LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, Sept. 6, 2001

Murderer’s shocking escape
To the editor:
   
The events of the past week in Hopewell Township have shocked many residents.
   A two-time convicted murderer escaped from the Mercer County Correction Center Thursday morning in a daring escape.
   This maximum-security inmate scaled the wall of yard unseen by guards or security cameras, shed his orange prison garb, and jumped off the roof by the visitor’s entrance. The guards found him writhing in pain and he conned them into believing he was a visitor. Prison officials called for the ambulance that took him to Trenton. From the hospital, he simply walked away.
   More amazing still, the Corrections Center failed to recognize his disappearance for approximately 13 hours. Many residents received a call at 2 a.m. Friday from Community Alert Network, activated only after prison officials finally realized that an escape had occurred.
   County Executive Robert Prunetti introduced male maximum-security prisoners into the Mercer County Correction Center in 1997 without the knowledge or consent of the Hopewell Township Committee. He and Warden Dennis Cunningham have repeatedly stated that this reassignment of county inmates will not increase safety risks to the residents of Hopewell Township.
   Despite these assurances, Mayor Marylou Ferrara and the Hopewell Township Committee repeatedly have called for the removal of the maximum-security prisoners from the facility. We reiterate that call today.
   The Corrections Center is not maintained as a maximum-security facility. The buildings are old and badly in need of repair and the jail does not consistently use all needed maximum-security procedures.
   During the past three years, members of the Hopewell Township Committee have more than a dozen times brought these concerns in writing and in person to the county executive. The responses we received have not resulted in the meaningful improvements we requested.
   With considerable difficulty, I have obtained two tours of the Correction Center. Each time, the facility was prepared with many visible guards, a working metal detector, and great care to stow all of my personal items. But when Hopewell Township Police Chief Mike Chipowsky and I paid an unannounced visit to the jail last December, there were no guards outside the facility, the metal detector was off, and we were able to walk right into the warden’s office without anyone stopping us.
   The recent escape places these concerns now in a very public light.
   Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) would have required camera surveillance of the yard and the roof. Were these cameras in operation?
   All visitors to the facility must log in at the front gate before proceeding to the Visitor’s Center. Did they check this inmate’s name against the log-book?
   SOPs for maximum-security prisoners limit the number of inmates per guard. Simply put, it should not be possible for a maximum-security inmate to go unnoticed for any substantial period of time.
   Tonight, the Hopewell Township Committee will vote on a resolution to renew its call for the removal of maximum-security prisoners from the Correction Center. The committee also will vote to renew its call for a review of the facility’s standard operating procedure. And, because the county executive also introduced Immigration and Naturalization Prisoners to the Correction Center this year, we will also call for a federal investigation into this escape.
   We are inviting a representative from the Correction Center to be on hand to provide an overview of recent events.
   Above all, we will call upon the County Executive Prunetti and Warden Cunningham to face up to the realities of using a century-old structure to house seriously dangerous criminals.
Jon Edwards, deputy mayor, Hopewell Township
Valley schools are being reactive, not proactive
To The editor:
   
