Decline and Rise in Crime
The decline of the South Ward began with the building of new suburban homes in the towns surrounding Trenton in the 1950s and 1960s. Many old factories closed and businesses left the area. Many cities experienced urban decay and a rise in crime, and Trenton did as well. In 1958, a young religious fanatic who grew up in a broken home stormed St. Joachim’s Church and shot three nuns, and then escaped out the back as police fired 1,000 rounds at shadows in the front window of the nunnery. Until the late 1960s crime was sporadic. A South Broad Street home was the site of three burglaries between 1966 and 1970. What made the robberies more interesting was that the building adjacent to them was the home of the Trenton Police Department. Obviously having a precinct next door did not discourage the thieves. However, South Trenton was for the most part unaffected by the Trenton Riots of 1968 while downtown was looted and burned.
Read more about this topic: South Trenton, New Jersey
Famous quotes containing the words decline, rise and/or crime:
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)