Judging from the recent homes reportedly ransacked along with the thieves striking at just this one store, it seems to me the idea of reducing the size of the police department was a dumb idea. Hopefully, this council will see that education and public safety is the taxpayers # 1 concern. Boy have the politicians blundered at this subject!

John: Got a bit of an issue with people on the other side of the river, do ya? I guess the people of Paterson don't have permission to leave and try to shop elsewhere. I have yet to hear of an outcry in Paterson against all the people from Fair Lawn that shop in places like the Home Depot, Lowe's, Pep Boys and Micro Center. Like there is no criminal element in this place....

John, maybe Inserra should do a better job protecting there merchandise. Seems to me that they are always getting hit. Just think of the giant tattoo parlor that can go there if they leave......

Nice to see how classy you are - "the ghetto"? I was being sarcastic, which apparently went right over your head. But your preconceived notions notwithstanding, crimes are not committed by anything other than criminals. They live in lovely suburbia, too. And because they don't look like what you think of the people that live in Fair Lawn look like, you can single them all out with your stupid remarks as criminals from "the ghetto" because they live in areas without supermarkets and have to come here to shop. Every time I think this country has managed to escape the prejudices of the distant past, up pops an open, out-in-the-open figment from my parent's generation who insists on living like it was 1970 again. Blame everything that happens in town on Paterson - go read the police reports instead of your own idea of what is going on.

Sarcasm huh?. I welcome a diverse neighborhood. I myself am a proud hispanic living in Fair Lawn. I moved here to get away from crime and have a better lifestyle and education for my children; better than what my parents could give me growing up in NYC. Don't come at me with some smug comment on being prejudice. I live it everyday my friend. I see what i see in this town and just giving you my perception. Maybe we should be figuring out why low income families cant get out of that hole, or why corrupt NJ politicians can't seem to clean up Paterson like NYC did in the early 1990's. Politicians have been sucking up money from these NJ urban areas for decades. Maybe we should be asking why isn't there a major supermarket in Paterson... Then again, that isn't our problem right? (sarcasm)

You have no idea of who I am. I came from a neighborhood that was a ghetto, complete with drug dealers and hookers and a corrupt city government in a place as bad as the worse NJ has to offer - my parents moved me here for the same reasons you came here. But they left their preconceived notions as relicts of the past, not something to carry along into the present. You "welcome a diverse neighborhood" while rejecting the people who might want to move into it, because of your preconcieved notion that people from Paterson are criminals or creating all the crime in Fair Lawn. I grew up in Fair Lawn - and I can name at least a dozen classmates that grew up to be criminals, at least three of whom are dead from crime and drugs. Crime, comes from criminals. Period. Criminals come from suburbia, and everywhere. Bigots are everywhere, too.

Your twisting around what my point is. Its all right man, you wont be called a racist if you state the obvious that Fair Lawn borders a very bad area. Yes and its a fact that there is a bad element that comes from there. Yea and i agree that criminals are everywhere, your next door neighbor could be a child molester, you never know. Im just rejecting the bad people. Again, I'm just basing my opinion based on what I read and hear in the newspaper/ police blotters from our town.

Fair Lawn does not border a "bad areas" - learn a little geography and understand that the "bad areas" are nowhere near this part of the Passaic, and most of those considerably south and west of here. Most of the parts of Paterson that are close to this town are relatively better off. Madison, south of Broadway and east of Clifton? Those are the bad parts, where the gangs and hoods hang out 24/7, Not up here. Those are condominums on Rt, 20, not projects, and most of the people who shop here, live there. And if you don't think that a certain amount of profiling does not contribute to the home addresses of names that appear in the police blotter....