On Aug. 30, 2013, Timothy Linnartz, a 29-year-old heroin addict from Waldwick, was found beaten to death behind the abandoned Hinchliffe brewery on Governor Street, an imposing brick complex west of the railroad tracks that divide Paterson’s 1st and 4th wards. Two Paterson men, arrested days later on theft charges after they were seen in Linnartz’s car, remain in Passaic County Jail. It wasn’t until this past December that they were indicted in Linnartz’s slaying.

If the fatal shootings of 12-year-old Genesis Rincon in July and 14-year-old Nazerah Bugg in late September reminded Paterson residents of the daily perils the city’s children face, Linnartz’s death — which was not reported in the news and spurred no public outcry — shows how closely the city’s troubles are tied to its surrounding communities. The young suburban addict, drawn to Paterson by cheap drugs, died violently and unnoticed on the streets that had become his home, a forsaken industrial landscape in the shadow of one of the nation’s wealthiest areas.

In the northwest section of Paterson, police patrols have been a rare sight in recent years. Gunshots ring out almost daily. Community programs have left town; churches have closed their doors.

On some streets in the city’s 1st and 4th wards — a few square miles bordering the Passaic River just south of suburban neighborhoods with manicured lawns and quaint downtowns — more than half the houses are abandoned or dilapidated, used as drug dens, makeshift shelters or rental units.

While south and east sections of the city contain stable, working-class neighborhoods, this part of Paterson has become increasingly isolated and violent.

The story of Paterson’s decay is not new; the city has eroded for decades as mills and factories closed. But the decline has a new engine at its core: heroin so pure and inexpensive that it is not only hastening the fall of this once vibrant city, but feeding on the wealth of nearby suburbs, towns like Glen Rock and Clifton, Mahwah and Waldwick.

Paterson is at a crisis point, one that reverberates in the towns that surround the city.

Mike Ward, a heroin addict who lives on the streets of Paterson, shooting up after collecting $11 panhandling.

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Violent crime, connected to the city’s thriving heroin trade and related gang activity, occurs daily and has increased following the layoffs of 125 police officers in 2011 from a force of 500. And officials list 1,200 abandoned properties, buildings that often become magnets for vagrancy, drug abuse and crime.

“There has been a change in Paterson — things have gotten more negative, more violent,” said the Rev. Linda Stancil, a former Paterson cop who raised two daughters in the city’s public housing projects. “There is a difference in the way people feel about this city. Industry left. People became jobless, homeless. The Police Department is overworked. Services have been cut.”

Last year, there were 23 homicides - five more than in 2013 - and 156 non-fatal shootings reported in the city. Most occurred in the 1st and 4th wards, neighborhoods that are close to Haledon, Prospect Park and Hawthorne. The majority of victims in these shootings were Paterson residents, according to city police reports.

Paterson has plenty of its own addicts, but officials say it is outside users who have brought the city’s drug trade to another level. Authorities in Bergen and Passaic counties have said they cannot keep up with the demand.

“To me, it’s like a state of emergency,” said Lt. David Borzotta of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office narcotics task force, which has done extensive work in Paterson. He estimates that 300 people from surrounding suburbs travel to Paterson for heroin every day.

Lt. David Borzotta of the Bergen County Prosecutor Office questioning a man who was arrested in Paterson on heroin possession charges.

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“It’s a hurricane,” Borzotta said. “This one town affects a lot of other towns.”

In 2014, there were nearly 50 heroin-overdose deaths in Bergen County, twice the number for 2013. The Passaic County Prosecutor's Office reported 33 heroin-related deaths in the 12 months ending in September 2013, and 39 over the next 12 months.

“The idea that suburbs are protected from the classic problems of urban crime or disadvantage is a myth,” said Robert Sampson, a Harvard sociologist who studies crime and inequality in American cities. “No neighborhood or city is an island.”

Indeed, Paterson’s legacy as the first planned industrial city could also be, in part, what contributes to the problem. Designed to be easily accessible, the city has more than 30 points of entry, connecting some of the region’s wealthiest communities to the poorest. Those surrounding towns that once sent workers to the cotton, locomotive and silk factories now help feed the drug trade and associated violence, officials say.

“There’s a direct impact to what happens in your home in suburbia if we don’t take care of what happens in Paterson,” Mayor Joey Torres said.

That is a warning that is being sounded on both sides of the Passaic River.

“Bergen County is coming in and sustaining this violent narcotics trade with their money,” said Capt. Timothy Condon of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. “What are our residents doing to [Paterson]? You’re not going to have gunbattles in River Vale.”

That effect can be seen in plain sight on the city streets, where more and more suburban addicts find themselves homeless, panhandling or prostituting themselves to feed their habit — and to survive.

Timothy Linnartz

The youngest of four brothers, Timothy Linnartz was a bright, soft-spoken boy with gentle eyes and long, sandy-blond hair. He was a quick study: He taught himself to play the piano and guitar, he fixed cars and computers and rewired his parents’ home in Waldwick. On summer nights, Linnartz would play the piano on the family’s back porch, his mother, Peg, recalled.

