Editors are minding police only when they break the law

The man who parked this minivan in a reserved space steps from the entrance to 24 Hour Fitness in Paramus this morning appeared to be able bodied, but his enormous beer belly may have qualified him for a handicap parking permit.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The tabloid news leading The Record's front page today -- a Glen Rock detective accused of sexting teen girls (A-1) -- exposes the editors' refusal to examine how well the police protect us.

Whether it's a rash of burglaries in tony Tenafly or drive-by shootings in impoverished Paterson, the irresponsible Woodland Park daily has simply ignored the performance of police departments, even when innocent lives are lost.

In 2010, The Record did report on the impact of police salaries on property tax bills and crime. A chart listing salaries stated:

"The average police officer's 2009 base pay was almost $104,000 in Bergen County and nearly $88,000 in Passaic County, with some of the highest pay in lower-crime areas and some of the lower salaries in higher-crime communities.

"Here are averages by municipality, along with crime rates and the percent of officers earning at least $100,000. Data covers patrolmen up through police chiefs."

P.R. for cops 

One reason police performance is ignored by The Record's editors is their continued reliance on routine crime, fire and accident news to fill their columns.

To keep the flow of police, fire and accident news coming, local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza knock themselves out doing public relations for the police and other first responders.

What other explanation is there for why they ran photos showing water-emergency training for local firefighters on the front of Local today (L-1)?

Or, how about a long story on wealthy Wyckoff adding five police officers (L-2)?

And then there is a preview of the Ramsey Rescue Squad putting on "a simulated rescue of a person trapped in a sewer" (L-3).

We pay them handsomely to do those jobs. If they don't, the editors should be pointing that out.

Salary cuts

Another sign the editors want to stay on the good side of the police is their reaction to Governor Christie's order to limit local school superintendents to his salary of $175,000 a year, resulting in many cuts.

The Record never questioned then or in the five years since that move why he didn't order the same cuts for nearly 70 local police chiefs in Bergen County, many of whom are making close to or more than $200,000 a year, a huge burden on property tax payers.

Goes to far

Also on Page 1 today, a photo over line goes way too far:

"CRUSHING BLOW TO WATER SUPPLY"

Before you rush to your faucet, take a look at the caption for the photo under that sensationally exaggerated statement.

Residents in only three of the 70 towns in Bergen County towns were "warned to boil water" (A-1).

Eye on The Record

will return on Sunday

Editors hit dog slayer, but not cop who ran down woman

In the more than seven years I've lived in Hackensack, the lack of turn lanes on Passaic Street at Summit Avenue constitutes an annoying bottleneck at almost any time of day, because cars can't pass turning vehicles on narrow, antiquated Passaic.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you're wealthy and live in a good town, you can get The Record to use Page 1 for your endless complaints about a cop who shot and killed your vicious dog.

And the editors will even demonize the officer by dredging up his past involvement in the unrelated death of a suspect in Newark more than four years ago (A-1).

But if you're a Vietnamese-American woman living alone in a shabby Hackensack apartment building and get run down by a detective as you're crossing the street, the editors won't even question why no charges were filed against the driver in your death.

That's the stark contrast presented by today's front-page story on Wyckoff Patrolman Kyle Ferreira, who shot and killed a German shepherd that lunged at him and bit his boot when he was investigating a burglary report on April 29 (A-1).

The Record reports that when Ferreira was a Newark police officer in 2010, his patrol car fatally injured a fleeing domestic violence suspect.

Cop kills woman

On March 11, The Record ran a single story on the death of Hue D. Dang, 64, who was fatally injured two days earlier by an unmarked car driven by John C. Straniero, an off-duty detective sergeant from the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

The story, reported by telephone, omitted key facts:

Dang was walking in or near a crosswalk when she was struck on Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack, only a few blocks away from where she lived.

The 5-foot, 100-pound woman, who was carrying a plastic grocery bag, fell and struck her head, leaving heavy blood stains on the pavement.

Hackensack police filed no charges of any kind against Straniero, 49, of Wayne, but the accident is being reviewed by the Union County Prosecutor's Office.

The Record's editors never questioned the decision of Hackensack police nor did they do a follow-up story.

Hue D. Dang's blood, right,  staining the pavement hours after she was fatally injured crossing Jackson Avenue in Hackensack. This photo, from a neighborhood resident, also shows police markings that indicate the unmarked car's right rear tire, left, stopped in the crosswalk, below.

The driver who killed Dang was turning the corner of Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street toward the ramp for Route 80 west.

Also on Page 1

The A-1 story on the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania is a huge waste of precious space. Why was it written by the paper's transportation reporter?

There is nothing sillier than a reporter who covers a court hearing on Governor Christie's sleight of hand with state pension payments, and tries to predict how the judges are leaning on the issue from their questions to the lawyers on both sides (A-1).

That reminds me of an editor in Hackensack who asked me when a jury would be returning with a verdict in a federal court trial I covered for The Record.

Local news

The Record's story on two people who were fatally injured by a Washington Township police cruiser as they were walking in a travel lane of the New Jersey Turnpike doesn't report the time of the accident early Wednesday (L-1).

But the story does say Sgt. Arsenio Pecora was involved in a training exercise at Fort Dix that ended "shortly before 1 a.m." Wednesday (L-6).

Cliffview Pilot.com reported the pair were struck by Pecora's cruiser at 1:06 a.m., according to state police.

