Controversial crosses to remain in front of Camden City Hall

The hand-painted crosses in front of Camden City Hall that for weeks have spurred sorrow and shame over the rising homicide toll will remain untouched despite concerns that they are damaging the city's image.

"The crosses will not be removed," City Council President Frank Moran said in an interview Monday. "Absolutely not."

Moran's remarks came as activists behind the field of white crosses warned they would try to prevent their removal or would replant them if they were taken away.

Stop Trauma on People, an antiviolence group, began planting the crosses more than a month ago to remember victims as the homicide toll grew. The group says its intention is to shame city officials into action and decry the daily trauma inflicted on residents by violence and poverty.

But the Roosevelt Plaza crosses - 81 of them thrust into the grass there as of Monday - bearing the names and ages of victims from this year and earlier, also drew controversy last week after Councilman Brian Coleman said they underscored the image of the city as a dangerous and violent place.

He said he feared they would discourage visitors and businesses. He also questioned whether the organizers had city permission to erect the knee-high crosses.

Group members planted two more crosses Monday in memory of this year's 57th and 58th homicide victims. The toll tied a record set in 1995.

It was unclear Monday whether the organizers of the cross plantings had city permission to raise them so close to City Hall.

Moran said he learned last week that the group did have permission to keep the crosses in the park until the end of the year.

He said the group had received authorization from "someone in the administration" or from the Camden Special Services District, a subsidiary of the redevelopment nonprofit Cooper's Ferry Partnership that handles maintenance of the park.

Helene Pierson, a member of STOP who is executive director of Heart of Camden, a neighborhood nonprofit, said that around the time of the first cross planting, on Oct. 1, she had spoken to a representative of the Special Services District of her group's intention to maintain the crosses until the end of the year.

She said the group had also asked the city parks department if it needed a permit to ring bells in the park during the ceremonies and learned that it did not.

Anthony J. Perno III, CEO of Cooper's Ferry, said, however, that the Special Services District did not have the authority to give permission.

Calls to a spokesman for Mayor Dana L. Redd were not immediately returned.

Pierson said she would have rallied supporters to stop any attempt to remove them.

"I was very sure there would be enough people that would come down to lock arms with me to prevent it from happening," Pierson said after Monday's solemn ceremony for Edwin Crespo, 33, who was shot dead on Thursday, and Gregory Holder, 45, who succumbed Friday to injuries from a beating early this month.

As a dozen people gathered on the grass and two crosses were hammered into the ground, the Rev. Jeff Putthoff, founder and director of Hopeworks, a North Camden nonprofit focused on youth development, prayed that "the crosses remind all of us that we are in need of healing."

The Crespo family brought flowers. Edwin Crespo's sisters, Yessica, 34, and Ketsy, 37, hugged their mother, Norma, who sobbed.

Yessica said her 9-year-old daughter had decorated her uncle's cross. In the middle, the girl had painted the word heaven inside a blue cloud "because now she knows he's in a better place."

Holder was not represented.

Members of STOP and residents said opposition to the crosses was misguided and the focus should be on what the crosses represent - the community's suffering.

"Whoever killed them . . . left us all hurting," said Maria Reyes, whose sister Alma Reyes Brito, 49, was killed in June. "This is a part of our healing."

Edwin Crespo was a roofer and father of a 12-year-old boy and 1-year-old girl.

Yessica said the crosses depict the reality of violence in the city.

"You can't hide it," she said.

Moran, however, said the renovated downtown park is the wrong place for the crosses.

"It's not a cemetery. I don't know what the motive is with the crosses," Moran said. "Everybody in the city . . . that reads a paper, that lives and serves here, knows the murders in Camden are going through the roof. Everyone is touched by this."

Instead, he touted what he believes is a solution to the violence - a plan to replace the city police with a countywide police force. City officials and other backers of the controversial plan say it will increase police presence in the city. Camden police union leaders say it's a union-busting ploy.