Maplewood/South Orange, New Jersey - My name is Marcus Durant and I’ve lived in Irvington for 8 years but never have I set foot on their high school territory, walk the streets at late nights, or even have friends in the city of Irvington. Is it because it’s a bad area? To me Irvington is a pretty dangerous city compared to Maplewood/South Orange...
All cities do have their crimes, but within the city of Irvington there are 22.4 incidents per 1,000 population, they aren’t eligible to be ranked one of the most dangerous cities in the country due to their low population, and taxes increased up to 17% as of May 1st, 2010, but the services to help the city become a better place with the tax money received doesn’t even seem as if it’s being used.This is the city I live in and I’m not to happy about being here.
Appearance and services are the first judgment you can make on a city and between these two cities, Maplewood/South Orange appearance and services are better due to the people caring about the city, street cleaning crews are more effective, people are more unified.
In Irvington the appearance is above average and services are horrible, a lot of streets have pot holes, street cleaning crews do the bare minimum, and people just aren’t as helpful. I’m not saying that everyone is not willing to help each other but a majority of the city, from my experience, don’t want to help others. For example during the big snow storms in Irvington snow plows didn’t even leave the garage to start plowing snow away. Streets were covered in snow and the people literally came out their homes to not only shovel the sidewalks, but also the streets. This caused a lot of anger within the city and people were calling the mayor’s office questioning “Where’s the Snow Plows?” In Maplewood/South Orange there were trucks driving around the night before and the morning of the snow storm plowing, dropping salt on both streets and sidewalks, and street cleaning crews helped other people shovel snow.
Stereotypes and misunderstanding in Irvington are two main things that are hugely exaggerated. Yes, there are a lot of Hispanics/Spanish and Haitians in the city of Irvington and people tend to judge them as dirty, “fresh off the boat”, and illegal aliens. I don’t know peoples situations and neither do you so therefore that doesn’t give you the right to judge people based on their nationality. It’s a huge misunderstanding that people have about the city of Irvington; even at Irvington High School Haitians and Americans fight all the time due to gang-related or stereotyping a person because they aren’t from America. Police are always at Irvington High breaking up fights and stopping these acts of violence from getting out of hand, but acts of cruelty will always happen and police won’t always be there. Now in Maplewood/South Orange the police stereotype all teens that either come from different cities or are from Maplewood/South Orange as bad teenagers or looking for a trouble. For example there have been situations where me and some friends of mine hang out in an area we call “The Ville” and cops literally tell you "...go home, you can’t sit there, go back to Newark." It’s disturbing...
TO BE CONTINUED.
