EAST ORANGE, New Jersey (WABC) — Several local businesses in a city in New Jersey have teamed up with the police to provide safe shelter for anyone who feels in danger.

It’s called the ‘Safe Place Program.’

Some stories double as a safe spot including a thrift store The Angel Spot.

“We’re actually a family. We don’t look at ourselves just as a store, we look at ourselves as a family place,” said owner Mark Smith.

A new initiative was launched in East Orange Tuesday where participating businesses partner with police to protect victims until help arrives.

The participating stores are marked with stickers on their front doors and windows.

“This program establishes safe places for victims of bias, harassment, discrimination, bullying, or hate crimes to find shelter while calling 911 for help,” said Chief Phyllis Bindi of East Orange Police Department.

Lloyd Morgan and his wife have been merchants in the city for more than half a century.

He didn’t hesitate to sign up his hardware store and barber shop next door.

“I am not a crime fighter, I’m here to help others that are in need, save lives, this people in this city are very loving people,” Morgan said.

Long before the formal program began, Morgan says victims have rushed into his store desperate for help.

And that’s what he gave them.

A safe place while police were called. He said he would never lock his door on someone in need.

“It happened quite a few times. I had to take the one in and stand at the door and went outside. I called one from the group. I said come here and let me speak to you and they left,” Morgan said.

So far, 11 stores have signed up as a safe place. The goal now is to get widespread participation so victims can find help anywhere in the city.

The participating stores include:

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A New Jersey maniac shot his married neighbors Monday afternoon, then barricaded himself in his Jersey Shore mansion and committed suicide after a two-hour standoff with cops, authorities said Tuesday.

John Adamo, 54, of Berkeley Township, shot the husband as he stood outside his Drake Drive home at about 4:45 p.m., according to Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer.

Then he turned his gun on the house and shot the wife as she stood inside.

Afterward, he retreated to his house next door and, for the next two and a half hours, brushed off overtures from the local SWAT teams that surrounded the home, Billhimer wrote.

“I heard two very loud gunshots,” a neighbor told NBC New York. “I was walking in the street to warn somebody, and the police arrived.”

One of the teams eventually blew the front door off its hinges and swarmed the home, which sits on a small canal just minutes from the beach.

They found Adamo dead in an upstairs bedroom — after he apparently shot himself, authorities said.

Officials evacuated neighbors because the team also found a pressure cooker inside the bedroom, but a New Jersey State Police bomb squad later found the device wasn’t rigged to explode.

Adamo’s unidentified victims were both airlifted to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, where they’re listed in critical but stable condition, Billhimer said.

Police have not said what Adamo’s motive might have been.

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