He first tried heroin at a party, sometime after graduating from high school, his parents said. “He got addicted to heroin and that was his downfall,” his father, Edward, said. “He couldn’t shake it.” Linnartz continued to live with his parents, taking occasional work as an electrician; he tried a number of drug rehabilitation programs to no avail.

Linnartz made regular trips to Paterson, where he found a community of fellow addicts, many of them self-described “street walkers” — young white adults from the suburbs living in Paterson who stole, panhandled or prostituted themselves for drugs, food and bus fares, his friends and family said.

In February 2013, Linnartz was arrested in Waldwick after detectives in Paterson saw him buying heroin outside a public housing project. Soon afterward, Linnartz packed his things into his gray Jeep Cherokee and moved into the abandoned Hinchliffe brewery. While most users buying drugs in Paterson simply drive in, make a curbside purchase and drive out, Linnartz was one of a growing number of addicts eking out a life in the inner city, moving between shelters and abandoned buildings.

The area around St. Peter’s Sounds of Praise Church at Fair and Auburn streets in the 4th Ward is a haven for local addicts who nod off on stoops and wander in and out of ramshackle houses. Fourth Ward Councilwoman Ruby Cotton calls it “Heroin Alley.”

One day last year, Bergen County detectives — who often assist in Paterson because of the city’s symbiotic relationship with the suburbs — were circling Auburn Street, looking for drug users.

That’s where they saw Zachary Tucker, a 23-year-old heroin addict from Wanaque who said he had been living on the streets for three years. Tucker’s hair was stringy, his teeth yellow and his pants sagged below his narrow hips. He said he used a brick of heroin each day — roughly 40 doses, worth around $140 in Paterson.

Zachary Tucker
23-year-old heroin addict from Wanaque

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Tucker said he was seeing more young suburban addicts in the city. He sleeps elsewhere, he said, but comes to Heroin Alley to “do my business.”

A detective suggested that Tucker go to a methadone clinic; Tucker grinned, looked around, and started to walk away down the street. “You’re gonna get me in trouble,” Tucker said. “They’ll say I’m snitching.”

“If I see you again, I’m going to arrest you,” the detective said.

“Don’t do that,” Tucker said, playfully.

Days later, Tucker was back on Heroin Alley, shirtless, walking with a young woman into the yard behind the abandoned house on the corner.

A few blocks south, a woman was nodding off, slouched on the concrete stairs in front of an old public school. As she woke up, she apologized and introduced herself as Melissa, originally from Clifton. She said she was addicted to painkillers and heroin. “I am just in so much pain,” Melissa said, wincing.

Melissa, originally from Clifton, said she was addicted to heroin and painkillers. "I am just in so much pain," she said, resting on the steps of Kilpatrick elementary school on Ellison Street in Paterson.

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She lifted the right leg of her cargo pants, revealing a stump in the place of a foot, skin mottled by burns and scar tissue — the result of a childhood accident, she said. She used to take the painkiller Percocet every four hours, but “Medicaid told my doctor not to give me any more narc pills,” she said. “So I started using drugs.”

She began to cry. “I want my leg amputated,” she said of her damaged limb. A week earlier, she had been jumped by four men who wanted money, she said.

Brandon McNamara, originally from Mahwah, is not homeless, but for two years he lived in abandoned houses and cars in Paterson; his 14-year battle with heroin addiction still brings him to Paterson nearly every day. It also has led to multiple overdoses, arrests and hospital visits.

“Every day is just waking up and figuring how you’re going to make money,” McNamara said. “I’ve seen some rough stuff out here.”

Feeding the addiction drives his daily life.

“Your whole life revolves around heroin, once you get hooked,” McNamara said. “It’s like having a baby. You have to take care of it, 24 hours a day.”

The Hinchliffe brewery, which was gutted by a fire in 1997, is secured from the street by a wire fence, its windows sealed with bricks. But an adjacent parking lot gives way to a large internal courtyard, thick with weeds and broken concrete. From here, the Hinchliffe complex is splayed open, its upper floors accessible by rusted fire escapes.

Brandi, a homeless friend of Timothy Linnartz from Kinnelon, walking past the spot at the old Hinchcliffe brewery where Linnartz's body was found.

Linnartz lived in the brewery with two men — Carl Jones and Christopher Daut — and Jones’ ex-wife, a woman named Brandi whom Linnartz had met at a methadone clinic. According to Brandi, the four shared space on the old brewery’s second floor in a room filled with garbage, soiled mattresses and industrial detritus.

Brandi, 33, who is from Kinnelon and asked that her last name not be used, said she and Linnartz panhandled together and used heroin.

Many of the homeless addicts in Paterson know each other. They have their own alliances and enemies, routines and uncertain living arrangements.

Most afternoons, William Henderson — a 61-year-old homeless man known locally as the “Needle Guy” — sits in an improvised wheelchair behind a gas station a few blocks from Well of Hope Drop-in Center on Broadway, which offers free medical services and clean syringes to addicts who register for membership.

That’s where he was waiting for customers one afternoon.

