After Paterson double shooting in business district, more police presence but no arrests

PATERSON — In the middle of Paterson’s downtown business district, a police SUV sat parked late Monday morning with its red-and-blue lights flashing at the corner of Main Street and Broadway.

The location — in front of Broadway Pizza — was no coincidence.

City law enforcement officials had assigned an officer to that spot in response to last Wednesday afternoon’s double shooting at the busy commercial intersection about a block and a half from Paterson’s police headquarters.

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Neither victim suffered life-threatening injuries, officials said. A 35-year-old Paterson man was hit by gunfire while on the sidewalk, and a 56-year-old Clifton woman was grazed by a bullet as she was driving east on Broadway, law enforcement officials said.

Authorities had not made any arrests five days later.

Mayor Andre Sayegh did not respond when asked for his thoughts about the downtown double shooting. The mayor’s chief of staff, Habib Kader, issued a statement that said the crime was under investigation and that further information would come from the prosecutor’s office.

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One of Sayegh’s longtime supporters, developer Charles Florio, is building a 72-unit apartment building across Main Street from where the downtown double shooting took place.

“I don’t care whatever statistics they put out there,” Florio said regarding police pronouncements about crime being down. “The people of Paterson don’t feel safe.”

Last week’s incident was the second shooting at the corner of Main and Broadway this year. The first happened on March 1.

The executive director of the Greater Paterson Chamber of Commerce said he thinks the city’s downtown business district already had returned to normal after the shooting.

“We know incidents like this will create fear in some people,” said Chamber of Commerce director Orlando Cruz. “But our downtown bounces back very quickly. Already, it’s like nothing ever happened.”

A manager at Broadway Pizza said it was “too early to tell” if the shooting would impact business. The manager, who declined to give his name, said the police car parked outside the pizzeria was not unusual. “There’s a presence,” he said.

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At the coffee shop on the other side of Broadway, Sara Ruiz said she has seen fewer customers after the shooting. “It’s not the same like it was,” said Ruiz, whose husband owns the business.

Councilman Michael Jackson represents the 1st Ward, the district where the downtown shooting happened.

“To me, it shows that nothing has changed in this city,” Jackson said of the shooting. “It reflects the gross failure of this administration,” he added, referring to Sayegh’s performance as mayor.

There’s some irony in the fact that the downtown shooting happened on Broadway, the same street that has been cited as proof of the New Jersey Attorney General’s success in its takeover of the Paterson police department.

Last summer, the AG’s Office deployed numerous police officers in a different section of Broadway — in the 4th Ward between Straight Street and Rosa Parks Boulevard — to stabilize what had been a neighborhood plagued by wandering and sleeping drug addicts.

Florio questioned whether the 4th Ward crackdown has been as successful as some people assert. He said “zombies” chased from Broadway now roam nearby side streets, including Hamilton and Godwin avenues.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: After Paterson double shooting in business district, more police presence but no arrests