Paterson homicides keep rising, cops hit snooze button

The Oritani Field Club in Hackesnack has seen better days, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The front-page announcement of seven arrests in the slaying of Nazareh Bugg, a high school freshman and aspiring basketball star, comes from the county Prosecutor's Office, not from Paterson's dysfunctional Police Department.

You'd think Page 1 of The Record would be reserved for police who prevented the deaths of the 14-year-old and another young girl gunned down on Paterson's violent streets over the summer, Genesis Rincon, 12.

But Editor Martin Gottlieb, his predecessors and the paper's editorial writers have stood by for years as the Paterson Police Department, headed by a white chief until recently, allowed gangs and gunmen to roam freely across Silk City.

Now, with the headline-grabbing former sheriff, Jerry Speziale, installed as police director, little has changed except the lip service being paid to safer streets.

Slayings rise

"Nazareh was the 19th homicide victim in the city this year," The Record reports (A-6). "The 20th homicide occurred early Saturday when a 20-year-old man ... was fatally shot.... Last year, the city had a total of 18 homicides."

Why doesn't the almighty Record call on Governor Christie to send in state troopers, as a previous Republican governor did in Camden?

After all, Christie's state aid cuts to poor cities forced the layoffs of 125 officers in Paterson. 

How many layoffs?

The upbeat history of Becton, Dickinson and Co. on Page 1 today doesn't report the messy details of how many workers will be losing their jobs until nearly the end of the story, and then only superficially (A-1 and A-6).

Nor is there any mention of how many of the company's products may have been involved in medical malpractice lawsuits.

I guess the editors had to leave room for yet another story about the Giudices (A-6).

Privileged kids

Look at all that coverage of Gaby Wilday, a Ridgewood mom who is selling healthy organic lunches to rich kids in her village, Wyckoff and Franklin Lakes (BL-1).

Gee. Her 6-year-old didn't like the food served when she was in first grade, and was coming home "weepy, cranky, tired and hungry."

When is the last time you read about unappetizing, low quality school food, especially in Hackensack, where many high school students vote with their feet and eat lunch at Starbucks, Wawa, pizzerias and fast-food places?

I like the idea of parents and schoolchildren being given a chance to order a higher quality, more expensive lunch, but at Hackensack High, only a mediocre lunch costing $2.30 a day is available.

Freelance photos

Boyd A. Loving, a freelancer, could take a photo of a fallen tree branch, and The Record's desperate local assignment editors would buy it from him and plug into a hole in their thin Local section.

Today, his newsworthy photo of a man pinned under an NJ Transit bus in Ridgewood is on L-1, but a second photo -- of a minor flood caused by an SUV that hit a Ridgewood fire hydrant -- is on L-6.

When local editors are accused of ignoring mass transit and the travails of those commuters, they point to the bus-pedestrian accident as proof they are really doing their jobs.