MOUNTAINSIDE — The Mountainside Council discussed at Tuesday night’s work session meeting the issue of statewide home invasions, with the majority of recent incidents involving the theft of car keys.
MOUNTAINSIDE — The Mountainside Council discussed at Tuesday night’s work session meeting the issue of statewide home invasions, with the majority of recent incidents involving the theft of car keys.
“There’s a large amount of home invasions where people are coming into homes at night, looking for car keys, which escalates to the point of waking the people up, wanting their car keys,” said Chief Joseph Giannuzzi of the Mountainside Police Department. “This has become a statewide problem. It occurs here in Union County.”
With incidents now being reported all over New Jersey, the police department is making a move in order to address this issue.
Chief Giannuzzi said he would support bail reform at the state level to prevent repeat offenses.
“Under the current bail reform laws, people are released 90 percent of the time on what they do is non-violent, and a burglary was a non- violent thing,” Chief Giannuzzi said. “Now, they are taking steps into more accountability. [The Bail Reform Law] is changed now. We’ve arrested people with handguns that were stolen, and after we completed the paperwork, they would walk right out the door. The theory was that they were in possession of a handgun and they didn’t use it on anybody.”
Another topic that the council discussed was a plan to modify the commuter parking fees. The daily fee can either be paid using the pay station manually, or via an app.
Borough Administrator Glenn Mortimer said, “so if people want to rent them to go into the city for a day, they can pay in cash when it is activated to the dispatch, or they can just use the app on the phone.”
“Because of Covid and quite a few empty spaces, last year, the mayor and council chose to waive [the fee],” Mr. Mortimer said.
This decision of the exact parking fee has not been decided and will become an ordinance for the month of January of next year.
The next meeting of the Mountainside mayor and council will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 17, at the municipal building on Route 22. It will be the final meeting of the governing body for 2024.
