Herkimer drug thug Kim Vargas goes from success to success: after several years of harassment and drug trafficking along Pleasant Avenue, she wrapped up her stint next door by helping her son Jordan Bormann on his way to prison, charged with a class D violent felony. Jordan Bormann, 21, assaulted an elderly neighbor, sending the old veteran to Albany Medical center with a traumatic brain injury.
Vargas, the subject of many herkimerpost.com articles, enjoyed a two-and-a-half-year reign of unchecked criminality next door to us at 328 Pleasant Avenue, long a gang sanctuary and retail drug thug front.
This March makes our ninth year in Herkimer. For seven of those years, 328 Pleasant Avenue has been tenanted by a succession of low criminal types trafficking drugs and occasionally kids, and doing their inept best to force the “weak old people” from “their” street. As with all else in their wretched lives, they failed. Here’s a 328 Pleasant Avenue rogues gallery:
The Froth On the Scum Of The Earth: 328 Pleasant Avenue Rogues Gallery
Herkimer Monster Mom Kim VargasHerkimer elder-basher Jordan Bormann, unfortunate son of Kimberly (Bormann) Vargas, with vile friends on the porch of 328 Pleasant Avenue.Kim Vargas’ son Jordan Bormann assaults elderly neighbor in front of 328 Pleasant Avenue, causing traumatic brain injury. Officer Jason Crippen’s investigation found elderly neighbor guilty of the assault. Reinvestigation based on victim’s surveillance cam footage saw Bormann charged with Class D Violent Felony.Curtis Cool. Cop-coddled Herkimer drug thug and probable child trafficker ally, menacing his neighbors from driveway of 328 Pleasant Avenue.328 Pleasant Avenue’s wacky Amanda West harassing old folks on their neighboring porch.328 Pleasant Avenue’s Xavier Rowe harassing neighboring old folks.
Herkimer police officer Jason Crippen responding to Kim Vargas’ call. from 328 Pleasant Avenue. Crippen threatened one of us with arrest for using foul language in our driveway.
I’ve speculated at length as to who controls 328 Pleasant Avenue, using it as a retail drug trafficking front. The demographics of the Herkimer area are rapidly going upscale. We’ll see if they sell the place or move another set of gang scum in there. Whatever happens, there are a lot of surveillance drones around and our cameras stand ready.
“Misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law, is action taken under color of state law.” United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 326
Herkimer police officer Jason Crippen, again! Suddenly he’s in our driveway and faces, hectoring and lying and rude. Summoned, per Herkimer normal, by yet another thug playing the victim. This time it’s our latest neighboring drug trafficker, Kim Vargas. We’ve written a lot about her harassment and trafficking.She’s a peach.
“I can’t decide if he’s complicit or just an idiot.”
We’ve been subjected to Crippen’s abuse of power multiple times over the last six years. In all instances, Crippen has malfeasantly supported our criminal neighbors, using his office to intimidate us and deny us the protection of law. It’s obvious when you speak with him that Crippen’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. As I said to a state police investigator when he raised the subject of Crippen’s conduct, “I can’t decide if he’s complicit or just an idiot.” There’s enough material in this post for you to decide for yourself. Certainly, the performance Crippen puts on here would discourage anyone but a criminal from calling the Herkimer police.
Here’s his pattern: Crippen responds to a 911 complaint from one of our trafficking gang neighbors. He advises us that their accusations are valid, that we’re in violation of criminal law, and threatens us with arrest. He either ignores anything the complaining thugs have done to us or says their actions aren’t subject to criminal law.
On one occasion, Crippen refused to accept a complaint from us while he was manning the desk at the Herkimer police station. The complaint was carefully written and supported by video evidence. (See below, “Another Crippen Encounter”.)
This most recent incident on 6/16/22 is classic Crippen. The video should be used in police training classes as an example of intimidation under the color of law.
Herkimer drug thug Kim Vargas holding court on her 328 Pleasant Avenue porch. Small children come and go. Vargas says she’s a licensed daycare provider. She’s not.
Our Latest Thuggish Neighbors, the Kim Vargases
Kim Vargas has lived next door at 328 Pleasant Avenue for two years–the Doolen gang’s most recent placeholder. Afternoons she holds court on her front porch, along with her supposed brother-in-law, a heavy-set, low-browed antisemite. The two chain-smoke the day away. A bong is sometimes shared. In the afternoon small children come and go–Vargas’s latest lie is that she’s a licensed daycare provider. She’s not.
The porch people’s chain-smoking quickly fills their porch ashtray. In the morning, we often find cigarette butts heaped in our driveway, next to Vargas’s patch of paradise.
The Right Response To Outrageous Behavior Is Outrage
On June 16th, wife Linda had had enough of the butts and spoke to Vargas firmly, in words typically used by Vargas, to drive home her point. Vargas, horrified by the foul language coming from our driveway, called 911, falsely stating that she was a licensed daycare provider and that children were in danger. Vargas is not a licensed daycare provider. You can cuss in your driveway all you want.
