Xerxes wrote:
Quote:

Mayor Healy has declared on several occasions that campaign contributions have no bearing on any decisions he makes concerning Jersey City.

I think at some time in his career, every politician on Earth has made this claim. Perhaps 2% of them might be believed?

12012 wrote:
Early in 2005, the desk sergeant at the East District Precinct told me there were eight police officers assigned to 111 First Street at all times. For EIGHT MONTHS, the city allowed Lloyd Goldman, a NYC multi-billionaire developer and landlord of 111, to hire uniformed off-duty Jersey City police officers with guns to harass and intimidate approx.100 residents at 111. Some of the drunk cops in the video were almost certainly working for Goldman, (as it was pointed out by someone else in this thread) because an employee of Goldman approached the vehicle with a paper at the end of the tape.

Harassment by the off-duty hired cops at 111 took place on a daily basis, ranging from mildly frustrating, to extremely dangerous, and to downright unconstitutional. An example of a mildly frustrating form of harassment is when one artist was taking some of his artwork out of the building for an exhibition, a cop told him that the artwork was now the property of Lloyd Goldman and he couldn?t remove the work. (True story!) An example of an extremely dangerous situation is when a cop blocked a fire exit with a 4x8 sheet of plywood so he could nap, drink, or do whatever he was doing in the dark street behind 111. There was also the arson. With eight cops watching the building, it is hard to imagine they couldn?t provide any information to the arson squad. Two examples in the unconstitutional category are when police officers hired by Goldman removed a television crew from the studio of one of the tenants. They also attempted to remove a Star Ledger reporter from the building. I have video of this and I also have a photo of the plywood against the fire door.

There were 100 tenants in the building during this time and each could probably tell you at least one story involving unprovoked harassment by the cops. I could easily rattle off another ten examples that personally happened to me.

It is important to understand the chaos and confusion that occurred by having uniformed off-duty Jersey City police officers (w/guns) hired by the landlord in and around the building. Confrontations between the tenants and BLDG Management (Goldman?s goons) were constant. If the tenants needed police intervention, it was impossible to get any justice from the rent-a-cops. We had to call the precinct to get an ON DUTY police officer for the situation. The precinct would then exclaim that they already had officers on site. And we would say, ?yeah, but there working for the landlord. We want someone who will be neutral.? Eventually we would get an on-duty Jersey City police officer, but the whole situation was nuts. It got to the point that when any interaction with a police officer occurred at 111, most of us would first ask if he/she was working for the landlord right now or if they were on-duty being paid by the city. For this reason alone, off-duty police officers hired by private companies/individuals should not be allowed to wear their uniforms or carry their police revolvers.

BTW- it costs about $45/per hour to hire an off-duty Jersey City police officer. If Goldman had 8 police daily for 8 months, it kicked in an additional $2,073,600 towards our boys/girls in blue. Unbelievable!!!

What angers me most is city officials knew all this was happening. We brought our grievances to Mayor Healy several times. Members of the city council were aware of the situation at 111. Certainly Mariano Vega and Junior Maldonado knew. Internal Affairs received reports. Even Judge Gallipoli must have indirectly had a clue, since we were in his court room several times to try to overturn bogus building restrictions that Goldman?s goons dreamed up to harass us and the off-duty hired cops enforced.

A lawyer friend of mine who worked in the legal department of a city in NJ once told me that he doubts you could find another city in this country that would allow their police force to be hired by a private contractor for long extended periods of time such as in the case of 111. I am furious Jersey City has this policy and they should immediately eliminate it. No other citizens in this city should experience the injustice the tenants of 111 went through.

fasteddie wrote:
I am doing some renovations. Today I tore apart a kitchen cupboard, one of the last few original details left in this house. It has glass doors on top and a little counter and drawers on the bottom. I stripped the paint from the upper part and will rebuild the doors but the lower part was too far gone to save, 100 + years of paint layers, it was not salvagable. So, as I took the Sawzall to the lower faceframe, I find that it was mortised and tennoned together, not just nailed together. Someone put some real work and sweat into this thing. I felt bad, like I was commiting a sin, I was. You can google "mortise and tennon" if you don't know. The mortise was cut with a chisel and the tennon was cut with a saw, there were 8 of these joints on the small part I demolished and they still held strong. The drawer bottoms are 20" wide solid 1/4" thick clear pine, not plywood, this cannot be found anymore, I am saving this wood. Since I have been doing this work and taking things apart, I often think about the people who put it together. I always look for a note or someone's initials or a date penciled on the back of a peice of wood, I never find any, they didn't have time for time capsule notes. I imagine men in overalls with handlebar mustaches, pencil behind the ear, Irish or German. They went to work early, probably walked or on horse drawn trolley and carried their lunches with them. They lived in the tenements with their wives and children, they didn't own the houses they built, worked six days a week, wore themselves out, died young. All the materials for this house were delivered by horse and wagon and carried upstairs by hand or with block and tackle. Tons of plaster, thousands of feet of wood lath. The plaster had horse hair in it as a binder, the way we use fiberglass today in concrete.
So anyway, what I'm saying is, I hate tearing apart another man's well done work. Even if he lived 100 years ago, especially if he lived 100 years ago. I will replace it, I promise, but it will have European self closing hinges and ball bearing drawer slides.

