Even the second safest city is not immune to the fallout of the ongoing credit crunch. Rockland Journal News reported that home prices in Rockland dropped an average of 5% in the first three months of 2008. In addition, the number of home sales dropped over 30%, to 216 home sales compared to 329 during the same period in 2007. The article conspicuously fails to mention the outrageously high property taxes assessed on homes in the area.
Clarkstown Police and fire officials are investigating a small albeit suspicious fire at the Palisades Center IMAX theater that caused a temporary evacuation of about 50 people. The fire started around midnight, and the local fire departments responded to find that a tarpaulin had apparently been placed over a light, leading to the fire.
Two Acura Integras and one Audi A4 went missing from the Palisades Center mall between 2:30pm and 9pm yesterday. One of the Integras belonged to a Yonkers resident, the other Integra and the Audi belonged to residents of Nanuet. The Audi was recovered in Newark this morning. No arrests have been made. Anyone with information is asked to call Clarkstown Police at 845-639-5800.
The problem is that we don’t have an undercover stolen car unit driving around with a computerized, camera equipped automatic number plate recognition system, constantly running license plates looking for stolen cars.
Wait, we do have one of those.
Interestingly, unlike other unmarked units that carry around undercover or plain clothes officers, this special stolen car unit is said to always be manned by a uniformed officer despite its complete lack of markings. Hopefully this makes these officers easy to distinguish as real police as opposed to impersonators interested in hijacking FedEx trucks with fake badges.
Crimes happen on a daily basis at the Palisades Center, no matter how small. Ever been in the stairwells around and in the parking garage? You’d think you were in the bad guy’s underground lair in a Ninja Turtle movie, seeing leaks, rust, burned out and flickering fluorescent lights, and a seemingly endless amount of graffiti and discarded drug bags.
While Clarkstown is claimed to be the second safest city, this statistic would seem to ignore the fact that we have one of the largest 5 malls, connected to three major state highways — 59, 303, and the Thruway. The mall, and the community at large, have a connectedness that provides an easy entrance and escape for people going to and from New York City. The size of the mall provides a great deal of anonymity during busy times. And despite the fact that the mall has more cameras per square foot than the Big Brother house, the responsiveness of the security guards watching it and handling it are the weakest link. With 30 million people in the New York metropolitan area, how many bad apples pop up at the mall?
But maybe these criminals wouldn’t have shoplifted in the first place if Mayor Darden was on patrol at the mall with his police lights like last week. Mayor Darden may have just pulled these people over and then took their parking spot, causing them to get frustrated and leave, preventing them from ever reaching the stores they stole from.
Four men were arrested after Clarkstown police stopped their car on Route 59 after an officer ‘recognized’ a man that lived in North Carolina and discovered that him and his buddies were loaded up with one handgun in the trunk. Seven police cars responded and they had all four men get out of the car at gunpoint. Richard Williams, 36; Sante Ballard, 23; Raymond Jones, 27; and Michael Batts, 22, all from North Carolina, were charged with 4th degree gun possession.
Just to clarify: according to the official story, these men from out of state were driving through with a gun stored in the trunk - but all four were pulled out at gunpoint by seven responding police cars and charged with weapons possession.
How can four people all be in possession of one gun? How serious of a threat is a gun in the trunk during a traffic stop to warrant that? As for the need for 7 police cars to respond, considering they found only a single .25 caliber handgun, and considering police carry .40 caliber handguns and wear body armor, it just makes it look like we’ve never seen a gun before.
It’s interesting to note that the article doesn’t mention that there was a warrant on any of these men, just that the officer recognized one and ‘believed’ he had charges pending.
For this gross abuse of public trust, what happens? Did he get charged with public corruption? Did he resign? Did he apologize? Did he get charged with class E felony criminal impersonation of a police officer? Maybe he was issued a ticket for having illegal red lights?
No, he got a warning from the Clarkstown Police. We can only speculate, but here’s why we think this is so.
