Paterson, New Jersey: Where Something Is Wrong
(Last updated January 2024)
Halloween 2017:
At approximately 3pm on 31 October 2017, Halloween afternoon in New York, a city already etched hard on the terrorists map, an ISIS sympathiser used a truck, rented just an hour before, to mow down cyclists and pedestrians for nearly a mile along the Hudson River Park’s bike path in lower Manhattan.
Six were killed at the scene, two later died in hospital and eighteen others were seriously injured. Five of the dead were Argentine tourists, another was from Belgium and two were Americans. It was the worst terrorist incident in New York since 9/11, but this time, things were different: the perpetrator was captured alive.
Before he was stopped, 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov had intended to drive to the Brooklyn Bridge to continue to strike pedestrians. He wanted to kill as many people as he could, choosing Halloween for the attack because he believed there would be more civilians on the streets.
Saipov had arrived in the US from Tashkent the capital of Uzbekistan some six year’s earlier in March 2010. He had gained a green card through a diversity visa program, which allowed him permanent legal residence.
A former long-haul truck driver, he had originally settled in Cincinnati, Ohio where he had family, but in the summer of 2015 Saipov left for Fort Myers, Florida before moving up the coast to Tampa. Whilst there he became radicalised and moved again.
At the time of the attack Saipov, who did not have a criminal record, was working as an Uber driver and had relocated once more, this time to New Jersey, the state where he rented the Home Depot truck which he used as his weapon of slaughter. The place he most recently called home was Paterson, where he lived with his wife, Nozima Odilova and their three children in a two-bedroom apartment at 168 Genessee Avenue.
I have to confess, up until then I’d never heard of Paterson, indeed I had to look it up to find where it was and learn something about it. The results make for grim reading.
America’s second-most highly-densely populated city:
Paterson, it turns out, is the third most populous city in New Jersey with around 153,000 inhabitants. It may not be that big of a place, but perhaps more tellingly it’s also America’s second-most highly-densely populated city. Only New York City beats it to top spot. And Manhattan is just a short drive across the Hudson River from Paterson.
All too often, high-density equals poverty and inevitably high levels of immigrants. If one looks at recent terrorism in Europe, many of the perpetrators hail from just such an environment, with the poorer suburbs of Brussels and Paris being cases in point.
So it was chilling to find out that Paterson also has the second-largest Muslim population in the United States by percentage.
One of America’s first industrial cities:
Paterson was founded in 1792 by Alexander Hamilton — yes that Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the man who the musical is named after.
The city was named in honour of William Paterson, the second governor of New Jersey, and also one of the Founding Fathers and a signer of the US Constitution.
Paterson was one of America’s first industrial cities: Hamilton himself developed early waterpower systems utilising the Great Falls, second-only to Niagara as the most powerful waterfall on the East Coast.
A place of refuge:
Thanks to its proximity to Manhattan, it’s always been a place of refuge, firstly for the Irish, Germans and Dutch, then it was the turn of Hispanics who were soon followed by those from Eastern Europe and by 1890, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants had also settled there.
Once known as the Silk City, silk was first produced in Paterson in 1840 and by the 1890s, half of all America’s silk came from the city. This was Paterson’s most prosperous period. The fabric mills needed skilled labour which led to the city becoming a mecca for Italian weavers from the Naples region.
Home to assassins and gunmakers:
One of those weavers was Gaetano Bresci who found notoriety when he assassinated the king of Italy, Umberto I. Another Paterson-born assassin was Giuseppe Zangara who killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak.
As the silk industry declined, manufacturing industries took their place. One of the first to set up shop was Samuel Colt who started producing firearms in 1836, including the first marketable revolver, known as the Colt Paterson. Years later, the Colt Single Action Army Revolver, introduced in 1873, was known as “the gun that won the West.”
In 2015, The Colt Gun Company, now headquartered in West Hartford, Connecticut, filed for bankruptcy Chapter 11 protection. In February 2021, the company was acquired by the Czech gun-maker, CZ Group.
