Township Of Union Mayor, Clifton People Jr.
The following is the full text of Detective Fuentes' remarks to Mayor People and the Township Committee:
Mayor People, I would first like to congratulate you publicly for becoming the Mayor of our great community. It is truly an accomplishment.
I would also like to thank you for your efforts, from the onset of becoming mayor, in attempting to correct the hostile and dangerous policies which have been instituted by Township Administrator Frank Bradley against the men and women of the Union Police and Fire departments. The reason I am speaking here tonight is to inform you Mr. Mayor, the Township committee and the people of the Township of Union that after all of the conflict, all of the expense, all the effort to institute Mr. Bradley’s control of the police department through his version of compstat; It is a failure.The year end crime statistics are in for 2007 and they show that the year long exercise in giving Mr. Bradley control of the Police department has been disastrous for this Police department, its Officers and most of all the citizens of the Township of Union. That is not my opinion, it is not born from my personal like or dislike of Mr. Bradley, and what I am about to say is as troubling to me as it is to anyone else in this room. What I am about to say is based on the very statistics that Mr. Bradley has relied on to hold us to his program and his standards of Policing; his Compstat.
I am proud to say that the members of my local have completed the mission as set by Mr. Bradley and we have met all of his programs goals for increased productivity and efficiency. We have done this through 4 years without a pay increase and we have done this under the most hostile of work environments. We have increased our activity as reported through incident numbers by 60% from 94,000 incidents in 2006 to a staggering 153,000 incidents in 2007. We have increased motor vehicle stops, the cornerstone of Mr. Bradley’s program, by a staggering 125%, from 11,000 in 2006 to over 24,000 in 2007.Mr. Bradley believes that the motor vehicle stop alone is the greatest single law enforcement tool available. I would agree that motor vehicle stops often do lead to arrests of wanted felons, but I would argue that it alone is no replacement for the Community based Policing which had been the cornerstone of the Union Police department before Mr. Bradley replaced it with his version of Compstat.
I will remind you that in 2005, the year before Compstat was introduced; the Township of Union and its Police department were recognized as the 22nd safest place to live for a community our size in America. This accomplishment was the result of the leadership of Police Chief Thomas Kraemer and the hard work of our dedicated Officers using a community policing program that had a long tract record of success. In fact before Compstat was introduced Crime had fallen for 9 consecutive years. In contrast 2007, our first full year with Mr. Bradley’s form of Compstat, the crime statistics tell a very different story and I believe that this story is a direct result of Mr. Bradley’s policy of micromanaging the day to day operations of the Police department coupled with his belief that increased activity, like conducting more motor vehicle stops is the end all way to decrease crime. These policies have forced our officers to concentrate not on taking the time to seek out and apprehend criminals in an attempt to prevent crime but concentrate on stopping every motor vehicle violator for the most minor of infractions and issue them a ticket.What Mr. Bradley fails to realize is that writing tickets to law abiding taxpayers takes time, energy, and concentration away from the police officers primary duty of law enforcement and crime prevention. This fact is again supported by the statistics. In 2006 the officers from the Union Police department made 2,845 arrests. In 2007 with compstat that number has fallen by nearly 10% to 2,622. Mr. Bradley: when our officers are writing tickets to taxpayers they are not pursuing criminals.
The negative impact of Mr. Bradley’s form of Compstat is being borne directly by the citizens of Union not only in increased taxes and tickets but a staggering 33% increase in violent crime. These are the statistics by category:
Strong armed robbery is up 25%
Armed robberies are up 32%
Aggravated assaults are up an incredible 76%
It appears that the near Half a Million dollars of taxpayer money spent on computer tracking programs, dedicated salaries, printers, overtime, and now GPS and cameras, has made the people of Union no more safe than before.
Mr. People it is time to use the mandate given you by the people of Union and give the function of policing back to your Police Chief and your Police department and once again hold us responsible for crime prevention. Everything necessary to reduce crime is already in place, a competent and respected Chief, a competent command staff and a highly motivated workforce.
There never was any need for Mr. Bradley’s interference in the Police department and there is no need for a Police Director which would burden the taxpayer with another $125,000 salary. This is not my personal opinion but that of expert Michael Renahan. Who wrote in his original report before it was doctored:
“It is our belief that the current Police leadership is quite capable of managing the policing needs of the community”The only thing needed to do is to remove Mr. Bradley’s negative influence from the Police department. The taxpayers have spent nearly half a million dollars on this Compstat experiment and it has failed. I understand that this will be more difficult now since Mr. Bradley was granted Appropriate Authority on November 27th but it is the right thing to do for the 55,000 thousand residents of this Township.
I thank you for your time. Detective Bill Fuentes, PBA Local 69 State Delegate