By CLAIRE LOWE

Thirty-five people in Cape May County have been arrested in conjunction with gang-related activity as the result of a three-month long, state-wide initiative to combat gangs, guns and violent crime, Cape May County Prosecutor Bob Taylor, along with Jose Cordero, the Director of Gangs, Guns and Violent Crime Control for the State, announced Wednesday, Nov. 5. Twelve of those individuals arrested were known to be associated with the PIRU set of the Bloods, an infamous street gang.

Taylor said that the arrests made were “primarily for drug distribution crimes.”

In Wildwood, especially, the Cape May County Gang, Guns and Narcotics Task Force led an operation in coordination with members of the Wildwood Police Department to infiltrate and dismantle an open-air drug market. The task force was able to execute six search warrants in Wildwood and Woodbine, seizing over 10 ounces of narcotics, mostly cocaine, and three guns. Lieutenant Ken Super of the Prosecutor’s Office said that the crime area was concentrated primarily in the 100 West block of Baker Avenue in Wildwood and that the drug distribution network was running “24-7.”

The arrests in Wildwood, he said, occurred earlier in the operation in March.

According to Taylor, Cape May County’s gang-related activity, while still “quite a big problem,” is not as prominent as in some other, more urban areas in the state.

“We’re far more fortunate here in Cape May County than in the rest of the state,” Taylor said.

However, Cordero said that that about 43 percent of New Jersey municipalities reported some kind of gang activity in the last year. The reason for the statewide initiative, the Governor’s Strategy for Safe Streets and Neighborhoods, is because of the rise of organized criminal gangs in New Jersey since 2001.

According to Cordero, there are three components to the Governor’s strategy to dissolve gangs and violent crimes in the state: prevention, reentry and enforcement. A threat assessment, which Cordero called a “living document,” was also conducted in each county by each of the 21 counties’ prosecutor’s offices.

“The Cape May County investigation,” Cordero said, “is on target with our threat assessment.”
Like in most circumstances, early detection is key: officials want to evaluate and identify the problem before something bad happens.

“I think it’s incredibly important…to look at the problem early,” Cordero said.

“Only in that way are we going to affect the gang and violent crime rate in the state,” he said.

The initiative was coordinated statewide by Attorney General Anne Milgram and Cordero. Locally, the county’s task force worked with members of the New Jersey State Police, the Middle Township Police Department, the Wildwood Police Department, the Cape May Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Adminsitration.