Second Safest City Blog

Two New Jersey women, 28-year-old Stephanie Setiff of Secaucus and 27-year-old Jaqueline Aragon of South Hackensack, were arrested on a variety of charges Tuesday afternoon after they went to the Lace topless bar in West Nyack and allegedly tried to steal a stripper’s purse.

Police say the women got a lap dance and from one of the dancers. When they were about to leave, one of the women hugged the dancer while her friend reached over the bar and took the dancer’s purse, which contained about $400. Employees stopped then women when they tried to get to the front door, and called the police.

Police have accused Aragon of having the dancer’s purse. Also, police say when officers tried to arrest Setiff, she resisted, kicking one of them. She then kicked out the side window of the police car. Police charged Setiff with assaulting a police officer, criminal mischief, as well as petty larceny, resisting arrest and criminal possession of stolen property. Aragon is charged with petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. Both women are free after posting bail.

Joe Queenan, writer for the New York Times, recently spent a day at the Palisades Mall. He wrote about it in the paper, in an article that tears the Palisades Center Mall a new one. This one is a must-read! Couldn’t have said it better myself:

From the outside, the Palisades Center has little to recommend it. Vast, inert, lacking any discernible architectural theme, and plunked down next to the cheerless Interstate that leads to the Tappan Zee Bridge, the mall is often described as a series of interlocking coffins. The Brutalist exterior conveys the impression that some senescent, unemployed Eastern Bloc architect was summoned to the developer’s office and threatened with severe reprisals against his family if he dared to introduce a single visual nuance suggesting that someone had actually designed the building. The visible trash gondolas that greet visitors when they enter from the I-287 side do not help.

Inside the cavernous structure, things improve dramatically. With pipes and panels and air-conditioning vents laid bare, the four sprawling floors suggest a retail version of the Centre Pompidou. The gargantuan, airy building is built around a series of atriums, suggesting that it had been modularly assembled by an industrious but agoraphobic child.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing more than 100 kids running amok in the Palisades Center yesterday, screaming and breaking glass. Police were unable to locate any one of the teens. Rockland Journal News reported police spokesperson Sgt. Harry Baumann as saying, “We did have several calls of suspicious incidents with kids, but every time we got to the location, there was nobody there.” Broken glass could still be observed where the teens had been hours later. The story also mentions the February 2006 McDonald’s riot, when fight broke out between 40 children aged 12 to 19, resulting in felony arrests and charges of rioting.

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.

Thankfully we have an army of Honda Civics, taxis, and mayors from nearby towns patrolling the streets, keeping us safe.