I think you should dress up like a giant can of Goya beans, and stand in front of the Vanessa van to be extra sure he sees you and stops.

Please?

To the apologists:

Let's take the EMT's actions at face value.

S/he (they) responded to a call from a man who seems to be in some sort of psychological distress.

They find what they believe to be potentially deadly bombs on the premises.

What do they do?

Run away and call the cops.

What if Slacky really was a mad bomber, and now knew that his plot was uncovered?

In the intervening 10-15 minutes (by Slacky's account) that occured between the EMT's leaving and the po-lice showing up, Slacky could have easily lobbed the grenades at neighboring houses, Lucky 7s, or probably, running at full clip, made it to the Grove Street Path and destroyed a car full of yipsters.

Why didn't the EMTs call for backup if they were so concerned, and then stalled Slacky while it arrived?

It seems to me that the EMT's acted incredibly incompentently based on the perceived threat.

In a post 9-11 world, we all need to act with greater vigilance, and, when tough times demand it, heroism in the face of the global threat of terrorbombers, evilaxisers, and islamobanditoes.

I feel that the people of Jersey City should rise up and demand that the cowardly and inept actions of these EMTs be investigated thoroughly, and that all members of emergency response units be trained in ways to handle potential bomberistas.

Thank the angel Gabriel and the gods of the Homeland that Slacky was just an irressponsible foreigner idiotically collecting perfectly legal but easily mistakeable detritus of the american war machine, and not a nineelevenistermujadeenfighter, because this easily could have been Jersey City's own 10-26.

@realist

Quote:

You've left out the part about bringing Slackey to the hospital, handcuffing him to a bed, and the threat to test him for psychological problems.

All of which happened AFTER the paper-weights were determined to be paper weights.

Your version of reality skews stupid.

They shouldn't have harassed him (if they did) but they should have had a right to get a bomb expert to look at the disabled grenades, and it seems to me that it would be reasonable for them to have someone evaluate the original poster to make sure he wasn't the kind of person who uses a fake grenade to hold up banks.

"the kind of person?"


The fact of the matter is that anyone at anytime could walk into a bank with a roll of toilet paper painted red and an alarm clock and pull off a heist.

The police have absolutely zero authority to evaluate people for potential crimes.

Talk about the thought police.

There was no mistake. A hand grenade IS a bomb. The fact that it was decommissioned is irrelevant. Should you always assume an unloaded handgun is safe just because the guy who has it pointing at you says so?

A dead human body is not a human being.

A statue of a person is not a person.

A drawing of a flower is not a flower.

An animation of a talking fish is not a talking fish.

A device that looks like a bomb is not a bomb.

A hand grenade without the powder, rendered harmless and useless, is no longer a hand grenade. It's an object with the formal, external characteristics of a hand grenade, but is missing the basic elements of "hand grenade-ness" to make it a hand grenade.

These are basic ontological principles that even the most thick should be able to understand.

Did the PD have the right to question Slacky further about the
"being" of the hand grenade? Perhaps.

Could they have done so without harrassment and over-reaction?

Without a doubt.

Skadave

You miss the point.

There are PLENTY of things that could be mistaken for a bomb.

Say Slacky's iPOD was broken and he had it dissasembled on the kitchen table.

Or he had a pile of white clay shaped into sausages for an art project.

Or a sculpture of a grenade.

None of the above things go "boom."

Should police have the right to bust in for anything that might be considered suspicious?

Like make sure every puff of cigarrete smoke isn't pot, or every argument isn't domestic abuse, or every flickering TV screen isn't transmitting an obscenity, or every sound of sex isn't a rape, or every darkened window isn't concealing a crime?

Police need to lay off.

A knock on the door would have sufficed.

JC is just itchy on the trigger finger since all the WTC plotting was done here, and they were too stupid to catch it.

1. Owning a deactivated hand grenade is not illegal.
2. Owing a ceramic sculpture of a hand grenade is not illegal.
3. Owing a painting of a hand grenade is not illegal.

What links these three things?

None of the above are weapons.

What if Slacky were an inventor, and had a weird and wooly device that looked "bomb-like?"

Would the police have the same right to roll in and humiliate and mistreat him?

The police should not and DO not have the right to roll into private homes and abuse citizens based on some "post-9-11" rationale nonsense.

The JCPD consistently embarrases itself with either outright criminal activity, ineptness, or civil rights encroachments.

I feel like JC is at this point an anarcho/fascist state. The police harrass ordinary citizens, ordinary citizens are afraid of the police, and the criminals run wild.

The police are, and should be, civil servants. Very much like the post man. IF anything needs to be defused, it's our drug-addled, steroid-cocked, pea-brained hero-wannabee PD, and not ordinary citizens with perfectly legal memorabilia.

Maybe the influx of new people, unbeholden to the corroded JC political machine, will be able to elect officials who will be able to reform the absolutely broken JC justic system.

But as of right now, I feel less safe in this damn town every day.

I'll throw in my 2 cents.

My wife and I would go there quite a bit, usually for Guinness and hot wings, but haven't been since the changeover.

Why?

Because my wife told me that she had heard that "some guy from South Jersey took it over," and I thought: "Great, now it'll be Hoboken."

Based on the arrogant Bon Joviness of "blummy," and what seems like the consensus of suckiness from the rest of the comments, I don't think I even want to sit outside at that place (which sucks because I live right up the block, and it was always nice for a summer beer.)

Simple it is! Which is OK, because they have the best baked eggs on earth.