Slung over one arm was a bag with boxes of Albuterol, an asthma medication; Xanax, which is prescribed for anxiety; and Tylenol with codeine. All the drugs were prescribed to Henderson, according to their labels. On the other arm, Henderson guarded a small plastic bag stuffed with several dozen individually wrapped empty, unused hypodermic needles, marked “Terumo Insulin.”

Henderson buys the syringes for $1 apiece from Well of Hope members, then sells them to other users for a small profit.

An ex-convict who said he is HIV-positive, Henderson sees his role as part altruistic. “All these kids getting AIDS and HIV,” he said, nodding toward the street.

He had been robbed three times in the past year, Henderson said; he lived on Social Security and the money from his needle trade, and slept in abandoned houses.

Henderson voiced a sentiment echoed by many city residents and civic leaders — things have changed, a community “code” has been broken, neighbors have stopped caring for each other.

William Henderson, a homeless 61-year-old known as the "Needle Guy," dispenses drugs and clean syringes from his wheelchair.

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“Fifty years ago, this was a racist city, but people still cared about people. People don't care about nothing no more.”

Henderson is just one of the daily fixtures in this upside-down neighborhood. The passing parade also includes young addicts from the suburbs who end up as prostitutes, familiar fixtures on Broadway and Van Houten and Market streets, serving locals or men passing through in cars.

Christina Misko was a ghostly, waifish figure, shuffling down Van Houten in hospital socks on a chilly afternoon, with a black eye and a swollen cheekbone.

“Why am I here?” Misko said. “You know why I’m here.” She needed drugs and money.

Just hours earlier, Misko, 33, who grew up in Wood-Ridge and lives in Paterson, had been raped and beaten in a house up the street, she said. She spent the morning in the emergency room — the orange hospital bracelet was still around her slender wrist.

Beneath the front entrance to the Christian Fellowship Center, Misko, who had dyed pink hair and large eyes, set down her bag of fast food and a large iced coffee to remove her sweat shirt.

“Look at this,” Misko said. “It really hurts.” She pulled back the strap of her cotton dress to reveal a large swelling on her back, then pointed to a patch of bloody, matted hair on the back of her head. “I got staples,” she said. Misko pulled open her lips — pink gums, not a single tooth.

“Brass knuckles, and drugs,” Misko said, shrugging. With a smile, she added: “I can eat anything! I just had three little cheeseburgers.”

Prostitution is an open-air practice — much the same as the sale and use of drugs — that local residents are hesitant to talk about. Talking to authorities, or “snitching,” can lead to violent retribution on the streets.

“Ain’t no snitches on Van Houten Street,” said one woman, a landlord, scowling at a reporter’s notebook as she sat on her front stoop.

She complained bitterly about prostitutes, who she said often appeared too strung out to stand, and she puzzled over their clients.

“These men must be beyond really desperate,” she said.

Another Van Houten resident said he saw dozens of women walking the street at all hours, and rarely any police. He did not want to be identified. “They’ll come bust my windows,” he said. “Word will get around.”

“Most guys only wanna pay $20,” said a 43-year-old woman from Wanaque, a crack and heroin addict who hooks on Market Street, where she said she entertained two or three customers a day. For years, she had a job at a ShopRite in Englewood, she said; she once tried rehab in Bergen County but “bolted.” Now she lives in Paterson, in a house with no running water.

Misko, who said she first used heroin as a teenager, has resisted going to rehab. Weeks after her rape and assault, she was arrested again as part of a “quality of life” sweep targeting prostitution.

Among the 20 women arrested were those who listed their hometowns as Oradell, Little Ferry, Clifton, Englewood and Ringwood.

Built in 1890, as Paterson’s beer industry was booming, the Hinchliffe brewery on Governor Street was a modern complex at the heart of a prosperous city. It closed three decades later, during Prohibition. For decades, the brick complex was unused, and after a 1997 fire, its surroundings became a dumping ground.

As Hinchliffe was left to deteriorate, so, too, were many of the properties around the brewery. Despite fitful attempts through the years to reclaim the city’s many abandoned mills, as apartments or retail space, they remain eyesores, painful reminders of the city’s past glories and its present shortcomings.

By August 2013, when Timothy Linnartz was found dead on the grounds of the Hinchliffe brewery, the burned-out property — a place where addicts go frequently to shoot up — accounted for tens of thousands of dollars in tax debt, city records show. The complex also drew complaints about crime and vagrancy.

A narrow gap between the brewery and the gravel embankment of the railroad tracks — known to some as “The Crack” — leads to a small landing on the property that is a popular place to shoot heroin. Dozens of needles and drug paraphernalia litter the ground.

Paterson, the state’s third-most populous city, has eroded for decades. It now finds itself with 1,200 abandoned properties, many that were once homes to hardworking families. Looters — typically drug addicts looking for cash — break into empty buildings and rip out copper piping, heating units and wires. Addicts, more and more who pour into Paterson from Bergen and Passaic county suburbs, as well as dealers linger in apartment building hallways and courtyards. Abandoned houses burn down and damage surrounding homes.

“The hollowing out gets so deep, it’s hard to turn around,” said Robert Sampson, a Harvard University sociologist who studies crime and inequality in American cities.

