TRENTON – Acting police director Carol Russell faced a taste of the intense questioning she will likely face when she goes before City Council for a confirmation hearing later this year.
Russell, a 20-year retired Trenton Police sergeant, often looked down at notes as she answered a range of questions from at-large councilman Jerell Blakeley that veered from the number of murders the city has experienced to her plan to address a recent spike in violence, highlighted by the Nov. 27 midday execution of a Crip gang member.
Blakeley quizzed the acting police director on crime statistics for this year, asking her how many murders and shootings there have been this year.
She responded with the numbers 12 murders and 71 shootings but admitted she might be mistaken about the crime stats, which she said had just been requested earlier Thursday by the legislative body.
Blakeley also grilled Russell on her educational background, getting her to admit what is already known – that she doesn’t have a college degree.
Russell said she has taken “classes” at Mercer County Community College but admitted she hasn’t attained degree because life got in the way.
Russell has faced blowback over her alleged lack of qualifications, which Blakeley attempted to drill down on, asking her for her definition of community policing which her supporters have touted as one of her strong suits.
She described “interacting and engaging with the community” as one of the keys to community policing.
Mayor Reed Gusciora has touted Russell’s experience as a police officer who emphasized community engagement when he announced at his historic pick of her to become the first black woman to lead the police force.
But her critics have slammed her as unqualified, pointing to gaps in her resume.
Blakeley tested Russell’s knowledge of the community she was so involved in by asking her to rattle of the troubled crime hotspots in the city, which she said were the same ones as when she was on the force.
She cited the Wilbur section, a stretch of Walnut and Monmouth and Hoffman, Stuyvesant and Oakland as areas in which city is focused on crime suppression.
She cited the fact that the city hasn’t had a murder since Crip gang member Shaela Johnson was viciously gunned down in an ambush-style slaying outside a city deli Nov. 27, the third homicide on her watch, as proof that her plan to attack crime is working.
She said officers have worked hard to get “guns off the street” but didn’t have any figures for how many guns have been seized from the city streets.
Russell wouldn’t directly answer when the at-large councilman asked her whether she supported a still-in-the-works proposal to bring back a deputy police chief to help her out.
At one point, she claimed the mayor hadn’t talked to her about the proposal – though the mayor previously told The Trentonian the idea came up during a “brainstorming session” with her.
When Blakeley informed her there was a story in the newspaper about the prospective move, she said she didn’t “read the paper,” and suggested The Trentonian “misinterpreted” the mayor.