As many readers here know, Clarkstown is said to be the 2nd Safest City(tm). Everyone’s entitled to their own interpretation of that statistic. To the writers here, it is actually a farce that is used to justify high property taxes and unjustifiably high salaries and benefits for municipal employees including police. But Clarkstown Police claim it is because of strategies including using completely unmarked cars with officers in plain clothes carrying only a badge that we are so safe. Mayor Darden was simply establishing a low profile presence and policing the area during the busy holidays. He is just pitching in with the effort to keep the mall free of crime. We are the 2nd Safest City(tm) because even neighboring town’s mayor have police lights now and patrol our streets at no cost to us! The officer that issued him a warning was merely saying thanks to Mayor Darden for helping pitch in and keep the crime down in the 2nd Safest City(tm).
The Urinal News claimed that it would follow up on this story, but it did not.
I happened to be at the Palisades Center mall during the fire that occurred yesterday, which just happened to be Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year — the day that numerous consumer whores travel from afar and line up in the freezing cold to wait for the chance to be told the item they want is already out of stock.
One group of local teens put together a video of exactly how ridiculous this entire event is. They didn’t capture the fire, however, so let me share a few points.
Some friends and I were there ’shopping’, or should we say, ‘watching shopping’. We were headed down the escalators, ready to leave the mall anyway, when our noses started to pick up the scent of something acrid.
“Do you smell smoke,” we asked each other. Within minutes, it was hard to deny that the mall was filling with this white acrid smoke, the kind of smoke that fires produce.
Remembering that Clarkstown is the Second Safest City, shoppers went about their business and pretended like nothing was wrong despite that something was obviously wrong at this point. They simply felt so safe, that they continued shopping even though the building may well have been on fire.
I walked towards where it seemed like the smoke was coming from. Was I stopped by security? Emergency responders? Alarms? Other shoppers? Not at all. No alarms went off, despite that it was difficult to even see while standing in H&M. No strobe lights, no sirens, no evacuations. I literally screamed at the manager of H&M to close the store and get everyone out. They insisted there was no problem as “the fire was upstairs”. Not even a moment later, a Clarkstown Police officer (who was actually wearing a uniform) walked in and said the same thing I said, but got more results. They shut down the store and got everyone out.
I walked upstairs to see Circuit City not filled with smoke at all. So much for the fire “upstairs”. I asked a Circuit City employee what was going on. Never in my life had I seen someone so obviously high on marijuana.
“Like, there was like this fire man, outside. But then like there was this fire inside, then everyone was like ‘get out of here!’ Man,” he uttered in his stoner drawl. We decided this was a good time to leave the mall. On the way out, I stopped and asked a security guard, “Hey, do you know what started the fire?”
“Fire?” he asked. Remember, we’re standing in the smoke still.
“You might want to go talk to your buddies, they’re over there putting out a fire.” Naturally, he smiled and went about his merry business pretending that he understood what I said to him in English.
The next day, we all found out that there actually was no fire in the mall itself, but rather in the ventilation intake for the mall, which had managed to suck in a mass of burning cardboard, allegedly ignited by a carelessly discarded cigarette butt. Of course, no one seemed to care that there should have been fire dampers in the ventilation to prevent this exact scenario from happening.
To summarize:
There was a fire in the ventilation system that was billowing smoke into the mall, despite the requirements for fire dampers in the vents to prevent this exact situation from occurring.
There were no visual or audible alarms in response to the fire.
Smoke from the fire was thick enough to significantly reduce visibility. From inside H&M, you could not clearly see the store opposite H&M.
Mall security didn’t even know there was a fire when the mall was filled with smoke. Even if it was just one clueless guy, you have to wonder how he could keep his job given his uselessnesses in an emergency.
Retail store managers involved refused to close down operations until ordered to do so by police, despite that there was obviously an emergency.
Shoppers felt so safe, they didn’t care there might have been a fire! Not more than a handful of people were reacting to it in a meaningful way. A number of shoppers covered their faces with their clothing, as if that would somehow filter the smoke. In reality, shoppers at the mall were probably just overwhelming themselves with the scent of their own sweat.
All in all, it was a happy holiday shopping experience, and we’re just glad that we were safe since steel doesn’t easily melt or burn.
This provocative article outlines the questionable tactics of the Clarkstown Police in allowing officers in plain clothes to use completely unmarked cars for traffic stops and routine police work. Not surprisingly, the Clarkstown Police spokesman refused to issue comment until the town council prodded him. His response?
“Maybe that’s why we were just identified as the second safest community in New York State of a population our size. Being a resident of the town you should be very proud of your police department and the work we’re doing.”
Truly safe cities don’t need armed narcotics and gang task forces.