The close connection between blight and drugs, experts say, is at the root of the problem. As people flee drug-ridden neighborhoods, more properties are abandoned. As more properties stand vacant, they are used by addicts, dealers and the homeless.

Members of the Bergen County prosecutor's multi-agency task force searching an abandoned house at Auburn and Fair streets that is a favorite haunt of drug users.

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“If you have heavy crime, there is limited reinvestment, people don’t feel safe,” said James Hughes, a Rutgers University professor who studies crime and housing. “The decline and deterioration provides a petri dish for crime, all the ingredients are there.”

It is a difficult problem for the city to fix.

The sort of record keeping that the average suburb takes as a given can be a challenge here. Paterson lacks the ability to keep track of things such as business licenses or addresses of property owners. Some city departments are only beginning to transition to computerized record keeping. And as a result, millions in property taxes and sewer bills routinely go unpaid.

Today, abandoned and dilapidated homes are the greatest challenge facing city housing officials, said Kathy Easton, director of improvement for the city’s Community Development Department.

Easton’s office is charged with enforcing the city’s construction codes and property ordinances, overseeing housing inspections and issuing permits. The caseload is heavy and the budget tight.

Only recently were the office’s paper records computerized, Easton said.

With a small staff and poor record keeping, tracking down the owners of abandoned and foreclosed properties can be particularly difficult.

“Many of the owners are registered as living at the property, which they are not,” Easton said. Other properties are owned by companies that don’t have a viable mailing address or agent, she said. Many of the companies are limited liability corporations, a type of business that protects the actual investors, in most cases, from debt incurred by the company.

Local residents express frustration with how long it takes to get an abandoned property boarded up. Easton understands.

“We can’t issue court summonses unless we have an actual agent. There is a process we have to go through,” Easton said.

“It takes a while.”

If the city can't find the owner, Easton said, it will clean, secure and place a lien on the property.

Paterson residents marching past blighted houses in the 4th Ward in August, calling for an end to gun violence in the city.

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Previous attempts to hold absentee property owners accountable have failed.

In January 2012, then-Mayor Jeffery Jones’ office sent a letter to thousands of businesses and property owners, urging them to maintain their properties and report illegal activities. Hundreds were returned unopened to City Hall.

“One of the failures that we uncovered is our record keeping — it’s a problem,” Jones said.

Property taxes — the primary revenue source for virtually all New Jersey municipalities — are another challenge. For example, between July 1, 2013, and June 30 of 2014, it could not collect precariously high totals of $10.7 million in property taxes and $600,000 in sewer taxes, according to city records.

The city’s tax collection rate has dropped by more than 5 percent in the past four years, from 98.74 percent to 93.5 percent, according to city records. Anything below 95 percent is considered insufficient, experts said.

A low tax collection rate is “true of all poor urban municipalities,” said Vincent Belluscio of the Tax Collectors and Treasurers Association of New Jersey. “Unfortunately that is part of urban blight.” Part of the problem, he said, is the prevalence of rental properties.

“The owners probably don’t have much of an interest in maintaining the property,” Belluscio said. “That appears to be common.”

But Paterson’s blight also has connections to the nearby suburbs.

A city survey in 2012 and again in 2014 found that two-thirds of the abandoned, vacant and non-code-compliant houses belonged to non-resident owners, banks or limited liability companies based in nearby towns. A number of those owners are from Bergen County, according to an analysis of tax records by The Record. Others are owned by Paterson residents with separate addresses or post office boxes.

But when the owner lives out of town, it can make it tougher to track down a responsible party, something Paterson officials have grappled with for years.

A review of the 1,200 properties listed as abandoned showed that many were purchased well below market value from banks and at foreclosure auctions. Some were fixed up, only to sit empty or suffer at the hands of looters, while others were allowed to fall into tax delinquency, foreclosure and disrepair.

“There is definitely a connection between these properties and violent crime,” Paterson Mayor Joey Torres said. “We have experienced some of these abandoned properties being used for deviant behaviors. Homeless people build fires, burn out the building next door. We see that it has a negative impact on the quality of life for adjacent property owners.”

It was around 11:15 a.m. on Aug. 29, 2013, when an anonymous call came into police headquarters from a pay phone a few blocks from the Hinchliffe brewery, reporting a body at the property. It was Timothy Linnartz.

That afternoon, Paterson police stopped Carl Jones and Christopher Daut — Linnartz’s companions at the brewery — as they drove Linnartz’s Jeep. The passenger side window was smashed and a screwdriver had been used to start the car, Linnartz’s father, Edward, said.

This past December, Jones and Daut were indicted in the slaying of Linnartz.

Carl Jones, left, and Christopher Daut, were charged in January with the slaying of Timothy Linnartz, a homeless heroin addict from Waldwick.

Many of the properties in the city’s most blighted neighborhoods, including the Hinchliffe brewery property, are owned by out-of-towners. Hinchliffe is owned by 49-55 Governor Street, a limited liability corporation based in Hillsborough. The owners could not be reached for comment.

Unisporex LLC, whose owners have a Cresskill address, is the listed owner of 19 Paterson properties. At one point, the company owned 28 properties, a dozen of which the city identified in 2012 as abandoned.

