Pink Eyed Jim’s Blog

For those of you who don’t know, I live in the wonderful central New Jersey city (depending on whether the college students are in town or not; the population drops by about 50% in the summer) of New Brunswick. For those of you who don’t know, one of the main attractions of the city is Rutgers University, which I attend. For those of you who don’t know, Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus is made up of three separate campuses that are only inter-accessible by bus (unless you want to walk along the highway to cross the Raritan, or walk through downtown New Brunswick to get to Cook/Douglass), so the university has a bus system for students taking inter-campus classes and such. This bus system is riddled with less-than-cogent management policies and inefficient practices. The latest one, however, is damned near criminal.

I live about six or so blocks off campus from the main “College Avenue Campus,” luckily for me, the City of New Brunswick, and Rutgers University have gone in and paid for a shuttle that transports off campus students and other area residents around the general area. A good deal of the time, I don’t even generally use the shuttle when going to classes, since the walk can in fact be quicker than waiting for the shuttle. I use the shuttle in cases of inclement weather and at night - the shuttle runs until 2 AM. It drops me off and picks me up at either corner of my block. So I don’t have to walk in the rain or cold, and I also don’t have to walk through the streets of New Brunswick late at night (our own university President was mugged upon leaving one of the liquor stores near my house). Or at least it used topick me up and drop me off at either corner of my house.

Now, it’s not that I’m lazy, I just don’t want to be robbed, pistol whipped, or shot. You see, on April 9th and 10th there were two armed robberies within a two block radius of my house. One of the victims was pistol whipped after grabbing instinctively at the robber’s gun being prodded into his chest. He had to have three staples in his head. He’s lucky he didn’t get it worse, he could have easily died. And according to The Daily Targum

Lt. John O’Neal of the Rutgers University Police Department said that although these situations are often unavoidable, people should take minor precautions, such as walking with a partner and avoiding dark streets late at night.

“We can’t promise that nothing will happen, but by doing the best practices, you limit that risk,” O’Neal said.

You see, I’m just following the policeman’s advice: limiting my walks through dark streets alone at night. Or at least I did until last Wednesday. Why did I stop? Actually it was the New Brunswick Police Department that stopped me. Apparently there is some ne’er-do-well New Brunswick Police officer who has been ticketing the drivers of the New BrunsQuick shuttle for stopping to let people off. Stopping. A bus. Isn’t that what buses do? Isn’t that a bus’s purpose? As a result the drivers of the New BrunsQuick shuttle have had to stop only at major intersections, and at lights.

I asked one of the drivers about the situation, she was more than happy to oblige with the little information that’s actually getting to the drivers about this policy. “There’s this cop who works the morning shift who once gave me a ticket in Buccleuch Park for speeding, he said I was going 35! (Jim’s Note: I find it hard to believe that that shuttle can get to 35 MPH between the speed bumps in Buccleuch.) This guy’s supposedly the same officer that is ticketing the morning drivers. Now they can only stop at lights, or corners, we actually don’t really know which.”

So, here’s a breakdown so far:

• A New Brunswick police officer has been ticketing the drivers of a city-sponsored shuttle for stopping to let passengers off at unimportant intersections and in between long blocks, something which school buses do all the time and never get ticketed for.
• The bus company has since instructed its drivers to “not do that, whatever that is.”
• Now, students who live in an area with recent (and a decent history of) muggings have to walk two or three blocks further than they should through dark, unsafe areas to get home at night.

I have been keying the map of the route of the New BrunsQuick shuttle, and I will explain it to you here:

1. Approximate location of my house
2. One of the two equidistant stops closest to my house after the ticketing
3. One of the two equidistant stops closest to my house after the ticketing
4. One of the two equidistant stops closest to my house prior to the ticketing
5. One of the two equidistant stops closest to my house prior to the ticketing
6. The black circle, indicating the area in which the two recent robberies have taken place. It is important to note that the entire area of the map is essentially unsafe, not just the circled in area.

Why do we even have a police force in this city?