“Crippen…stepped into his familiar role of intimidation through misrepresentation of the law
Children in danger, Officer Jason Crippen immediately responded, followed shortly by two other Herkimer PD officers, seemingly as adult supervision. (The sight of Crippen armed with pistol and taser is as worrying as the sight of Vargas caring for children.)
6.16.22 Herkimer Police was officer Jason Crippen confronted by Stephen Ames Berry and Linda Kaidan in their 330 Pleasant Avenue driveway. Kaidan repeatedly challenged Crippen to follow through on his threat to arrest her for child endangerment: she’d used the word fuck in her driveway within hearing of children, speaking to neighboring drug thug Kim Vargas (on porch) in words Vargas typically uses in front of children.
Crippen quickly stepped into his familiar role of intimidation through misrepresentation. Below are listed highlights drawn from our video. (A detailed timeline is in the video’s description on our Herkimerpost.com YouTube channel.)
Here’s my bodycam video preceded by a brief street cam clip.
Video
Caught In The Act: Highlights of Crippen’s Attempted Intimidation
Twice threatened to arrest Kaidan for child endangerment for saying “fuck” in her own driveway 6:35 7:26
Crippen states to Berry that “your reports of child trafficking were reported to the Herkimer and State Police and found false.” (They weren’t reported to either agency-the FBI has sole jurisdiction over child trafficking matters.) 10:37
Also discussed was our perception of Officer Jason Crippen’s conduct in possible support of alleged child trafficker Little Mama.
State Police Investigation and Officer Jason Crippen
Our Herkimer Child Trafficking went viral, helping bring over a quarter-million combined views to our posts and videos. Apparently, many folks read our cornerstone child trafficking post after Facebook News picked it up. (It’s taken on a life of its own. Surprisingly, it’s big in China.) Many readers expressed their concern about Herkimer child trafficking to New York state authorities in Albany.
2016, Linda Kaidan makes the Nanny Nanny Boo Boo at neighboring drug thug Curtis Cool, aka Curtis Doolen, ignorant that it was exculpatory for harassment in Herkimer New York, per Herkimer Police Officer Jason Crippen.
Has Crippen Intimidated Others Under the Color of Law?
Surely we’re not the only ones Officer Crippen’s intimated under the color of law? According to Chief Michael Jory’s report to the Village Trustees and Mayor, Herkimer Village Police respond to about 500 phone calls a month. How many of these calls have been complaints Crippen has suppressed?
Not everyone’s a pigheaded blogger and filmmaker with a well-established social media presence. Confronted by a belligerent, bullying Crippen, most folks are going to fade. No wonder the local gangers strut about with such an air of entitlement.
Below is my complaint about Crippen to Chief Jory. There’s at least one other current complaint about Crippen in the police database, according to the Herkimer Times Telegram, but you won’t be able to read it: After the Village refused to make its police complaints’ records available, as required by New York law, it was sued by the Gannet Organization, owner of The Herkimer Times Telegram and the Utica Observer. Rather than releasing the records, The Village of Herkimer hired a law firm to keep this public resource from the public.
Herkimer Village won the first round in its attempt to avoid fully complying with New York’s Freedom of Information Law as it pertains to police discipline reports. The matter is on appeal.
We wondered the other day, as we tottered over Herkimer’s heaving stretches of ancient broken sidewalks, how our impoverished Rust Belt village justified spending an unpublicized amount of money to flout state law. But then, to quote The Herkimer Post, “‘It’s Herkimer,’ folks say with a shrug.”
Herkimer Only Releasing Recent Substantiated P0lice Conduct Complaints: Jason Crippen’s Released
Interviewed by the Herkimer Telegram’s Donna Thompson for her excellent coverage of Herkimer Village’s FOIL non-compliance, Herkimer Police Chief Michael Jory expressed his support for the law. One reason for that may be that, as it stands now, bad apples can be passed from Herkimer County police agency to police agency, inflicting their bad behaviors on unsuspecting communities, with the county’s police chiefs unaware until the complaints start coming in.
Herkimer Village won’t release any unsubstantiated complaints made about officers, and then will only release substantiated ones filed since the FOIL was amended. This means the copies of complaints of the two officers it did release were substantiated complaints. One of those officers was Patrolman Jason Crippen. Perhaps someday we’ll get to read it, or them.
It took the Village a year to provide those records to Gannet-Herkimer Telegram. Which can publish them as it sees fit. But only here on the doughty Herkimer Post can you read the most recent complaint against Herkimer’s Officer Jason Crippen. Or you can request a copy from the Village, and if it’s substantiated, wait a year or so to receive it. (All our PDFs are downloadable.)