A woman reached by phone at Unisporex’s Cresskill address said all of the company’s properties were being rented. She said they were purchased as investments and the company expected to sell them “when the price is higher.”

Paterson companies, too, have held onto portfolios of blighted real estate. A single Paterson post office box is listed on more than a dozen LLCs, with names such as 567 Madison Holdings and Jackson Street Holdings — 11 of the properties owned by these LLCs are on the city’s 2012 list of abandoned properties.

But of the estimated 3,000 Paterson properties owned by limited liability companies, two-thirds of the LLCs are based outside Paterson: 66 are owned by firms in Hackensack, 35 by firms in Franklin Lakes, six by Alpine firms, and 77 by Fort Lee firms, an analysis of public records shows.

More than 100 are owned by LLCs based in Wayne, of which two dozen turn up on the abandoned properties list.

Jack Wercberger of West Nyack, N.Y., owns roughly two dozen properties through a network of LLCs based at a single street address. Three properties were on the 2012 abandoned properties list, although Werc­ber­ger said they have been repaired and are being rented.

“Not one of my units are abandoned,” he said.

Wercberger estimated that 40 percent of his tenants receive federal Section 8 housing subsidies — a guaranteed source of income for landlords. He called his investment in Paterson real estate a “worthwhile gamble.”

Messiah Brunson, a building superintendent for landlord Charles Florio, checking damage in a basement apartment on Hamilton Avenue that was burglarized the previous night.

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“Hopefully, when the market turns, I’ll be able to sell them again,” Wercberger said. “That’s basically my game.”

Amid the seemingly endless crime, shootings and abandoned, hollowed-out residences that line many of the streets in the 1st and 4th wards, glimmers of hope can be found with people who remain committed to the city because they have spent their lives in Paterson or see an investment opportunity in the bleakest of environments.

Charles Florio, a developer who lives in Ridgefield Park, owns some 130 properties in the city, a $40 million portfolio centered in the 4th Ward, a few square miles near the Passaic River.

Florio’s aim is to renovate and rent multifamily residential buildings, he said. He works in the city six days a week, out of an office on Rosa Parks Boulevard and Hamilton Avenue. But he has struggled to keep his properties secure, let alone clean or rentable.

“If you look at some of my properties on Governor Street, you would say, straight up, ‘You are a slumlord,’” Florio said.

He meant this figuratively — some of his houses appear to be in disrepair — mostly the result of break-ins from people seeking to steal valuable materials, like copper wiring and plumbing. He said that he, like many landlords in the city, receives a large share of his rental income from Section 8 subsidies, without which many residents would not be able to live in Paterson.

Some of his houses have had to be fixed up three times in three years because of vandalism. He blames the poverty, the addicts and the lack of police.

“They are breaking into your hallways,” defecating in the hallways, “shooting up dope in broad daylight in your back yard,” Florio said. “We meet with Habitat [for Humanity], we meet with the councilwoman, we call the congressman, the senator — and at the end of the day you have no police presence still. How many times will you paint and fix the broken door?”

He recently started sealing his vacant properties with metal, rather than plywood. That did not stop somebody from breaking through the concrete foundation of a house on Godwin Avenue to get to the pipes in the basement, Florio said.

“The violence and the blighted properties is one and the same,” said Florio, who added that one of his employees was shot on his way home from work.

He also hired a private security company to monitor the properties and installed video cameras because police often take hours to respond to complaints about trespassing, he said.

“They don’t have the manpower or money to do real police work,” Florio said.

“There is very little in the way of law enforcement in these neighborhoods,” said Richard Bennett, an Englewood architect who owns two properties in the 4th Ward, where his superintendent said he hears gunshots many mornings. “It’s the drug trade, and the disputes that go along with the drug trade.”

The Paterson of vibrant neighborhoods filled with longtime residents, streets bustling with commerce and the sounds of gainful employment coming from humming factories often exists in memory.

For Edward Linnartz, Timothy’s father, those are the memories he prefers to have of the Silk City, the affectionate name given to Paterson when its clothing mills employed thousands.

“I remember Paterson when I was a kid,” Linnartz said. “It was the place to be, all the stores were there. It’s a real shame now — it’s like another planet.”

Linnartz said he will never return to Paterson, never again visit the city where his son lost his life.

Edward and Peg Linnartz keep their son Timothy's ashes in a memorial urn.

There are longtime residents, like Jessie Philpot, who will never leave. They have seen the neighborhood flourish in the good times and now witness the bad.

From the window of the Jessie & Duke Barber Shop on Godwin Avenue, Philpot, 92, has seen gunfights, drug deals and robberies in broad daylight on the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard.

“I leave before it’s dark,” Philpot said, hands folded softly over his chest. He has cut hair in Paterson since 1941 and owned this shop since 1947, he said.

Godwin is one of the most dangerous streets in Paterson. Since January 2012, there have been at least a dozen non-fatal shootings on the street, a half-mile stretch of the 4th Ward, according to Paterson police records.

Jessie Philpot, 92, left, outside the Godwin Avenue barbershop he has operated since 1947. "I leave before it's dark," he said.

