Bah humbug to racial stereotypes, sloppy reporting

On Tuesday afternoon, parents and children waited on a long line at Bergen Town Center in Paramus to pose for photos with Santa Claus, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You can add the war of words to the war between police and hardened criminals, such as the crazed gunman who murdered two police officers in Brooklyn on Saturday.

If you managed to get past all of Mike Kelly's cliches on Page 1 of The Record on Wednesday, his column repeats shocking stereotyping of black neighborhoods by an ex-cop the reporter has called his friend.

Kelly didn't interview Bernard Kerik of Franklin Lakes, the former New York City police commissioner who served three years in federal prison for tax fraud -- a crooked cop Kelly often referred to as "Bernie."

He just lifted Kerik's shocking comments from a Time magazine essay:

"We have labeled our nation's police as racists who target minority communities. That's a complete lie. Cops go to minority communities because that is where the crime is.

"They don't target minorities. They target crime.... People say it was racist. It's not. It's a statistical statement," Kerik is quoted as saying on Wednesday's A-4.

Of course, Kelly doesn't challenge Kerik's racial stereotyping or point out that police in Paterson and other cities fail miserably to protect the residents of minority neighborhoods, such as the innocent Silk City girls killed by gunshots in July and September.

Kerik and the reporter also conveniently ignore the many years of racial profiling by New Jersey State Police, who were accused of pulling over minorities for Driving While Black (DWB). 

The state paid $12.95 million to settle a lawsuit filed by three men who were wounded in a 1998 turnpike shooting and a fourth man who was driving their van.

The plaintiffs, three blacks and a Hispanic, alleged they were pulled over by troopers who racially profiled them. 

Sloppy reporting

A front-page story on drivers who unwittingly fill up at the most expensive North Jersey gas stations could have been written any time in the last decade (A-1 on Wednesday).

But Staff Writer Christopher Maag holds up one woman driver to ridicule by reporting she paid "fully a dollar more [per gallon] than the Costco gas station just a half mile away" in Wayne.

A photo of Clarke appears on Wednesday's A-6, and the caption notes she paid $2.99 a gallon to fill up her thirsty Honda Pilot on credit. Horrors!

This kind of sloppy reporting and editing continues to bewilder readers.

Dead man walking

The lazy local assignment editors have been using accident photos as fillers for years, but on Wednesday, the practice came back to bite them.

The photo over line declared, "Fatal accident in Elmwood Park."

But police wouldn't provide information, and the editors relied on UPS officials in reporting that "an unidentified driver was killed on Tuesday when his car collided with a UPS tractor-trailer."

Guess what? 

In what could only be called a Christmas miracle, the driver, Paul Massey of Saddle Brook, survived and was in critical condition on Wednesday, according to an A-2 correction today that quotes the Elmwood Park police chief, who appears to be no fan of freedom of information.

Is Massey a husband or father, employed or retired? How old is he? What does his family think of the report of his death?

Are you kidding? This was just filler. Nobody at the paper cares one way or another.

Christie arrogance

Once again, a letter to the editor today expresses what the editors refuse to recognize:

"I was a supporter of Governor Christie," says John Amicucci of Fair Lawn (A-20). "But as his time in office has grown, so has his arrogance toward his constituents."

Noting Christie's support for the Dallas Cowboys football team, Amicucci suggests the GOP bully run for governor of Texas.

A dry paper

Today's paper was delivered to my home in two plastic bags that were knotted closed.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, when rain was forecast, my papers arrived soaking wet. They also were in two bags, but they were left open.

I called for replacements both days.

Attorney Frank P. Lucianna marching in Englewood's Memorial Day Parade last May, as he does every year. The Record's Better Living section today carries a feature on Lucianna, 91, who has always felt a kinship with Louis Zamperini, the war hero and world-class runner who is the subject of the movie "Unbroken."