Police Chief Falco:
Acting Mayor Dawn Zimmer:
5th Ward Councilman Peter Cunningham:
Original Story 8/20/2009:
Chief Falco and resident Margaret O'BrienLast night I attended a community Police Meeting for residents in Hoboken from 8-12th Streets and Washington through Willow at the Wallace School. The meeting was attended by about 50 residents and covered issues such as parking, 911 calls, school issues, bike safety, burglaries, traffic and pedestrian Safety and also a survey to be filled out to give police feedback.
Chief Falco was the first speaker and address his concern and focus on public safety and quality of life issues. He said he would be bringing more of an "old school" approach to the police department that was disciplined and more like the military.
Dawn Zimmer spoke next and emphasized that she is big advocate of public safety and that Hoboken should aggressively pursue grants to raise pedestrian and motorist awareness.
Peter Cunningham also stressed the importance of public safety and mentioned traffic awareness devices to remind motorists of their speed as well as potentially reducing speed limits further. The current Hoboken speed limit is 25 miles an hour. Peter said that a meeting 6 months from now could be scheduled to see what progress has been made.
Lt. Ferrante spoke on parking and said that there is always the balancing act of writing too many tickets or too few. The Hoboken Police force's priorities on parking enforcement are fire hydrants, corner parking, and handicapped parking. The Parking Utility generally handles meters and yellow zones. Lt. Farrante also addressed another issue of Police Cars on duty not parking in legal parking areas. His comments were in response to a number of photos of cop cars posted on web sites (such as Hoboken 411?) . He explained that if a cop is on a break and needs to respond to an issue they have to have their car close by in case they are called and a legal spot isn't always available.
Another officer spoke of the of grants over the last several years that Hoboken has received to bolster pedestrian safety such as traffic lights, four way stops signs and flashing signs.
Burglaries were addressed by Lt. Ferrante as this is an issue that has affected this area of the Fith Ward generally. Here are a couple of points he brought up:
- The Hoboken Police Department will do a security survey of any building that has been burglarized.
- If a building has been burglarized, the probability it could happen again is 50% higher than average.
- Security cameras are a useful deterrent.
- The police department does not publish burglary locations since that information could be used by criminals to data mine potential targets.
- Lighting both front and back is important as a deterrent.
At the end there was a question and answer session that I did not attend as I had to be somewhere else. The meeting wrapped up around 9:30 PM.
This meeting was tailored to the specific concerns of this area of town. There will be other meetings to be scheduled by the Police Department in the future for those areas as part of their outreach to the community.
Here was the agenda:
2) Chief Anthony P. Falco Sr.
3) Acting Mayor Dawn Zimmer
4) Councilman Peter Cunningham
5) Parking Problems (Lt. Ferrante)
6) 911/420-2100 Calls for emergencies-service (P.O. Anthony Fesken)
7) School Openings/ School Issues- Parking and Juvenile issues (P.O. Joe Mezzina)
8) Bike Safety (P.O. William Oquendo)
9) Burglaries (Lt. Ferrante)
10) Traffic/Pedestrian Safety (Sgt. James Marnell)
11) Police Survey (Sgt. Marnell) 10 MINUTE BREAK
12) Questions and Answers (30 minutes)
Below is the survey on the Hoboken Police department. Please download and fill this out and return to the Police department. It would be ideal if the police department could get several thousand responses to this. You do not have to put your name but the nearest cross street would help the police assess where they are most needed.
