12012 wrote:


How would you suggest we can seek the city's accountability?

DanL wrote:
No ..... shame on Jersey City.

Our city failed to adequately protect its residents and enforce the applicable law. It is our city government's responsibility to regulate development and developers. Developers may be easy targets for rhetoric and deflecting blame, but it is our city leadership that has taken an oath of responsibility to serve the public.

I am glad to see these events revisited and believe the public should be seeking accountablility.

Billrybak wrote:
It seems to me that the drunken cops episode assumes its proper significance when viewed in the context the fight to save the studio complex at 111 First Street and utimately the PAD itself, and the extent to which Lloyd Goldman and his minions were willing to go to get what Goldman wanted.

What Lloyd wanted was to build a 22-storey hi-rise on that site. To accomplish this he would have had to overturn all the city ordinances and historic designations that were part of the original plan to redevelop the old warehouse district as the Powerhouse Arts District (PAD). That plan was worked out by the City and the Urban Land Institute and was supported by every successive mayor except Jerramiah T. Heally.

Goldman?s lawyers filed a barrage of lawsuits against the city, also targetting various other civic organiztions and individuals, attacking WALDO, and attacking the various historic landmark designations assigned to 111 First Street and to the entire PAD. His argument was that the State was interfering with his Constitutional right to turn as big a profit as possible on his speculative real estate investment, and that he had a Constitutional right to do whatever the hell he wanted to with his property. No shit. Keep in mind that the properties in question were not at the time nor have they ever been zoned for purely residential use. Ever.

So you?ve got cops on video drunk as a skunk, toting guns and badges, in front of the building they were hired to guard.

You?ve got Lloyd Goldman, billionaire landlord who hired the cops, who were just a small part of his agenda which was to evict the Arts Center, demolish 111 First Street and replace it with a 22-storey luxury hi-rise, apparently by whatever means necessary.

There?s the coincidental jump in the crime rate on those premises, including car bashings and arsons.

There?s the campaign of harassment by police and BLDG Management Co. personnel that included the dismantling of the heating system in winter and the typical civil rights violations, including forcibly entering residences without cause and forcibly seizing and ejecting members of the press.

The lackadaisical response of the Mayor, Internal Affairs, and the local press are a matter (just barely) of public record. So is the Mayor?s sudden flip-flopand withdrawal of city support for the Arts Center almost as soon as he was elected.

The array of lawsuits noted above were eventually resolved in the now infamous ?settlement? between Goldman and the City, forcing Goldman to give up his plan to build a 22-storey luxury condo in the PAD and instead build two luxury condos of 40-plus storeys in the PAD. The other details of the deal are equally ludicrous but not worth the space to detail here. I?m sure there?s someone out there who will fill us in eventually.

The settlement was made public just a couple of days before it was summarily approved over the jeers an catcalls of the crowd of citizens who filled the Council chamber to protest. Other legal professionals at the hearing described Goldman?s lawsuits as unwinnable and frivolous, tantamount to a very expensive bluff, and urged the council to lay down the law to the rogue developer.

No politician in his right mind, however, wants a billionaire developer for an enemy when he could have him for a friend.

Parts of Lee Perry?s commentary along with the Japanese documentary footage give us only a partial picture of an invaluable and unique cultural resource Jersey City lost forever so Goldman could build his hi-rises.

Besides presiding over a municipal bureaucracy that is periodically in the news for all the wrong reasons, and besides periodically conducting himself in ways that are an ongoing embarassment to Jersey City, Jerramiah T. Healy has arguably done more damage to the arts community in Jersey City than any other mayor ?ever. He and his cronies should be held accountable at least for that.

And yeah?stop pimping out the police force to people who use them dishonorably and reduce them to the level of thugs. The good cops deserve better than that and so do we.

edge wrote:
Is everyone in 101 building from a different country? This is america this is how things are done. It not a jc problem and its not isolated to 101. get over it. Welcome to america.

G_Elkind wrote:
How about shame on Goldman?

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.