The Battle Of Trenton
By Wyatt Earp | September 16, 2011
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into New Jersey, the city of Trenton announced the layoffs of 108 police officers, effective today. First Camden, then Newark, and now Trenton.
God help the people of these cities, because help will never get to them in time.
On Friday, 108 of the department’s 330-some officers will be left jobless and 29 supervisors will be demoted.
“Officers will be turning in their equipment,” Trenton PD spokesperson Tom McDonough (who is also being demoted) tells The Trentonian.
Just last month, 41 people were arrested in a single weekend following a spike in violent crimes. Trenton residents have been advised not to expect the same – if any – response to lower-level calls.
A third of the department. Jesus. My advice to the good people of Trenton is the same advice I gave to the people in Camden and Newark: arm yourselves. The remaining officers will be exhausted and overworked, and there will not be enough of them to keep the streets – and your families – safe.
Topics: The Job | 20 Comments »
September 16th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
If ever there was a situation where one needs to arm oneself, this is it. It also would be a good time to vote out some of the people running these cities.
September 16th, 2011 at 7:04 pm
Pray for our brothers and sisters who were let go…….
It’s gonna get a lot worse……….
Lock and Load………….
September 16th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Such a sad situation.
September 16th, 2011 at 8:05 pm
It just gets ‘better’ and better… sigh… That they did that at THAT scale is just unbelievable!
September 16th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
What’s bleeding Trenton’s coffers dry are the amount of state workers. I lived in Ewing tsp for nine years.
What really hurt that area was the closing of the GM plant in the 90′s. Thousands of jobs gone in a heartbeat. But Trenton came back despite that. It became safer, there was the ballpark, the hockey team. Restaurants and bars were opening up downtown.
Now this.
P.S. Titan games were always fun to go to. A shame the team is no more.
September 16th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
In Philly, the school board employs 5-10 spokespeople at a cost of $500K -$1 Milllion which could be better spent on 5-10 add’l cops. So, I don’t have sympathy for the city residents because they voted for the dumbasses who decide how they will spend the taxpayer money. The cities have the money buy they waste it on other stuff anf lay off cops to cry wolf.
September 17th, 2011 at 1:21 am
Nope. I’m an ordinary citizen and I don’t think cops, fire fighters, or 911 services are worth a shit.
Full discloser: I’m a State employee.
Cops clean up, fire fighters mop up, and 911 services are just dispatching the work. I don’t need a cop to keep my street safe — I have me and sure as hell I’m about as likely t see cop around here as a vision of Jesus in the cloudless skies. Fire fighters? We had something like “two” fires this year and we have five fucking fire trucks. 911? The fuck?
My G-d, please tell me that having more of this nonsense will save my grandchildren from bleeding in the streets.
You’re a shill on this issue. I’ve never had a cop help me after I called for help, never had a fire fighter help me when my house was on fire (chimney fire), and never been treated with respect by a 911 operator.
You might be the best cop on the planet but the “I’m a cop and you need me” shit does not fly with me.
September 17th, 2011 at 2:12 am
Morgan – It’s statewide, and the main reason for this – former Governor Jon Corzine – has been booted out of office.
LDIV – I suspect we’ll suffer the same fate soon enough.
RT – For the officers, but mostly for the residents.
Old NFO – One-third of the entire force. It’s unbelievable.
Chris C – I always wanted to go to a Titans game. Too late now. I hear the Thunder games are great, though.
AJ – True enough. And with 17 years on the job, if layoffs come, I’m safe. Still sucks for the cities involved, though.
Mark – Pretty sure I never said that, but by all means, paint every one of us with the broad brush of your experiences. It always amazes me how often cops get the broad generalizations, but if I wrote, “Abu Ghraib was a disgrace, and because of that, every single one of our servicemen and women are toads,” I would be condemned.
I guess the only other question is, why would you waste your time reading a blog written by a cop?
September 17th, 2011 at 5:31 am
Touche, Wyatt. Well said.
September 17th, 2011 at 9:02 am
We’ll be okay. We can use our God-given right of self defense to… Aw, crap, I’m in New Jersey.
And yes, Ewing is FULL of state workers (including me and the wife).
September 17th, 2011 at 9:30 am
Don’t worry–the homosexual outreach health advisors all got to keep their jobs!
September 17th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Or a Pennsylvania Congressman.
September 17th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
[...] The Battle Of Trenton [...]
September 17th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Mark – Fire Fighters don’t mop up! First Responders mop up! Get it right!
I get frustrated with cops sometimes as well. But I still have a huge deal of respect for them. I don’t know about your 911 system, but I will say this. You are lucky. You have one. We don’t. If you don’t like the way your system is run, get involved.
Don’t sit back and complain. Stand up and do something.
September 17th, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Mark sounds like he’s like that guy they had in the news a few months ago that bought a house in a ruralish area that didn’t have a Fire Department, didn’t pay the neighboring town for FD service, and then whined like a baby when the FD didn’t come save his house.
September 18th, 2011 at 11:33 am
Mark you are a Twit.
While there are bad police officers and fire fighters. The rest like two bloggers i know are very honorable people.
September 19th, 2011 at 2:51 am
Fat lot of good its going to do the good people of Trenton or anywhere else in NJ. Unless you got Connections, of course
September 19th, 2011 at 8:56 am
Someone has to do clean-up. For that matter, I certainly don’t want to live in a country where the cops prevent individual acts of a criminal nature before they occur; that’s called a police state.
It’s going to be a long hard slog to clean up after a lifetime of corruption, and there will be problems. Even before the cuts in these towns I would have advised the residents to take their safety into their own hands.
http://ianargent.blogspot.com/2011/09/because-no-one-ever-needs-to-defend.html – it’s not just the bad parts of the state where you might need to protect yourself before the cops can show up.
September 19th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Ian – Yeah, that’s me, Ian. Your friendly neighborhood Nazi. Seig heil!
September 19th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
That came out wrong. Any citizen ought to attempt to prevent acts of a criminal nature as they become aware of them in the normal choose of events. To the extent that any organization becomes a “department of pre-crime” a la the movie of the same name that I become antsy.
A police “sting” straddles the line for me: if you have the constitutional basis for a warrant then get one for the sting. IE, you have “probable cause” that the target is selling or buying illegally, get a warrant to run the sting, “particularly describing” what it is that the accused is doing.
Does that description of wheremy line is make sense? I actually believe most cops (being a subset of “most people”) are generally honest. You all do a job that is necessary, for little thanks and generally no recognition for doing it properly. My complaints about policing in this country are not resolvable by the rank and file law enforcement, and in some cases not by their political leadership.