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Graffiti scrawled on the building that houses the barbershop — “Welcome to DEATH AVE” — seems to encapsulate what many believe Godwin has become.

Roughly half the houses are abandoned or dilapidated. Most have been on the abandoned list since 2012. On a street with roughly 125 properties, 27 were behind on property and sewer taxes as of June 2014 — a total of nearly $100,000.

Even in quiet morning hours, on rainy autumn days, men on Godwin’s corners openly sell drugs to visiting addicts or brazenly approach passing cars to make a sale.

Behind one house is a spot known to some as the “Television Graveyard,” where electronics are sometimes dumped after being dismantled for valuable scrap.

“This is a whole separate city within Paterson,” said Rhonda Cleaves-Thompson, a Paterson schoolteacher, as she surveyed Godwin Avenue recently.

Benjamin, another barber at Jessie & Duke, said the drug trade was to blame for the neighborhood’s woes.

“It’s a shame,” Benjamin said. “You see it’s in trouble. Police ride through sometimes. It’s too late gone. It will take another generation.”

Antoine Garris.

Jaleek “Juice” Burroughs.

Tahir Canady.

All African-American men in their late 20s who were shot and killed in their hometown of Paterson. All sad statistics in the scourge of violence — fed by drugs, gang wars and poverty — that has gripped the city with alarming frequency at a time when the size of its police force has been seriously diminished.

Garris had intervened in a physical altercation between a couple at a neighborhood liquor store in September. Fifteen minutes later, police said, the man — a friend from childhood — returned with a handgun and shot Garris multiple times. He was traced to Rochester, N.Y., the next month and was charged with murder.

Burroughs was killed in August, his body found in the street next to a critically injured woman. He worked at a home insulation store in the city. No one has been arrested in his killing.

Canady, who has been linked by authorities to a powerful gang, was gunned down in the hallway of an apartment building. He was out on bail after being charged as one of the leaders of a local drug-trafficking network. Police are holding a man in connection with the shooting, but have not filed murder charges.

For every Timothy Linnartz, a white heroin addict from Bergen County who was beaten to death in Paterson 1½ years ago, there are many more like Antoine Garris, Jaleek Burroughs and Tahir Canady, young black men who were raised — and died violently — in the city.

While authorities point to a recent drop in crime as a heartening sign — violent crime dropped 23 percent in 2014 — Paterson overall has seen deepening violence and an acceleration of the heroin trade over the past four years as suburban addicts have increasingly poured into the city streets. As the drug trade increased, a $77 million budget hole forced the city to lay off one quarter of its 500-member police force.

Paterson police collecting evidence in October at the scene of a shooting on Rosa Parks Boulevard near Pearl Street.

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Twenty-four of Passaic County’s 36 homicides last year took place in Paterson, with no other municipality having more than two. And while the number of gun assaults in Paterson remained flat in 2014 compared with 2013, there was an alarming 32 percent jump through the first seven months of last year before the numbers began to fall.

“We work to the best of our ability with what we have,” said Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes, whose office collaborates with Paterson police on homicide investigations. “The reality is that we need more bodies to do this work.”

There are more churches in Paterson than uniformed police officers. Indeed, it is a hollowed-out police force in what has become a hollowed-out city, many officials and residents said in interviews.

Paterson Police Detective Tom Trommelen said the manpower shortage – the narcotics bureau went from 40 members to roughly a dozen in a few years – has made the work overwhelming.

“It is very hard to keep up with it,” Trommelen said. “It has to get better.”

At a recent community forum on violence, more than a dozen residents pleaded for more cops, more after-school programs for children, more ways to clean up the streets.

“Paterson is a good town. Paterson is not a jungle,” said Rahshon Dixon, a community organizer who leads anti-violence rallies. “We need resources.”

Even though the city used a federal grant in 2012 to rehire 37 of the 125 officers laid off in 2011, Paterson still has the lowest ratio of police to residents of any city in New Jersey: one officer for every 391 residents in 2012, the most recent data available, according to an analysis by The Record. Camden, for example, has one for every 288.

And while the city has made arrests in a good number of homicides — 65 percent of them in 2014 — it solved 9.6 percent of its total crimes and just 5.2 percent of its non-violent crimes last year, the lowest percentages among the state’s six largest cities, according to the analysis.

“We still do not have the resources to cover police and the support staff we need,” said Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, who lives in the city. “The solution is that the state has to do more.”

The state has sent Paterson $200 million over the past eight years, not an insignificant sum for a city that has been roundly criticized for fiscal mismanagement, widespread patronage hiring and waste. State officials have been reluctant to send more money , with Governor Christie observing in 2012 that the city’s finances had been “managed disgracefully” and promising: “They’re not going to get money from the state until they start responsibly managing their city.”

To be sure, city leadership has faltered.

One former mayor, Martin G. Barnes, pleaded guilty in 2002 to federal tax evasion and mail fraud and was sentenced to 37 months in prison.

The current mayor, Joey Torres, who also served from 2002-10, drew criticism when he received tens of thousands of dollars in unused vacation and sick-day payouts at the end of his first tenure as mayor, saying the demands of the job were so great they precluded him from taking time off. In his current term, he has been criticized for accepting a authorized state pension on top of his city salary and for throwing a lavish inaugural ball.