Vigilante wrote:
How many cops did the city make him put on the payroll? They managed to chase Law and Order away a few years ago by squeezing them with the " you're gonna need 6 cops to shoot there" crap.

Vigilante wrote:
I just walked past Pavonia and Coles St. and counted 37 Police Cars, 14 Fire Engines and 3 Swat Teams. There is an 11 year old kid holed up in a brownstone with a loaded SuperSoaker. May God help us all.

Xerxes wrote:
I have lived in the Heights and have always thought the architectural quality approached GHASTLY. There are exceptions but the basic Heights home was a thrown together wood and shingle one or two family home that weathered very poorly and was saved for a few more decades by a coating of aluminum siding. I have never lived anywhere else where the usual constuction form was so shoddy. I am often amazed that a huge fire hasn't somewhere along the way consumed most of the place.

I find it difficult to believe that development of any kind would not be an improvement to most neighborhoods with a very few exceptions along Summit Avenue and Sherman Place, and perhaps a smattering on Manhattan Avenue and Palisades Avenue.

I am not of the school that preaches anything that is standing is worth saving. But I'm sure there are people who can find some beauty in these multicolored aluminum sided shacks...not me, though.

ilovefood wrote: Did I complain about parking in jc? And does the fact that someone left a note on my car criticizing my parking prove that I was incompetent in parking it? I actually do have a really small car (so parking has never been a problem, thanks), and when I parked it a day ago, the cars in front of and in back of me were less than one foot away... sooo ... when those cars moved and others came in, this guy apparently thought I purposely left lots of room on either side (?). If everyone drove a subcompact car like mine, we'd have a lot more parking places in JC. Some ridiculous person decided to leave a note on my tiny car saying that I took up too much space. I think that anger should be reserved for the cars 4 - 8 ft. longer than mine (most of them). Quote:

ianmac47 wrote: Quote:

ilovefood wrote: I apologize if the way my small car was parked made it difficult for you to find a spot. However if your car was as small as mine, you could have easily fit behind me. balderdash.

You sound like a douchebag. Don't go complaining about the shortage of parking if you are too inconsiderate or incompetent to park your own car properly.

juan833blue wrote:
There are six drawbacks to riding those mini-buses:

1. They literally stink
2. The seats are uncomfortable and there is very little space
3. No A/C during the Summer which will feel like a steambath
4. They are hazardous for the environment because of the Diesel smoke
5. They stop in the middle of the street and not on an NJT bus stop
6. They cause too much traffic congestion and keep picking up or discharging people when in a red light which is unnecessary

In other words, all of those Jitney buses have got to go, there is no way in the world that these small buses are good and not to mention the poor safety riding the little buses. Riding NJT is not only more reliable, but they also have drivers with tons of experience and not to mention that the seats are MUCH more comfortable than on the jitneys.

caj11 wrote:
I'm just frustrated about the recent upsurge in muggings and break-ins (to both cars and individual apartments), the police being virtually helpless and all people do is joke about it. I suppose any kind of serious post on this forum is pointless...

caj11 wrote:
Regardless of how much people actually care about this or want to create a new bar drink, it\'s shit like this that has made me re-visit the issue of private gun ownership. I used to be a bleeding-heart liberal and hated the NRA. I lived the greater part of my life in a small town where my commute was short, I was usually home before dark and people routinely walked into each others\' houses. I never thought I\'d have any need for a gun. Now I work in NYC, its usually dark when I\'m walking home and the streets can get sketchy after dark. I\'m no match for a group of muggers, even if its a bunch of teenage girls, but the sight of a gun would make them re-think jumping me. Not that I\'d personally want to shoot anybody, but Jersey City needs its own version of Bernie Goetz to give the criminals a message. Notice how crime began to go downhill after that incident in 1984.

jcwestie1 wrote:

I think these punketts need a good slap from an adult because they definately arent geetting it at home.