Atlantic City: crime amidst excess

Atlantic City public safety director seeks to fix police headquarters lacking up-to-date crime equipment

ATLANTIC CITY — Christine Petersen knows firsthand what Gov. Chris Christie was talking about when he said Atlantic City had become a crime-ridden mess when announcing a proposed state takeover of its tourist and casino districts this summer.

Petersen, who took over as the city’s public safety director in March, sees the glitz and glamour of the seaside resort juxtaposed against its dilapidation and despair: High-rise hotels and burned-out row houses, women in ball gowns and men in cardboard boxes.

On Atlantic Avenue, just two blocks from the ocean, Petersen — a cop, detective and lawyer — walked into police headquarters and took a step back in time.

"No computers," she said. "We have no computers."

She found a city where the squad cars did not have terminals on board. The department didn’t have automated dispatch and incident-recording systems. Cops couldn’t track where crimes were occurring so patrols couldn’t be adjusted the way they are in New York, Newark and Jersey City, where she rose to become a detective commander after working nearly three decades in the city’s police department. Officers on the road were still checking old-fashioned hard copies of "hot sheets" to see if cars they were pulling over had been stolen.

Hovering over it all, Petersen found an entrenched bureaucracy heavy with veteran cops riding desks and doing jobs that could be handled by cheaper civilian employees.

"This is a great place to live," Petersen said one sunny afternoon in her top-floor office. "But we have to rethink what we do."

Her education about what was wrong with the city came well before July 21, the day Christie announced "Atlantic City is dying" and said the state would save the casino and tourist destination with a new state-run, "clean and safe" entertainment district. The state may take over police responsibilities near the casinos or it may not. But Christie emphatically vowed crime would go down and the perception of Atlantic City would quickly improve.

Petersen doesn’t always agree with the tough-talking former prosecutor in the Statehouse and said she hadn’t heard from the governor or those advising him before — or since — his big announcement. And she said she certainly didn’t need Christie to give her the score.

But Petersen did not play the role of a denier. Just the opposite. Petersen said she, like her senior staff, knows Atlantic City has a bad reputation and in some ways deserves it. In spitting distance of the casinos with their limo-driven patrons and enormous boxing purses are open-air drug deals, murders and spots where the police themselves aren’t comfortable going without backup.

She said she doesn’t know why the remedies were not put in place over the years and, candidly, doesn’t have the time for a research project.

"There were studies done over the years," she said. "The studies were all here. We know the problems."

Petersen makes no effort to downplay the trouble she and the city’s 40,000 residents face, easily ticking off the sites of the most brutal or troubling crimes. She knows the statistics. From 2008 to 2009, the city’s crime rate jumped 10 percent. Even as murders remained constant, the rates of both overall violent crimes and robberies rose considerably as crime statewide declined.

Her first summer in town saw a hot-weather murder spike. And, almost immediately, Petersen, who also runs the fire department and beach patrols, walked into a huge struggle with police and fire unions over budget cuts, which are hitting every one of New Jersey’s urban governments. The Atlantic City police union held a vote of "no confidence" for Petersen this summer.

"The morale in this police department has never been lower," union president David Davidson said.

Petersen notes that Atlantic City’s crime rate is still half what it was a decade ago, and said the real crime problems are largely confined to the tough neighborhoods of Back Maryland and the Stanley Holmes Housing Village, more than a stone’s throw from the casinos’ bright lights. She said she isn’t writing off those sections but stressed: "Who’s going to leave the casinos and walk all the way (there)?"

What is close to the Boardwalk, the shopping area called The Walk and the Atlantic City Convention Center, are safe, she insisted.

What Petersen said bothers her most is the general look and feel of the blocks immediately surrounding the Boardwalk and casino areas. "It’s dark," she said looking down from Boardwalk Hall toward Pacific Avenue. "Would you want to walk down there?"

"Perception matters," agreed state Sen. Jim Whelan, a Democrat and former mayor of Atlantic City. "You’re not going to want to send your wife to walk down any of those side streets. There’s a lot of blight."

The side streets are poorly lighted. Vagrancy is a problem. Empty lots dot the city — a bad sign in any town that’s trying to attract visitors. It all combines to create a bad impression, one reinforced last summer by Christie, the state’s most visible spokesman.

With recent layoffs cutting the ranks from 365 to 300, Davidson, the police union president, said crime could worsen. "It’s a small city with big city problems," he said.

Petersen, 56, retired last year from her hometown’s police department. She wanted to lead a police department after retirement, but figured she would have to head as far south as Florida to get that opportunity. With little knowledge or experience in Atlantic City, Petersen sent in a résumé after learning the mayor was seeking to fill the position. She got the job, which pays $90,000 a year, and now lives in the city. She collects an annual pension of $82,100 from her career in Jersey City, according to the state Treasury.

While noting that some things like prostitutes and erotic massage parlors always go along with areas that attract tourists, the new director said she has been working with City Hall to make small changes that could mean a lot: better street lights, tree trimming that will allow the existing lamps to be more effective, ordinance enforcement to make the sidewalks look clean, make the garbage go away and eliminate blighted buildings.

She has also made moves inside the police department to expand the uniform presence on the streets despite budget cuts. Some special plainclothes units have been disbanded so cops could be added to street patrols. Petersen is trying to change internal policies to cut back on sick time and long-term leave, which, she said, have crippled some parts of the operation because of staffing shortages.

Despite opposition from the police union, Mayor Lorenzo Langford and other political leaders applaud her efforts.

"She’s been visible in the community — where it counts," said Atlantic County Freeholder Charles Garrett. "She’s doing what she has to do to try and fix a culture that’s been in existence for a long time. She came in, she had an idea just as any outsider. But when she got there, she realized it was worse."

Staff writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.