And former Mayor Jeffery Jones, whom Torres replaced last year, let employees, himself included, rack up $83,000 in overtime during Superstorm Sandy. Jones later justified the payments, saying they were based on vague overtime rules held over from previous administrations.

Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes with Paterson Mayor Joey Torres after announcing the arrests in October of seven people in the shooting death of 14-year-old Nazerah Bugg.

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Camden, itself plagued by scandal, has received more focus in recent years than Paterson.

The most striking move in Camden, done with state approval, was the firing of the entire police force, which was placed under county control. Then only the best officers were rehired and the ranks were increased from 250 to 400, placing more officers on the street at lower salaries.

The aftermath has been striking. The Camden murder rate was cut in half between 2012 and 2014 and gun assaults dropped by nearly one-third from 2013 to last year. And although Camden remains one of the most dangerous cities in the nation, Christie pointed to it in his State of the State speech last month as an example of how other cities can improve policing.

Camden had a powerful advocate, South Jersey Democratic political boss George Norcross, an insurance magnate who was born in the city and used his connections in the Legislature, and with Christie, to push for change. During his years as governor, Christie has developed a working relationship with Norcross that the two have considered mutually beneficial.

Paterson has no Trenton power broker in its corner.

That was evident even when Christie’s Study Commission on Violence scheduled public meetings. Camden, Newark, Trenton, Atlantic City and even Vineland were chosen as meeting sites for the committee, which examines trends and works to identify grants to reduce violence.

Residents of Paterson had to demand a meeting in their city before one was scheduled.

Officials from the state Attorney General’s Office say that the state has provided resources and crime mapping to Paterson, and assisted in searches for fugitives through an initiative that seeks to stem gun violence along the Route 21 corridor, connecting Paterson and Newark.

“Acting Attorney General [John] Hoffman always is concerned when there are increases in violent crime in our communities, and this office is monitoring the situation in Paterson,” spokesman Peter Aseltine said.

Others say that police from surrounding municipalities could be used to buttress Paterson’s depleted force, especially since so many of those buying drugs on city streets come from nearby suburbs. Already, there have been cooperative efforts in the region. The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, for instance, has run operations to stem the drug trade in Paterson in recent years.

“Regional problems should have regional solutions,” said Barbara Dunn, director of Paterson Habitat for Humanity, which works to build low-income housing in the city. “Surrounding towns have a responsibility, too, Dunn said: “Their residents are buying half the drugs. Shouldn’t there be some pitching in?”

Tahir Canady was 28 when he was killed in a 1st Ward apartment building. He had been linked to a powerful local gang and was arrested in 2011 when state police dismantled a drug network run by an arm of the Bloods, identifying him as one of the leaders. He left behind two young children.

The man arrested in connection with his death, according to Paterson police documents, has been held since December in the Passaic County Jail on a loosely defined charge of “criminal attempt,” with bail set at $1 million. The family has said that authorities told them they are not ready to file a murder charge.

“Every day another person is killed, it affects me,” said Kelly Canady, Tahir’s mother. “It is a constant struggle.”

Michael DeMarco, Passaic County’s chief assistant prosecutor, believes the “overwhelming motive” behind many of the shootings in the city is the lucrative narcotics trade.

“When you find mid- to high-level drug dealers, those individuals are also arming themselves to protect sources, supplies, the drug business,” DeMarco said.

Michael DeMarco, Passaic County's chief assistant prosecutor, said suburban users who buy their drugs in Paterson are helping finance the city's lucrative drug trade.

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One former drug dealer, a 32-year-old who asked that only his street name “Country” be used, said the violence was just a part of the trade.

“The violence just come,” said Country, who had been selling since he was 15 but quit in November 2013 after being locked up. “I’ve lost some good friends because of these streets, and it hurts, because most of them were too young. The majority was too young. I know one who didn’t even make it to see 20.”

Ninety-one percent of the victims in the city’s non-fatal shootings in the first eight months of 2014 were men. Seventy percent were between the ages of 15 and 25. The vast majority were African-American.

In 2013, nearly half of Paterson’s shootings were in the 4th Ward, a Passaic River neighborhood that is the hub of the city’s drug trade. Liquor stores, takeout chicken restaurants and barbershops have been cited as particular areas of concern for illegal activity and violence.

But formerly quiet residential areas also have seen more violence, residents say.

“As soon as it gets dark, you can hear the shots,” said David, who would give only his first name. He lives at the south end of the 4th Ward, a few blocks from where a 23-year-old man from Lodi was shot and killed in May. “This area used to be very quiet.”

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Security cameras on display inside a bodega at Rosa Parks Boulevard and Lyon Street in Paterson. On July 5, 12-year-old Genesis Rincon was riding her scooter to this shop when she was fatally shot in the head.

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The violence has grown so much that it has had a chilling effect on the community: Restaurants rely on security cameras for protection and many close before dark because they draw more trouble than customers. Longtime residents say they take the long way home to avoid dangerous areas.