But Colt wasn’t the only famous person associated with the city.
Birthplace of Lou Costello:
Paterson was also the birthplace of Lou Costello, one half of the Abbott and Costello comedy duo. Costello was born Louis Francis Cristillo in 1906. His father was Italian, from Campania, while his mother was an American of Italian, French and Irish ancestry.
When he was 21, Costello hitchhiked to Hollywood with the dream of becoming an actor and changed his name from Cristillo to Costello.
He first teamed up with straightman Bud Abbott in 1936 and the pair went on to become one of the biggest comedy duos in the world. In 1942, motion picture exhibitors named Abbott and Costello the biggest money-maker in the industry. However, by the mid-1950s Abbott and Costello films were no longer box-office gold and in 1957 they amicably split.
Despite their shared success, they weren’t really friends, and reportedly barely spoke to one another outside of work. Lou Costello died of a heart attack at Doctors Hospital, Beverly Hills, on 3 March 1959, three days before his 53rd birthday.
In 1992, Costello was honoured with a larger-than-life statue in Federici Park.
In November 2023 it was announced that Lou Costello Pool — the Paterson swimming pool that bears his name — is getting a $1 million makeover with the help of a $250,000 grant from Passaic County and additional funding from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs.
Another noted Patersonian was the boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, the subject of the Dylan song Hurricane and the 1999 Denzil Washington movie of the same name. Carter was convicted of killing three people at the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson at around 2.30am on 17 June 1966. In the end his life was shaped, not by boxing, but by a flawed conviction that put him behind bars for almost two decades. He died from prostate cancer on 20 April 2014 aged 76.
Also born in Paterson was Bill Haast, one of America’s most renowned snake handlers. He relocated to Florida where he opened the Miami Serpentarium, which housed his collection of snakes and from where he produced snake venom. Haast claimed he built up immunity by injecting himself with a mix of 32 different snake venoms. There must be something to it. When he died in 2011 from natural causes, he was 100!
Home to musicians:
In more recent times, Paterson spawned a number of noted musicians including Doobie Brothers drummer Michael Hossack, En Vogue’s Maxine Jones, Steely Dan lead guitarist Jon Herington, William Junior Maxwell II aka rapper Fetty Wap, as well as Dave Prater of Sam and Dave fame. In fact, the title of this essay is derived from the Sam & Dave song When Something Is Wrong With My Baby which was first released in 1967.
Also born in Paterson is the author Michael Wolff best known for his books Fire and Fury, Deadline Iraq: Uncensored Stories of the War (2003) and, most recently, The Trump Show (2020).
Industrial decline and rising crime:
Over the years as the fabric mills declined other manufacturing plants sprang up in their place. During World War II, Paterson played an important part in the US aircraft engine industry. But the end of the war saw a decline in industry and since the late 60s the city has suffered high unemployment rates and ‘white flight.’
With twice the average unemployment rate of other Jersey city’s, by 1983, Paterson had become one of the poorest city’s in America. And as a result, crime levels rose.
In search of the American dream:
Despite the decline of Paterson’s industrial base, it still attracted immigrants — most recently those from the Arab and Muslim world — and it’s they who have been responsible for reviving the city’s economy, mainly through small businesses.
One of those, Kontos Foods was set up in 1987 by Steve Kontos and his father Evripides, a Cypriot emigree. Today, they are still family owned and have 350 employees making 450,000kg of pitta and other artisan flatbreads a week at their three factories in Paterson.
Not all immigrants however came to Paterson in search of the American dream, some like Hanj Hanjour, Nawaf Alhazmi, Salem Alhazmi, Majed Moqed, Abdulaziz Alorami and Khalid Almihdhar came to crush it.
They were among the hijackers in the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington DC and they shared a Paterson apartment in the six months prior to the attacks.
The city is often associated only with its troubles: crime, violence and poverty, but rarely is Paterson seen for its people.
A melting pot:
Today, it continues to be a melting pot where immigrants come to settle. Indeed, more than 40% of its residents are foreign-born and its 56 ethnic and religious backgrounds speak nearly 100 languages and dialects!
