It’s about three miles from the South Paterson apartment of the Uzbek immigrant charged last week in the New York terror attack, to the run-down tenement over a bodega on Union Avenue that provided a haven for those plotting the 9/11 attacks more than 16 years ago.
The two neighborhoods, in the same city, are worlds apart.
South Paterson is the heart of a thriving Muslim center, where signs in Arabic welcome shoppers into stores and restaurants. On the other side of the city’s Great Falls, Union Avenue is a gritty place where the signs are mostly in Spanish.
What both share is an unwelcome connection to yet another horrific news event that once again thrust New Jersey’s third-largest city back on the map.
And for some, there is a growing fear that the attention from authorities, and the return of the news media, will further cement an image into the minds of some who see Paterson as a hotbed for extremism or radicalization.
To Ahmed Youssef, 42, Paterson is just a home--a town to raise his four children, a place to work and somewhere to eat what he claims to be the best falafel sandwiches in the county.
“This is crazy. We’ve never had this happen since I’ve lived here,” he said, sipping his Dunkin Donuts coffee while talking about the swarms of police and federal agents who have taken over local streets since Sayfullo Saipov--who lived blocks away--was charged in the terror attack that killed eight people in New York on Tuesday.
“You know, it is just one guy,” remarked Youssef. “One isolated incident.”
But his fears of a backlash were not entirely unfounded. In recent days, telephone threats have been receivedat at least one mosque in the city.
The threats were received by the Islamic Center of Passaic County, located on the city’s Eastside, which reported callers using profane language and saying, “we’re going to kill you, we’re going to get you, we’re going to burn your mosque down.”
The calls were reported to police and the Department of Homeland Security.
“We have received threats in the past, but nothing of this magnitude,” said Omar Awad, president of the Islamic Center. “The national rhetoric is affecting our lives here.”
Former Mayor Bill Pascrell, now a U.S. congressman who was born and raised in Paterson, said the city is being stereotyped with a reputation it does not deserve.
“We don’t grow these people,” Pascrell said of Saipov. “Paterson shouldn’t be punished because he lived here.”
At the same time, Pascrell said the city’s ethnic enclaves and its cultural diversity are a source of its strength.
“My parents taught me to be respectful of all people,” said the Democratic congressman from Passaic County. “I was born in Paterson. I grew up in Paterson. Most people feel the same way.”
Paterson has seen its image and fortunes rise and fall since its founding in 1791, after Alexander Hamilton (yes, that Alexander Hamilton) had a vision of a mighty industrial center on the banks of the Passaic River that would harness the power of the Great Falls and help the new republic shed its economic reliance on England. The city over time became a rich mill town.
And immigrants came to work, including an Irish nationalist who dreamed of independence from British rule and began work on an undersea craft that he reported hoped could be used to “blow the English Navy to hell.”
The city’s fortunes, however, declined after World War II. Manufacturing fled, the silk and dye mills shut down, urban decay set in and the Great Falls and its historic mill district--today a National Historical Park--fell into disuse. Wide territories were claimed by gangs with streets taken over by drug dealers.
More recently, two Paterson mayors were caught up in major corruption scandals, including the late Martin Barnes, convicted in 2002 in a kickback scheme. And earlier this year, Mayor “Joey” Torres, pleaded guilty in Septemberto using city employees for personal tasks while they bilked the city for overtime.
Through it all though, the immigrants kept coming.
Once a massive blue-collar labor town, Paterson these days is a city of transients and immigrants, with a population where about 1 out of 3 is foreign born, many from the Dominican Republic, Peru and the Middle East, each with their own neighborhoods.
It is also home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the country with people from places such as Jordan, Syria and Morocco settling here.
The 9/11 connection
Between its continued association with 9/11, and its large Muslim community, though, many of the city’s residents say they have long felt themselves a target of suspicion.
At least six of the hijackers in the September 11 attacks rented and lived in a rundown three-story apartment building on Union Ave from March to September 2001, about three miles from the neighborhood where Saipov had resided.
That, and later reports that proved to be unfounded of celebrations in Paterson after the suicide attacks, brought the attention of New York Police Department, which secretly put Paterson on its watch list when it launched a covert surveillance program of Muslim businesses, Islamic schools and houses of worship throughout New York and into New Jersey. They called it an effort to identify “budding terrorist conspiracies.”
The controversial police intelligence operation, which unexpectedly came to light in 2011, kept tabs in dossiers on the comings and goings at the Masjid Omar Mosque on Getty Ave., near where Saipov was recently living, as well as restaurants and other Muslim gathering places in Paterson.
In the wake of an outcry over the surveillance, police officials defended the now-disbanded program as legal and justified, but later settled a lawsuit over the program.
For many Paterson residents, the attack in New York by Saipov was a moment of deja vu, with their city again becoming the epicenter of a major investigation by law enforcement.
The latest fallout
Since the attack, the FBI and local police officers have searched Saipov’s apartment and the surrounding neighborhood for evidence, drawing TV crews and dozens of reporters to the area. Store fronts on this block located at Genesse and Getty streets are quiet because most of the side roads leading here have been blocked off.
At Masjid Omar, the same mosque watched by the New York police, leaders spoke to reporters Tuesday and condemned the attack. They said they did not know if Saipov attended prayer there, though others from the neighborhood said they had seen him at the mosque, one of three in the city.
“Our mosque has nothing to do with this,” said Ibrahim Matari, the president of Masjid Omar.
Just a short walk from Masjid Omar on Main Street, two men working at Sun Tours and Travel, who did not want to give out their names, said they were both affiliated with local advocacy organizations and suggested leaders from the community were nervous about coming forward after the attack, because of the negative attention the town received after 9/11.
Natalie, who did not want to give her last name because she lived close by to where the FBI investigation is now centered, walked around the area where Saipov lived. She said she can “walk the streets of Paterson any time of the day any time of the night” without problem.
“This is not Paterson,” she reiterated of the focus Saipov has brought upon her city.
Tony Desimone, the director of the Passaic County Board of Social Services, which serves about 47,000 households, including many immigrants, grew up in Paterson.
“This has always been a first-generation town,” he said. “We all are immigrants here. I know there are bad people everywhere. But this is a great place. I really, really enjoy my town.”
James Sues, executive director of New Jersey’s Council on American-Islamic Relations, considers Paterson to be a Muslim-friendly town, but believes negative rhetoric at a national level is raising tensions on the local level.
“I got a phone call asking me what my reaction was just because we are the second largest Muslim population in the nation,” he said. “It was surprising to hear such questions. We didn’t see that with the Las Vegas shooting.”
Back at the cross street of Genessee and Getty in Paterson, Youssef shuffled into a cafe owned by a Lebanese man, a close friend. He ordered a falafel sandwich and tea and sat at a table where he could see the television. Scenes from just one block over flashed across news broadcasts. Waitresses and cooks from the cafe gathered to watch, most of them shaking their head in disbelief.
“I still can’t believe it,” one of them said.
Youssef, who moved to the U.S. from Syria when he was a child, has an extended family here. His father worked for the U.S. government. Now, all of his cousins, sisters and brothers live in the Paterson area.
“I love this country. I am from Syria but Syria didn’t do nothing for me. I am proud to say that I am from the U.S,” he said, adding that most of the Muslim community members that lived in Paterson either moved to the U.S. at a young age or were born here.
And what most of them want the world to know: Paterson is not a hotbed for extremism. It is a place that has given the foundation for many people here to start new lives.
“This guy had such a bad mind,” Youssef said of Saipov. “He came from overseas and had crazy beliefs. These aren’t ideas that exist here.”