The safety of our school children is critical, and a collective gasp is uttered as each new instance of school violence is recounted. No one disputes that these problems and issues are real and must be addressed, but is Hopewell Valley going about it the right way?
   In our opinion, Hopewell Valley is being reactive, when a proactive approach would go further toward ensuring the safety of our children. Further, by taking a proactive approach to this vital issue, we would not be consistently chipping away at the small-town characteristics that most of us moved here to enjoy.
   The most recent example is the refusal to post classroom assignments publicly. While we believe the measure is overly cautious in a community like ours, we can understand the concern and think it is at least reasonable. But why is the information being treated as top secret within our community?
   We assume that the idea is to keep the information about our children’s names and daytime whereabouts from outsiders with potentially nefarious intentions. If so, then it makes sense to keep the information out of the newspaper, the district Web site and even off the front doors of the school. However, we would like someone to explain to us why this need for secrecy extends to members of our own school communities? Why can’t this information be posted in the school offices, where a person is either known or can produce proof of identity before being given the names of our children’s new classmates?
   A recent Hopewell Valley News article on the subject cited "Columbine," but have we forgotten that Columbine, and indeed all the school shootings, were carried out by students within the school? Restricting access to class lists would not have helped prevent any of the recent school tragedies.
   It seems to us that we need to address the similarities between all the "shooters" involved in these school tragedies and work to avoid these kinds of situations. What did these children have in common? Beyond the obvious ability to obtain lethal weapons, all the children involved were outsiders, shunned by classmates and bullied or ignored. They felt disenfranchised, and, left to their own devices, they made horrifying choices for exacting revenge on those who had hurt them.
   It is fine to have school policies of inclusion — "r-cubed" and "responsive classrooms" are enacted with the best of intentions. But how many of these attitudes are carried out when the watchful eyes of teachers and other adults are missing? It is naive to believe that we are doing enough to prevent these kinds of tragedies by refusing to post classroom assignments. Even putting security cops in place won’t do the trick; many incidents of violence occur in schools that already have security personnel. We need to make sure that our rules for behavior are so deeply ingrained that they occur on the playground and elsewhere, not just in the classroom.
   We need a zero-tolerance policy for bullies if we want to increase the likelihood that our children will respect others, stand up for friends and learn to handle differences responsibly without resorting to violent options. We need closer supervision on the playgrounds and in extracurricular activities. We need to ensure that none of our students is made to feel like an outsider.
   Furthermore, and just as important, we need parents to take the same position at home. Often, when school personnel identify a child as misbehaving towards others, it is the parents who turn a blind eye. "Kids will be kids" is not a reasonable response but it is the one often spouted by parents unwilling to see the need to modify their children’s behavior.
   Hopewell Valley is still a safe place to raise a family and we are all lucky to be here. We do not want restrictive policies to make us feel as if we live in the inner city. It is especially galling when these restrictions are in place because of misguided notions of school safety. Stopping by school to find out who is in your class is a beloved Hopewell tradition — let’s modify it to make it safe without scrapping it altogether, especially since this change cannot possibly have any real impact on school safety issues.
Lisa S. Lewis and Serge Goldstein, Pennington
We await answers to questions about Aug. 30 prison escape
   The following letter was sent to Robert Prunetti, Mercer County executive, and submitted to the HVN for publication:
   
The following letter is to be taken very seriously. We are extremely concerned about the course of events on Aug. 30, regarding the delayed notification of an escaped inmate from the maximum security prison, on Route 29 in Hopewell Township.
   My husband and I received a recorded phone message at 2:30 a.m. Friday, from the Hopewell Township Police Department stating an inmate had escaped from the prison at 9 a.m. Thursday, and the police were notified of the escape at 11:30 p.m. Thursday by the Mercer County Correction facility. The inmate was incarcerated on murder and armed robbery, and had changed his clothing and was armed.
   When we called the Mercer County Prosecutor’s office, we were told the corrections facility had learned of the inmates’ escape at 10 p.m. Thursday during roll call. There is a discrepancy here as the Hopewell Township Police recording stated the inmate escaped at 9 a.m. that morning. Later, we received another update from the police that it had been verified that the inmate had been seen in Trenton during the day on Thursday. Why did it take 14 hours for us to be notified of an armed murderers’ escape? The police said it is the responsibility of the Mercer County Corrections facility to activate the alarm and the phone alert system as soon as a prisoner escapes from prison. The alarm signal was activated approximately 12 a.m. Friday and the call came at 2:30 a.m. We are terrified of what may have happened if that inmate had hurt someone during the span of 14 hours, while the community went about their usual business, placing themselves at a frightening and unnecessary risk. We live across from the Washington Crossing State Park and I was jogging earlier that day, and shudder to think of the risk I took, and would have avoided had I known there was a murderer at large.
   We are asking that the community be notified immediately upon a prisoner’s escape. I do not want to hear about the prison not knowing about an escaped inmate until roll call at 10 p.m. at night. I would like to know what measures will be taken to ensure that the corrections facility activates the alarm when they become aware of an escape, not when they feel they must contact the police.
   The correction facility was converted from minimum to maximum security without input from the Hopewell community, some would say in the dark of night. We received a letter from you explaining the safety procedures that would be enacted and therefore look to you for an explanation and a solution to this dangerous and fearsome circumstance. We are not pleased to be living under these conditions. We believe our concern and indeed indignation is justified and request a thorough investigation and report on the escape notification process and what will be done to ensure that nothing like this happens again.
   We respectfully await your response.
Hilary and Sean Murray, Titusville