A new direction for this blog

This blog started out as a personal journal, a record of my thoughts and my feelings on myself, my life, and the world around me. The first few posts continued in this way, with stories of the last few weeks of my first year at American University, and only veered into the crime data and mapping on a whim. Now that the crime aspect of the blog has become more serious, the face of the blog should change, and I now consider this primarily a blog about Northern Jersey crime, rather than my own personal life.

Because of this, I’ve deleted several posts from this blog that were inappropriate in the light of such a serious subject like crime, and also to make this blog more focused on that one issue. From now on, From the Muddy Banks of the Hackensack will cover the crime map only.


And speaking of the crime map, the first week of June has seen some interesting happenings in North Jersey. Just after midnight, the first new crime of the month took place in Jersey City, with a drunken argument culminating in a man getting stabbed in the back, and then refusing to cooperate with police to find the suspect. An inauspicious start to June.

Further in Jersey City, a 9-month probe into organized crime resulted in the arrest of 35 street-level dealers and organizational leaders in a gang that specialized in heroin trafficking and dealing, with several murders attributed to them. They were operating out of the A. Harry Moore and Marion Gardens projects on Westside; seven were charged on the federal level.

Aside from the usual burglaries, minor assaults, and robberies in the area, there were two murders in Newark in the first week of June. On June 2, a 25-year-old man was found around 10pm on 11th Street near Woodland in Newark, his body riddled with multiple gunshots. The next day, tragedy struck Newark again, in the far northern reaches of the city, almost in Belleville and Bloomfield. A gang fight erupted outside the Stephen Crane projects, which are populated primarily with senior citizens. Four shots were exchanged; one of these went through an old woman’s door, another struck the chest of a 70-year-old senior citizen in a wheelchair. He died within minutes, and the culprits fled.

Since this blog will have more of a singular focus now, expect more regular updates, and more in-depth coverage of the crimes detailed. Condolences to the families of the two men who died this week in Newark.

-Ronan