file photo by Boyd Loving
February 3,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Lt. Brian Pullman and Ptl. Kyle Scarpa were approached while on patrol and notified of two male parties soliciting money for candy in the area of North Walnut Street on January 28. The parties were then located and found to be soliciting without a permit. Both parties were identified and found to have active warrants for arrest out of Jersey City, N.J. Both parties were arrested at the scene and transported to Ridgewood Police headquarters. Both arrestees were issued summons for Village of Ridgewood ordinance violations and Jersey City P.D. responded and took custody of the arrestees.
This is why the Mega Garage was defeated as many new large Transit Facilities draw the criminals .It starts off with minor solicitations/ panhandling drug dealing bicycle theftt and goes downhill from there .We are seen as a town of soft targets
Exactly
It is a slippery slope.
9:23 that’s a reach.
Just saw an email via dads night dated 2/2/17 as follows:
“Guys. To my knowledge there have been 4 reported burglaries in our neighborhood the past 2 weeks. A couple were on spring and 1 today on John st. The pattern is mid day breaking glass to enter homes. Heard it’s a white male in a hoodie. We should encourage everyone to take the necessary precautions – hide jewelry, valuables, etc. Set your home alarms and lock doors.
As a member of the safety patrol, BE SAFE!”
Anyone have any further info about this. I see nothing in the town blog, Patch, etc. and I suspect this would be bigger news than busting a couple of unauthorized candy sellers in town — from which some would extrapolate a budding crime wave.
Speaking of crime, any truth to this email received from a dads night member:
“Guys. To my knowledge there have been 4 reported burglaries in our neighborhood the past 2 weeks. A couple were on spring and 1 today on John st. The pattern is mid day breaking glass to enter homes. Heard it’s a white male in a hoodie. We should encourage everyone to take the necessary precautions – hide jewelry, valuables, etc. Set your home alarms and lock doors.
As a member of the safety patrol, BE SAFE!”
I suspect this would be of greater concern to most folks than some unlicensed candy peddlers at the suspected cusp of a crime wave.
RWT – stop living in denial. 9:23 is spot on.
I tend to agree @9:23
Yes, let’s build a load of low-income housing.
Nice to see Ridgewood’s finest issuing summons’ to someone other than Ridgewood taxpayers
@9:23 “We are seen as a town of soft targets.” Not sure what this means or how you arrive at this conclusion.
Ridgewood’s crime rate (measured in instances per 1000 of population) is historically low (9.3/1000) as compared to neighbors like Paramus (52/1000) or Paterson (39/1000). On a national basis, Ridgewood is in the top 17% of the safest (read: low crime) communities.
Are you implying that suburban privilege is inversely proportional to urban street smarts — giving Ridgewoodians only an illusion of safety — when in fact — we are easy pickings — or “soft” because our average income ranks 37th out of 702 municipalities — according to the 2010 census — and rich folks are easy pickings for criminals? It seems logical that a “good” criminal would want to steal from rich folks, but the opposite is overwhelmingly true. Nationwide, the poor living in poor communities are the most frequent victims of crime hence, considerably more “soft” than we are in this town.
I’m no fan of parking garages, and such structures do bring with them a degree of urban blight and perhaps a bit more property crime — mostly because they afford bad guys a convenient place to hide and steal cars and stuff from cars — which accounts for much of the Paramus spike. But by any reasonable measure, Ridgewood remains among the most crime free towns in the County, the State and the Nation — garage or no garage.
@7:26 — The Mt. Laurel rulings by the NJ Supreme Court, followed by the NJ Fair Housing Act of 1985 and COAH — all require affordable housing in ALL towns.
@8:15 — AMEN!