It’s home to many Peruvians — officially around 10,000, but some claim it’s closer to 30,000. With the largest population of Peruvians outside of Peru. No wonder many call it Little Lima.
Paterson also has the largest Turkish-American immigrant community in the United States, as well as the third-largest Dominican-American community. What’s more, it also has America’s largest Circassian immigrant community. Circassians are Suni Muslims originally from the Russian caucases.
But perhaps most ominously, Paterson also lays claim to having the second largest Arab-American community after Dearborn, Michigan.
Little Ramallah:
Nicknamed Little Ramallah, in 2015 Paterson’s Arab American population was estimated to be around 20,000, mainly of Palestinian, Syrian or Jordanian descent. The Daily Telegraph puts that figure even higher at between 25,000-30,000.
The son of Lebanese and Syrian immigrants, Andre Sayegh, currently serving his second term leading Paterson, is the city’s first Arab American mayor.
Paterson’s Arab neighbourhood is served by the Omar Mosque at 501 Getty Avenue, which was the subject of a widespread surveillance program by the NYPD that targeted “budding terrorist conspiracies.”
Sadly, one of its congregation managed to evade their suspicions.
Since then Paterson remains a violent city. 2021 saw it set a record number of homicides for the second straight year when 25-year-old Jasmin Wel became the 28th person killed in Paterson during the year, making it one more homicide than in 2020. And 2022 saw another 28 homicides.
Although six separate shooting incidents in October 2023 produced Paterson’s worst month for homicides in more than three years, 2023 did see the number of murders in the city drop to 17, a 39% decrease.
2023 also saw some big changes within the Paterson Police Department. Among the most significant developments was the takeover of Paterson’s police force by New Jersey attorney general Matt Platkin. This move shifted control from mayor Andre Sayegh’s administration and led to a reorganisation of police leadership.
One of the first initiatives of newly appointed police chief Isa Abbassi was to introduce a Summer Crime and Quality of Life Strategy, which involved additional state resources, personnel, technology, and almost $1 million in extra funding.
Filming location:
After a devastating fire in 1902, the city rebuilt the downtown with massive Beaux-Arts-style buildings, many of which remain to this day. Paterson still retains an old-fashioned appearance with its downtown area full of mom and pop stores.
The 2016 film Paterson, directed by Jim Jarmusch, is set in Paterson and was largely filmed there. The movie is about a bus driver named Paterson who writes poetry in his free time.
Paterson was selected by Steven Spielberg as the location for his remake of West Side Story. Chosen for its ‘grit and authenticity,’ filming begun in downtown Paterson in August 2019 with an entire city block being shut down and transformed into 1950s-style storefronts.
A few months earlier, Paterson stood in for the Windy City when it was used as the location for Aaron Sorkin’s movie The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Footnotes:
For today’s terrorists, access to weapons is cheaper than ever. The Home Depot truck used by Saipov bore the sign “Rent me starting at $19”
Due to complications caused by the pandemic, Saipov’s trial was delayed by almost six years until January 2023. In court, the jury heard how he had spent a year planning the attack. His defence attorney said his client had expected to die and become a martyr.
Saipov was convicted, but in March 2023 the same jury was deadlocked over how he should be punished. In the end, he was spared the death penalty because a unanimous decision by the jury is required. He is now incarcerated, without the possibility of parole, at the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, the most secure prison in the US.
On 17 December 2021, Paterson-born rapper Fetty Wap was arrested at Newark Liberty airport after his ankle monitor went off and alerted authorities to his whereabouts.
The incident came a month after he posted $500,000 bail following his arrest by FBI agents in connection with a huge drugs bust during the Rolling Loud music festival at New York’s Citi Field stadium. He and five others were accused of operating a multimillion-dollar drug ring and plotting to sell fentanyl and heroin at the festival.
On 24 May 2023, the 31-year-old rapper was sentenced to six years in prison and is currently serving time at Elkton Federal Correctional Institution in Ohio.
E&EO
