March 2016.
“Making Irvington cleaner and safer,” said Mayor Vauss. “That is what I promised the people of Irvington and I am very pleased to say that under the great leadership of Public Safety Director Bowers, we have been able to clean up the crime in our town.”
“In these last four months, we have made great strides in meeting Mayor Vauss’ mandate to make Irvington safer,” said Public Safety Director Bowers. “I formed TACIT (Threat Assessment Criminal Intelligence) to analyze criminal statistics and develop strategies to combat individuals who are involved in criminal activity within the township. We used these statistics and data to develop strategies that led to: the arrests of 109 individuals for narcotic crimes; recovered seven handguns, one shotgun, one prohibited assault weapon; and, seized over $70,000.00 in US currency .”
“TACIT is a great initiative that has also shut down a heroin mill that supported users in Essex, Union, and Middlesex Counties, “said Mayor Vauss. “This team also arrested a major drug supplier who would write false prescriptions for local street dealers for Xanax, Percocet, etc. They also confiscated more than 400 grams of cocaine, over 500 glassine envelopes containing heroin and 500 grams of marijuana from street level distributors of which the majority were violent members of the Bloods and Crips Street gangs. This demonstrates tremendous success and I applaud Director Bowers, TACIT, and Irvington law enforcement.”
For information please contact Stephanie Bush-Baskette at sbush-baskette@irvingtonnj.org or 862-216-7254.