AS NEWARK MAYOR READIES OFFENSIVE AGAINST CRIME, TOLL RISES BY 2

Two men were killed in a midday gun battle in a Newark housing project
yesterday, less than 24 hours before Mayor Cory A. Booker was
scheduled to reveal a new initiative against drugs and violent crime.

The killings yesterday were Newark's fourth and fifth homicides of
2007, following a year in which the city tallied the most killings in
a decade and underscoring the primary challenge confronting the new
mayor. And they came a day after another afternoon burst of gunfire
that critically wounded two men on South Orange Avenue, a busy
commercial street.

"It has not been a good week at all," Garry F. McCarthy, Newark's
police director, said yesterday.

But Mr. McCarthy said that important inroads had been made in fighting
violent crime, and that homicides had declined since Mr. Booker took
office in July.

The two men who were killed yesterday were not identified by the
police, but a resident of the Baxter Terrace Housing Complex, a large
project of three-story brick buildings within sight of Interstate 280,
identified the victims as his brother, Samad Grimes, 18, and his
uncle, Saad Rahman, 19.

The resident, Sadir Grimes, 17, said that his brother and uncle had
claimed in the past to be members of a street gang, but that recently
they had "tried to get their lives together." He said that both had
until recently lived at Baxter Terrace, where the shootings took
place. They had moved away, but returned yesterday for a party, Sadir
Grimes said.

Residents said they heard about 15 shots around 12:30 p.m. When the
police arrived, they found both victims with multiple gunshot wounds.
One of the men was found just outside the complex and was pronounced
dead at University Hospital. The other man was pronounced dead where
he was found, inside a hallway at the complex, at 182 Orange Street.

"Early indications are that a group of armed suspects drove up to the
location and entered the courtyard, where they exchanged gunfire with
another group already in the courtyard," the Newark police said in a
statement. The police said that they had recovered weapons at the
scene, and that some of the gunmen had fled in a vehicle.

"The location of the shooting suggests the shooting may have been
drug-related," the police said.

The case remained under investigation late yesterday, and there were
no arrests.

Mable Ivey, 52, who said she heard the exchange yesterday, said she
was able to distinguish "10 shots, a pause, and then 5 more." She said
there had been outbursts of gunfire at Baxter Terrace during the
Christmas and New Year holidays.

Lupe Todd, a spokeswoman for Mr. Booker, said that he was unavailable
for comment yesterday, but that the spate of recent shootings would
probably be discussed at a news conference he had previously scheduled
for this morning. She said he had planned to talk about a revised
strategy against street violence, and a new, 45-member narcotics squad
being created within the Newark Police Department.

Under Mr. Booker and Mr. McCarthy, a former deputy commissioner and
specialist in strategic planning in the New York Police Department,
overall crime rates have decreased.

But in a troubled city with three times the number of homicides per
capita that New York has, Mr. Booker's young administration came under
scrutiny late last year as the number of killings mounted to levels
not experienced for over a decade. For all of 2006, the police said,
Newark had 104 homicides, far below its record of 161 in 1981, but
more than in any other year since 1995. In the first week of 2006,
there were three homicides.

Mr. McCarthy said yesterday that the spate of killings over the last
week came as Newark was about to begin a broad new initiative, and
that his department's performance in recent months had been
encouraging.

Newark's violent crime "is not going to stop overnight, but we are
having very good success," Mr. McCarthy said. He said that during the
last four months of 2006, there were 22 percent fewer killings in
Newark than in the same period the previous year.

Since taking over the Newark department in September, Mr. McCarthy has
given more autonomy to precinct commanders, demanded greater
professionalism and accountability and shifted 150 uniformed officers
from desk jobs to the streets. The department has also indicated that
it plans to put surveillance cameras in crime-battered
neighborhoods.

The newly formed narcotics squad is to coordinate a revised and more
aggressive assault on drug dealing, which the police have long tied to
a large share of the city's homicides and gun violence.

Mr. McCarthy said yesterday that the focus of enforcement would shift
more heavily to midlevel and upper-level drug dealers, and away from
small-scale street criminals.

"By focusing on the street level, you are simply not getting to the
whole thing," he said. Among the tactics to be used are undercover
drug purchases and expanded police intelligence work, he said.

"The vast majority of violence comes from narcotics," Mr. McCarthy
said.