They were pronounce dead at the scene at 4:33 a.m.

Borgs can keep more of their money

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Record of Woodland Park carries good news today for wealthy families like the Borgs, who control North Jersey Media Group. Governor Christie opposes renewing a tax on the wealthy that expired Jan. 1.

The stories, on Page A-4, call it a "millionaires tax," although it's unclear whether it applied to people making more than $400,000 or $500,000, because both figures appear. More sloppy copy editing.

More inattentive copy editing raises questions about whether Staff Writer Joseph Ax and Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi have returned from Haiti. On Wednesday, their story appeared inside on A-6, but without a dateline, usually a sign that they had returned (the big Page 1 news that day was "sexting"). And on Thursday, no story from them appeared.

But today, they are back on the front page, where their first three dispatches appeared, with a dateline, and the text refers to events of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

In Local, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski finds yet another excuse to avoid writing about the lousy local bus service -- well within his mission of covering commuting issues -- and more precious space on the front is wasted on the old Giants Stadium. All of this is probably an attempt by the lazy, desperate and incompetent editors to distract readers who won't find any Teaneck (photo) or Hackensack news in the paper.

Image via Wikipedia

But Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano finally appears for the first time in nearly two weeks with a story on how that city is proposing a hefty 10.5% property tax hike -- news that is sure to upset NJMG Chairman Malcolm A. 'Mac' Borg, who lives in an East Hill mansion, and all those residents who send their kids to private schools to avoid segregated elementary and middle schools.
  
Fabioano's story raises more questions than it answers. For example, does the goal of reducing police overtime by more than $500,000 mean the city department is short of officers, and is that deliberate, as it was in the past?

In Better Living,  Restaurant Reviewer Bill Pitcher finds that Legal Sea Foods in Paramus is showing its age after nine years, with service and food lapses, and a dirty bathroom. The two-star rating equates it with Bahama Breeze, the faux-Caribbean chain restaurant on the highway in Wayne.

Image by Randy Son Of Robert via Flickr

For yet another week, no Wyckoff restaurants are listed in the abbreviated health inspections report.

Slanted local news coverage

You'll find important news on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today -- a potential $10 billion deficit facing the incoming governor and continuing coverage of Haiti -- but what jumps out is a Page 1 promotion for the third story in recent months about Ridgewood's downtown.

I can't remember a story in the past few years about the downtowns in Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck, all of which have suffered during the recession. I hope Ridgewood is getting so much coverage because of the enterprise of reporter Evonne Coutros -- not because it is a wealthy, predominantly white community when compared to the others, which have much larger minority populations.

Hackensack's Main Street has always looked forlorn, even more so after The Record transferred hundreds of press and editorial employees to Rockaway Township and Woodland Park, finishing the moves last year. Englewood and Teaneck also have many empty or changing storefronts, and the former also struggles with major downtown traffic congestion, not to mention segregated elementary and middle schools.

Why are these three towns consistently ignored by head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and her equally lazy, incompetent sub-editors, including Dan Sforza and Richard Whitby? Where are the Borgs, basking in the tropical sun? After all, North Jersey Media Group Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg grew up in Hackensack and his son, Publisher Stephen A. Borg, grew up in Englewood, where his father still lives in an East Hill mansion, but I guess they no longer feel any loyalty to those towns.

Can an argument be made that consistent coverage of Tenafly (where the younger Borg now lives in a $3.65 million mansion), Ridgewood and Glen Rock (home to Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale, who couldn't afford Ridgewood) and other predominantly white communities is deliberate? Scandale also has done a poor job of hiring and retaining minorities. (See the flattering portrait of Tenafly in today's Real Estate section.)

Similarly, Road Warrior John Cichowski barricades himself in the office to all hours of the night, reading bitchy e-mails from drivers and writing columns about them, but refuses to ride and report on the decrepit local bus service, which is patronized mostly by blacks and Hispanics who can't afford to own cars and probably don't own computers or send him e-mails. (See a reader's complaint about mass transit on the Editorial Page today.)

Columnist Mike Kelly today tells us why Governor Corzine lost the election, but doesn't give him props for all he did to improve health care and education for disadvantaged children. (Memo to Kelly: Many people thought raising turnpike tolls to help get the state out of its financial mess was a great idea, because it would shift the burden to drivers who used the road most, so stop calling the proposal "knuckle-headed." You are the knuckle head.)

The Local section today has a second story on the front in three days about the proposed end of side-yard garbage collection in lily white Allendale, and reporter Allison Pries again blindly passes along the assertion of lazy residents that having garbage cans at the curb awaiting pick-up once a week will "lower property values."
 
On Page L-2, there is a picture of an Oakland house fire, but you have to read cliffviewpilot.com to find out the homeowner is being accused of deliberately leveling the place. On L-3, a quarter of a page is wasted on a Wayne family of slobs whose house will be cleaned up by a reality show. The episode won't be aired until May or June, so what is the compulsion to run this now, except for the lack of legitimate news about Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood?

In Better Living today, On-Leave Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung has a column on food safety in restaurants (no names are mentioned) -- while the paper continues to short-change readers every week by running a much-abbreviated list of North Jersey restaurant sanitary inspection reports. For example, you won't find any inspections listed for wealthy Wyckoff, because the news clerk who compiles the list has said that town's health inspector refuses to release the ratings.