Disgrace: Alarms should have sounded before the K9News Story

    The last issue of the K9News-Revival exposed the fact that former city big shot Gwendolyn Harris was still receiving free burglar alarm monitoring courtesy of the taxpayers of the City of Trenton for two years after she left the city's employment rolls. Harris, who ran the truly dysfunctional Division of Youth and Family Services, apparently forgot that she was receiving free alarm monitoring.
    Much to their credit, the Times of Trenton picked up on the story and followed through. The result was that Harris’ special alarm monitoring arrangement was discontinued by a clearly embarrassed Palmer administration. Harris will now have to pay for her alarm monitoring, just like the rest of us mere mortals.
    The Times of Trenton accepted the nonsense espoused by City Business Administrator Jane Feigenbaum and Chief of Staff Renee Haynes, regarding the preferential monitoring situation. Feigenbaum stated that this sweetheart deal did not burden the taxpayers because the dispatchers were already there. Jane, the concept is known as opportunity costs. If you tie up two cops for 10 minutes 29 times over a six month period, that comes out to 580 minutes or almost 10 hours. This works out to almost $150 just to respond to Harris' house. Haynes proffered the ridiculous theory that the response times for these sweetheart alarms are the same as for commercial alarms going through an alarm company. Renee, just how stupid do you believe people are? Let's see, an alarm coming directly into the Communications Center receives a police response just as quickly as an alarm coming into an alarm monitoring company who then calls the Communication Center?
    Haynes, understandably embarrassed, resorted to disparaging the K9News-Revival as a "little newspaper." She suggested that had we told her, the situation would have been dealt with. The administration was caught giving preferential treatment to people in positions of power. This is egregiously unfair to the rest of the citizenry.
    The real story the Times missed was the number and the cost of false alarms in this town. Did you know that Trenton is one of the few towns in Mercer County without an alarm ordinance? Did you know that if you tally up the number of false alarms on an annual basis that Trenton wastes the salaries of approximately five police officers responding to these false alarms? An ordinance was drafted, and it was sent up the chain of command and lo and behold, nothing happened. Another ordinance was drafted a couple of years ago only to be sucked into the abyss we call City Council. I'll even let you in on a secret. You don't have to re-invent the wheel. Towns that have ordinances happily share them and you can cobble together something that would work here.
    The question is why has our lazy city council failed to do their job? What will it take to light a fire under their collective posteriors and write some meaningful legislation? If your going to wait for the newspapers or even for Ms. Haynes or Ms. Feigenbaum, I think you have a very long wait indeed. But who knows, maybe the light of truth will prompt some action.

Alarm Story a Major Success for K9NR

    The last issue of the K9News-Revival contained our first real news story. We were very pleased with the treatment of our story by other news organizations and the public response.
    There was a great sense of pride amongst the K9News-Revival staff, to say the least. The story ran three separate days in the Times of Trenton, appearing on the front page twice. We did receive other coverage as well. We know that radio stations WBUD and 101.5 broadcast news about us. The biggest compliment came from the least likely of places. It came from within the Mayor’s office itself. Ms. Renee Haynes, Chief of Staff to the Mayor himself, has the honor of being the first person to bestow the title “Newspaper” upon the K9News. The tone of her comment isn’t important. The term she used is. We thank Ms. Haynes for the recognition.
    Lastly, the response of the Trentonian to the Harris alarm story should not go unnoticed. The mouthpiece of City Hall was silent through the entire story. Even when the administration was “volunteering” additional information in an attempt to show good faith, the Trentonian was silent. We take this as a sign that no “positive spin” could be put on the story, so the Trentonian chose to ignore it.
    We encourage city employees to continue emailing us information and news tips! This is not just about the Police Department.