Newark's city council voted Thursday to require all late-night restaurants that serve less than 20 people at a time to have an armed security guard posted from 9 p.m. to closing.
"I think it's a wonderful idea. I really do," Newark resident Myra Dixon said of the initiative. "I hate that it has had to come to this, and the community because Newark used to be a nice place to live. But we gotta do what we gotta do."
I haven't lived in NJ since 1988 but even then, Newark had a rampant crime problem. There was no way that anyone from outside of the Newark city limits would have felt safe in a fast food joint after 8pm.
The interesting aspect of this is that the ordnance calls for "armed security". Given NJ's handgun laws, I cannot imagine who, besides off duty LEOs, could fill that bill and I doubt if there are enough of those in the Newark area to cover every fast food place.
NJ has a ban on hollowpoint ammo for everyone besides LEOs. I wonder if an exception would be made for the armed security in Newark.
Newark's city council voted Thursday to require all late-night restaurants that serve less than 20 people at a time to have an armed security guard posted from 9 p.m. to closing.
"I think it's a wonderful idea. I really do," Newark resident Myra Dixon said of the initiative. "I hate that it has had to come to this, and the community because Newark used to be a nice place to live. But we gotta do what we gotta do."
I haven't lived in NJ since 1988 but even then, Newark had a rampant crime problem. There was no way that anyone from outside of the Newark city limits would have felt safe in a fast food joint after 8pm.
The interesting aspect of this is that the ordnance calls for "armed security". Given NJ's handgun laws, I cannot imagine who, besides off duty LEOs, could fill that bill and I doubt if there are enough of those in the Newark area to cover every fast food place.
NJ has a ban on hollowpoint ammo for everyone besides LEOs. I wonder if an exception would be made for the armed security in Newark.
Sounds like the "Off Duty Police Officer Full Employment Program"
Range Rule: "The front gate lock is not an acceptable target." Never Forget.
From Super Troopers edited to meet the 12 year old daughter rule
Farva: Give me a double bacon cheeseburger.
Dimpus Burger Guy: [into mic] Double baco cheeseburger. It's for a cop.
Farva: What the heck's that all about? You gonna spit in it now?
Dimpus Burger Guy: No, I just told him that so he makes it good.
[into mic]
Dimpus Burger Guy: Don't spit in that cop's burger.
Farva: Yeah, thanks.
Second Dimpus Guy: Roger, holding the spit.
When the game is over the King and the Pawn go back in the same box.
old Italian Proverb
5/13/11 Online App
5/18/11 Fingerprints
6/4/11 Class
6/6/11 Packet to DPS
6/13/11 Online Status
6/17/11 Background cleared
6/20/11 Mailed
6/24/11 PLASTIC IN HAND
18 DAYS MAILBOX TO MAILBOX!
"I think it's a wonderful idea. I really do," Newark resident Myra Dixon said of the initiative. "I hate that it has had to come to this, and the community because Newark used to be a nice place to live. But we gotta do what we gotta do."
I haven't lived in NJ since 1988 but even then, Newark had a rampant crime problem. There was no way that anyone from outside of the Newark city limits would have felt safe in a fast food joint after 8pm.
Before my time but I've been told Newark hasn't been "a nice place to live" for more than 40 years, going back to before the 1967 riots.
(I wonder how they'll celebrate the 44th anniversary next week )
And apropos of nothing, every Newark "mayor since 1962 (except the current one, Cory Booker) has been indicted for crimes committed while in office." (source: Newsweek)
While conducting some technical tests at TCG Teleport a bunch of years ago, I spent a bunch of days and nights, not contiguous, at the Holiday Inn just south of Newark airport. During one trip I had a young engineer from our design department with me, a young lady who had never traveled outside the State of Illinois in her entire life (and it showed.)
After one particularly grueling day, on our way back to the hotel, we were discussing supper possibilities. It being close to 10pm, she was concerned that she wasn't going to get enough sleep if we went to a sit down restaurant, so she wanted to stop at the McDonalds just a couple of blocks from the hotel, she had walked there on a previous trip and it was quite close and we could walk over after we got back to the hotel.
Besides the obvious dangers of wandering around ANY strange city after dark, much less Newark, I was more inclined to stop there on the way back (actually I was really more inclined to order supper at the bar while the kitchen was still open and enjoy a glass of vodka with my meal.) And the McDonalds was surrounded by one way streets which meant a couple of extra blocks of driving to get back to the hotel.
"We" decided to stop on the way anyway.
As we exited the drive through I noticed something odd: A bunch of what I would characterize as thugs walking next to a car heading toward the exit onto the street, walking next to a car that was moving slowly with its lights off. I made the tactical decision to cross the parking lot and go out the main entrance, turning left for one block on a one way street the wrong way, and then back to the hotel. Poor "Bessie" screamed the whole way.
I don't know if I avoided a nasty situation, but only being armed with my Illinois FOID I felt it was more prudent to risk the traffic ticket than the confrontation that driving a fancy rental car in that neighborhood was likely to produce if those guys were intent on some sort of mayhem.
My co-worker's reaction was that we couldn't have been in that kind of danger, the City of Newark wouldn't allow it. The next morning I took her on a slight detour on our way to Staten Island, and showed her the burned out hulks of cars and buildings just a few blocks from the hotel. She was "Shocked, I tell you, shocked." that any city would allow such conditions to exist.
Did I mention that she grew up in an affluent suburban area northwest of Chicago and her only visits even to that sparkling example of urban renewal had been school trips in grade and high school, and when she attended Northwestern, she never went off campus the first two years and lived at home and commuted directly from home for the next two, and then went to work immediately on graduation at Tellabs in Naperville IL, where she was designing circuit boards for T3 and fiber optic cards in telecom switches while pursuing her masters in electronic engineering. (And she didn't know the proper terminating impedance for a T3 or that having the incorrect impedance would have a bad effect on communications for some reason.)
Some people just don't know that other conditions exist, happily living in their own bubbles until they burst and cold hard reality floods in. I am not sure that "Bessie's" bubble ever burst, it just got thin during that trip and she went back to the drawing boards and CAD programs and sealed herself off again.
Even with the "armed security" we would not have been any safer, we were never inside, and a platoon of troops would not have been wise to venture out where we were after dark.
) 
