Not a single police officer in Newark, NJ, fired their weapon in 2020, an achievement the department credits to its de-escalation training program. 
That stat is all the more impressive given that it comes during a year that Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose has described as the roughest in his 34 years of law enforcement, citing a summer of civil unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic as factors.
The Newark Police Division's de-escalation program was initially introduced two years ago. Ambrose says 2020 is the year the program really began paying off, telling News 12 New Jersey, 'These things, it takes time for it to work. And I think it worked.'
Newark, NJ, is a city that historically has had high crime rates, but overall, crime dropped 6% and police recovered 7% more firearms off the streets in 2020—without needing to fire a single shot.
Perhaps most impressively, the city's homicide rate stayed flat, while nearby cities like Trenton saw theirs rise alarmingly last year.
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