As I noted to Chief Jory in my complaint, in a heated part of my exchange with Officer Crippen I refer to “other complicit cops.” To the best of my knowledge, those who abused their authority to intimidate us are gone. Since Chief Jory took command, all of his officers but Crippen have been very supportive of us and often gone out of their way to offer encouragement and advice during some very stressful incidents, treating us as concerned citizen partners.
Digging Deeper: Jason Crippen And Revamp Fitness
Jason Crippen’s Revamp Fitness, 131 East Albany St., Herkimer, NY
Officer Jason Crippen came to widespread attention in Upstate New York during the pandemic threatening to reopen his Herkimer Revamp Fitness facility in violation of state law. “Those are only civil penalties that result in fines, not laws being broken.,” He was quoted as saying about possible fines “This is America … We’re not a communist country.”
“Members enjoy being part of a private and respectful community,” says the gym’s website. Respect is what I think of when I think of Herkimer’s Officer Jason Crippen.
Looking spotlessly new and unused, gleaming equipment abounds in Jason Crippen’s Revamp Fitness, Herkimer.
“Human trafficking finds both its victims and perpetrators in regions of poverty, violence, and corruption.” Shannon A. Welch, Human Trafficking and Terrorism
Last month at his request, we welcomed New York State Police Investigator Jason Nellis into our home. We talked for about 90 minutes in a part of our house not yet contaminated by Herkimer trafficking gangs’ 21 months of poison gas attacks. Our conversation highlighted the inherent inability of local and state law enforcement to cope with gang-based domestic terrorism.
Herkimer Child Trafficking Sparks Concern In Albany
We were our usual unflinchingly outspoken selves. Investigator Nellis was an engaged listener. He didn’t agree with some of our suppositions, and we didn’t agree with some of his assumptions. It was a polite and frank exchange during which we made the following points:
Herkimer child trafficking now apparently out of range of our cameras – Not gone far. Child trafficking brings welcomed cash into economically depressed Herkimer. Has long been protected here. Logistically complex operation with many dependencies. Has proven local partners and protected properties. Moving it from Herkimer would be difficult, costly, time-consuming and risky.
Herkimer landlords complacently shelter child traffickers – Property owner need not be complicit with cash-heavy criminals. Just has to rent to them. Herkimer’s historic child trafficking hub properties’ landlord Jay Smith was a case raised by state police investigator. For years Smith provided rental properties to the high-volume transnational child trafficker Little Mama and the Stanley Sykes gang. The gang’s still there, still trafficking.
FBI has sole jurisdiction over child trafficking – This we knew. Local and state police agencies haven’t the resources to tackle child trafficking cartels and their transnational networks. Billions in child trafficking profits make large bribes possible. The FBI has the resources to take on large gangs and also provides assurance of integrity.
Why State Police can’t stop Herkimer poison gas attacks
It became obvious as we talked that the State of New York has no way to detect and interdict poison gas attacks on the scale we’ve experienced. No state does–states haven’t the resources and their police agencies haven’t the structure. These heinous attacks constitute domestic terrorism. They’re staged from fleets of vehicles modified to stealthily dispense clouds of invisible, odorless pesticide, and from neighboring properties rented to drug and child traffickers.
This isn’t just about us. The many vehicles and properties involved argue this is a well-established, well-honed strategy for driving people from their homes, dead or alive. Houses can then be picked up for a song at tax auction, quickly mitigated, and tenanted with gang members.
There was much talk of the burden of proof of poisoning being our responsibility. Opening an investigation, we were told, would require evidence in the form of medical tests and property toxicity reports–at our expense.
Investigator Nellis used the word “evidence’ quite a bit. No evidence, no investigation. We think probable cause should be enough to open an investigation with evidence to be obtained by the police during the course of the investigation. But to do so would require more resources, and be a tacit admission that regional law enforcement has long been either been willfully ignorant of the danger or asleep at the switch.
Only the FBI Can Halt Herkimer Gangs
There have been strong indications in the last few years of a large federal law enforcement presence in and around Herkimer. Eyes in the sky, boots on the ground. It seems to us that toxicity levels from these poison attacks have been confirmed by lab testing and direct observation. And resources deployed accordingly.
Some big bites have been taken out of the gangs’ poison gas campaign capabilities in Herkimer. The feds have the resources for this. Drone-mounted thermal imaging cameras can detect poison gas being dispensed, and follow the identified spraying vehicles and deal with their drivers.
In September 2018 Herkimer County was awarded $89,974 as part of a statewide grant to improve safety in New York. Counter-terrorism is one purpose of this grant. Perhaps a very small part of it could go to halting child trafficking activities on Pleasant Avenue in Herkimer, NY using modern technology, like the FLIR Griffin™ G510 portable gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GC-MS). This chemical hazard identification device can quickly identify serious hazards. A single device can be shared by multiple counties and solve problems currently identified as being “impossible to prove.” Help end the long reign of Herkimer’s three monkeys.