Andy, who runs the 2000 Restaurant on 10th Avenue and asked that his last name not be used for fear of retribution, said police did not respond last spring to his calls about drug dealers and suspicious activity in the neighborhood.

“Customers don’t come here because they don’t feel safe,” he said.

Several residents interviewed said they feel that police have long been absent from their streets, with beat cops coming to neighborhoods in the troubled parts of the 1st and 4th wards only when there is an emergency.

Valdes, the county prosecutor, said that her detectives work cooperatively with Paterson police.

“When we have a homicide,” she said, “I can tell you that detectives from the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office and the Paterson Police Department are working around the clock.”

The anger of residents is “rooted in pain,” Valdes said, acknowledging that “people are frustrated, people don’t want to feel like they can’t leave their homes.”

But, she said, “The effort is there. Does the public always know what we’re doing? No. Can it know? No. Because we know what we are focused on doing.”

Jaleek “Juice” Burroughs’ body was found on Aug. 31, 2014, near Temple and North Sixth streets in the 1st Ward. An 18-year-old woman was found nearby, gravely wounded.

Burroughs was a graduate of a local high school and had attended Teterboro School of Aeronautics, his family said.

“I have not seen nor heard from any of you, it’s been eight weeks,” his mother, Delwanna Miller, told city officials after the slaying. “Yes, he was a black man. Yes, he was 27. Yes, it was 4:30 in the morning. But he should still be walking this earth.”

It is nearly impossible to pass through the 4th Ward without seeing a memorial, or meeting a resident who can speak about the death of a nephew, brother or son.

But it was the fatal shooting of a young girl that galvanized Paterson residents and animated the city’s entrenched violence for a wider audience. On July 5, 12-year-old Genesis Rincon was riding her scooter at dusk down Rosa Parks Boulevard when she was shot in the head.

Within a week, police had arrested three city men in connection with her shooting. Authorities said that Genesis was not the intended target.

“Our city has been plagued for a long time,” said the Rev. Della Fischer, who has been working with the Rincon family since the shooting. “But we really saw a lot of it happening [last] summer. Throughout the year we saw murder after murder after murder.”

And the slayings seemed to change, Fischer said, shifting away from classic gang-on-gang violence. “It was no longer them fighting each other, but then our children were caught in the crossfire,” she said at a hearing on violence in October.

Reaction in the city to Genesis’ death was forceful: Rallies were held at City Hall, hundreds joined a church group’s march through the 4th Ward, makeshift memorials blossomed on school fences. “Justice for Genesis” became a call to action.

Paterson police making a heroin possession arrest in November on Carroll Street.

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It was the kind of display that happens every so often in Paterson, typically in response to tragedy. Coming on the heels of a change in city administration, some dared to hope that Genesis’ death would spur real change.

Indeed, there have been heightened public-safety measures since the killing, including a midnight curfew for stores in dangerous areas, police sweeps in the 4th Ward and a greater police presence in high-crime areas.

Police Director Jerry Speziale — a former Passaic County sheriff — said the Paterson department runs special operations in drug-plagued areas of the city. But he also noted that clusters of blighted properties, like those in the 4th Ward, “create a breeding ground for crime and disorder.”

Under Speziale, who took the post in last summer, the city has hired 26 police officers and launched a crime-fighting partnership with Newark and Jersey City.

Mayor Torres said the new hires would be the first of 100 more cops to fill a department decimated by budget cuts.

After months of increased gun assaults, violent crime in the city dropped in August and again in October, according to police reports. In August 2013, there were four homicides and 19 gun assaults in the city; last August, there was one homicide and nine gun assaults. There were 156 gun assaults in 2014, down slightly from 159 in 2013.

Mahzir Cannon,14, at a sidwalk vigil for his brother Ramere Lockhart, who was shot and killed Oct. 5 at 261 Rosa Parks Boulevard in Paterson.

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Still, 11 people were killed last year in the city following Genesis’ death, including 14-year-old Nazerah Bugg, who was shot on Sept. 20 in what officials have described as an attack in retribution for a shooting earlier that day, four blocks away. Like Genesis before her, Nazerah was not the target, officials said.

Valdes and other officials describe a city police force doing its best under limiting circumstances.

Keeping police cars on every corner is not only impossible, Valdes said — it doesn’t seem to work.

“Even within blocks of where there is police presence, shootings are occurring,” she said.

Valdes later said: “It’s unrealistic to think you are going to have police sitting in front of you every day all day. And secondly, there are other areas of the city, and our charge is constantly to stay in front and ahead of the curve.”

“If they know we are situated in the 4th Ward, suddenly you see that things start happening in the 1st Ward. All of these things are daily challenges, daily conversations, daily prioritizing and re-prioritizing, to make sure that with the resources that we have, with the intelligence we have, with the evidence that we have, that we are proceeding in a way that is responsible and sustainable.”

Antoine Garris is buried in Clifton.

Jaleek “Juice” Burroughs is buried in Kearny.

Tahir Canady is buried in Fair Lawn.

The parents of Timothy Linnartz keep his ashes in a wooden urn in their Waldwick home.

By Valentines Day, Paterson already had nine shootings.