The murder of Jersey City Police Officer Melvin Santiago was a senseless tragedy. A young man with a promising career and future had his life snuffed out by a man with a gun for no apparent reason.

Santiago leaves behind a grieving family and friends who left to ponder the insane randomness of urban violence. Since the beginning of the year, there’s been 15 homicides in Jersey City and a plethora of shootings that left a number of city residents recuperating from gunshot wounds.

Even with the tragedy of Officer Santiago, the mayor has done little about putting into place any policy or major strategy to deal with the almost daily gun play and violence plaguing some areas of the city.

Several weeks ago, Jersey City NAACP President William Braker and Urban League of Hudson County President Elnora Watson addressed the City Council to implore that the neighborhood policing Fulop promised during his mayoral campaign, be implemented. "We need a physical presence of police in high crime areas," Braker has intoned so often it's beginning to sound like a broken record.

The pleas and admonitions of Braker, Watson and other residents who addressed the City Council were met with silence from the nine-member body. There was no comment, show of sympathy or empathy from the council members about crime. Nor did they react to a companion issue raised by community leaders and residents involving a city-paid disparity study that asserts minority businesses have been excluded from receiving a fair share of city contracts. There's a not-so-invisible thread that ties together a less than equal sharing of the city economy, unemployment and crime.

A clearly frustrated Braker said he’s beginning to wonder if City Hall holds the lives of residents in some neighborhoods in less regard than it does occupants of the gleaming high rises and pricey brownstones of Downtown Jersey City.

As harsh as that may sound, consider what people living on streets – where the staccato of gunfire is an almost nightly occurrence – are left to make of the stony silence emanating from City Hall.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Earl Morgan's column appears here every Wednesday.