Commentary: What the heck? Is Morris Township promoting guns?

Citizen Police Academy promo in Morris Township's August 2020 Municipal Messenger.
19
By Heidi Raas

I was disheartened, then aggravated, after seeing the above photo published in Morris Township’s August 2020 Municipal Messenger.

 

Excerpt from Morris Township August 2020 Municipal Messeanger.

After my concerns and comments on this subject on the July Township Committee Zoom Meeting, after having seen the same photo in the July Municipal Messenger, promoting participation in the Citizen Police Academy program offered in the Township,  I would have thought that more deliberate content would have been selected for publication.

Clearly, I was mistaken!

I will say again, I think this photo selection is glamorizing the use of guns in our town and society. Having them in the hands of our citizens, and promotion of same as endorsed by this police program is unconscionable!

Police car outside Frelinghuysen Middle School on Monday. Photo by Beit Ollestad
Police car outside Frelinghuysen Middle School, September 2016. Photo by Berit Ollestad

Have we forgotten Newtown already?? And our own scare in 2016 at Frelinghuysen Middle School?

How about a photo of a citizen providing CPR? Wouldn’t that be more in the vein of the intent of the Citizen Police Academy Program of Morris Township? Or am I missing something?

Reviewing a sampling of Citizen Police Academy programs on municipal websites across the country in both rural areas and cities, and after reviewing hundreds of online images of the program, again from all over the country, I found less than 10 photos of citizens with guns being shown in conjunction with this program.

Our town is one!

Shame on Morris Township Committee and Morris Township Police Department for even having the photo associated with the program offered here, and certainly for including it not once, but a second time relative to the current offering of this program as advertised on the Municipal Website and in their monthly newsletter.

What the heck?

Heidi Raas is a resident of Morris Township.

Editor’s note: The opinions above are the author’s, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.

19 COMMENTS

  1. Get a grip, Heidi. These citizen police will be extremely lucky if they never are in a situation where they suddenly wish they had a real gun. Being ex-law enforcement I can tell you that ‘crazy’ is everywhere and every LEO that was every shot at on a ‘peaceful’ domestic disturbance call will say the same.

  2. I look at the picture. I see happy confident people. Looks like a fair amount of comradery. Looks like they learned a lot. From that picture I would think it’s a good program. What I don’t see are ANY guns.

  3. I have never understood how these leftists function in their daily life. There is either perpetual offense, or perpetual fear. In this case, it appears that both are in play.

    I agree with one of the posters above. Editorials of this natures are most likely entirely self-promotional and serve as an effort to get one’s name out there due to some political ambition. Legal gun owners are, by and large, safe, polite, responsible citizens. Lose the dread, enjoy life.

  4. Ms. Raas, when finger guns are banned, only criminals will have finger guns. Perhaps you should concentrate instead on finger gun safety, because I’m sure that the reason you are concerned is that your finger gun has been misused; don’t you remember that incident in third grade where you shot Tommy with your index finger (something we are told never to do) and he didn’t get up for almost a minute?

    I’m also sure you are thinking about earlier today, when you over-reacted and gave a policeman the large caliber finger gun salute — also known as “the middle finger” — and got a ticket as a result. Yup, the police are terrible, are they not?

  5. I read about this story on another website and had to see if it was real. Is Ms. Raas that delicate? I would suggest that she toughen up a bit since conditions in NJ due to Covid -19 are going to stay rough for quite a while. If a group of people playfully doing “finger guns” upsets her that much, I wonder how she will deal with the Income Tax increase sure to follow the state’s next bond issue.

  6. Copaganda is real!

    You’ll hear the township call for lower taxes but nobody’s going to touch that bloated cop budget in this extremely low-crime area.

  7. Thanks for providing this platform for sharing my opinion. After reading about the program on the website and it’s intent, I agree with H. Raas that the selected image is neither appropriate nor matched to the intent of the program! I strongly hope that the Police Department will change their ad!
    Here are excerpts of what this program is about from the website of the township’s police dep for context: “ The purpose of the Citizen Police Academy is to give the public a working knowledge and understanding of the operations of our police ”…“It is our intention that the graduates of the Morris Township Citizen Police Academy will gain an awareness and appreciation of the services we provide. We also hope to collectively create an even stronger partnership between our police department and the community we serve which in turn will allow our graduates to become advocated for the law enforcement community as a whole“ –

  8. Get a life and stop being so a fended by every little thing. It’s a good program for people to get involved in.

  9. Get a life! There will be no fun in Morris Twp. Everything has to be so serious. Ay yay yay.
    You are a bit wacky to be putting out opinion pieces. And shame on Morristowngreen for putting this out there. I sure hope you don’t have any political aspirations but if you do, move!

  10. If you are mad about this don’t look into what the police salaries are. In Madison you have a cop pulling in almost 200k for 2019 and a kid pulling in 96k for driving a truck.

LEAVE A REPLY