It was artfully concealed in plain sight, just next door. Only after Little Mama and Pretty Boy had moved on did we realize they were child traffickers, two busy conductors along America’s bustling underground railroad of sex trafficked kids.
8.20.16 Herkimer’s Stanley Sykes’s gang’s Carrie Ann Bass (left) with big time child traffickers Little Mama and Pretty Boy the day the Sykes gang became guardians of Herkimer’s longtime child trafficking compound.
Child traffickers create an illusion of normalcy, playing to your preconceptions. Everything you see about them appears ordinary. Nothing jarring, nothing out of context. Unless you know what to look for, you probably won’t spot their operations.
Herkimer’s Pleasant Avenue for years was the perfect child trafficking cover– a noisy, lawless street, bustling with drug traffickers roaring by day and night, and teeming with kids from transient families. Moving from Florida, we bought our house in March of 2014 and were preoccupied with street harassment and documenting neighborly narcotics trafficking. We pretty much ignored what seemed normal comings and goings.
Little Mama’s Daily Child Shuttle
Almost every morning, five to six days a week, the young woman we named Little Mama drove past our house and into the next-door parking lot with an SUV full of kids, mostly 12 or younger. Sometimes another car would arrive. with Little Mama. That one typically had 3-4 toddlers. All the children were white. They’d disappear into Little Mama’s 341 Eureka Ave home, a Jay Smith property. Usually they were gone by morning.
3 trafficked kids, 341 Eureka Avenue, Herkimer NY. 4/14/16. All kids bikes on Herkimer’s Pleasant Avenue could only come from the trafficker’s shed, just off camera to the left. Riders not allowed out of the parking. 4th kid–kid on ground– is local, son of Stanley Sykes gang female ally Trash Mouth.
Herkimer Child Trafficking Pattern – Never the Same Kids
Infants and toddlers went into Little Mama’s, but never reappeared. Sometimes the older children would ride bikes, but only in the parking lot. The bikes were issued from the property’s shed. (The kids on Pleasant Avenue didn’t ride bicycles and weren’t allowed in the lot.) Little Mama’s younger kids would also play in the parking lot, but only with each other or the Stanley Sykes gang’s kids.
Our older daughter hung out in our backyard a lot. She was the first to notice: “Only one or two of her kids are ever the same.” We started watching, and she was right. But still, we didn’t tumble to it.
A Heck Of A Lot of Kids
We were very distracted, as intended, and didn’t do the math until long after the traffickers moved on. Then we were astounded–over time, that’s a lot of different kids–easily 1000 a year, possibly as many as 2000, depending on the number of days per year, number of unique kids per carload and number of vehicles per day. We don’t know the exact number. But we do know there aren’t that many surplus kids up here in rural New York.
“We never looked too hard–it was just kids.”
At night, cars would quickly come and go from the rear of Little Mama’s 341 Eureka Avenue, with visitors slipping in and out. It being Herkimer, we assumed she was just trafficking drugs. We were wrong.
In the morning Little Mama would drive off alone. We thought she might be an after-school care provider and the kids had been picked up by their parents the afternoon before, from the front of her house on Eureka Avenue. We never look too hard–it was just kids.
Our back and side yards were so quiet we only hung a camera out there to catch a brazen tomato thief. The camera faithfully recorded the kids, Little Mama and her associates – coming and going. Pity we didn’t keep most of those clips, but it was just kids.
Then the harassment and vandalism began.
Camera Triggers Herkimer Child Traffickers Attacks
Herkimer’s major child traffickers and their principal local allies, the Stanley Sykes gang, wouldn’t have harassed and vandalized us if we hadn’t put up that $50 mom-and-pop camera. And if they hadn’t, we wouldn’t have looked with new eyes at their activities, or come to the sickening conclusions we finally did. As our neighbor Joyce Barton taught us, Herkimer’s criminals always attack if you put up cameras. Cameras give away their secrets.
Suddenly our fence was being vandalized, our old dog pelted with rocks and metal, our back yard littered with junk hurled from the parking lot.
Easter Sunday 2016, Little Mama had the fake dad of her current consignment of trafficked kids challenge us for having a camera up.. Never saw Easter Dad before this video, haven’t seen him since. Outraged fake parents protesting cameras are a standard Herkimer traffickers’ ploy.
Herkimer Police Officer Jason Crippen Accuses Us Of Trespassing And Dog Enticement
I traded words with Easter Dad in March of 2016. Verbal harassment and junk hurling flavored the mood of the season. Little Mama and Sykes gang’s Carrie Ann Bass took to taunting our older daughter in our backyard, shrieking “Whore!” and “Psycho!” (Carrie Ann Bass is part of the Stanley Sykes gang’s harassment squad.)
On the night of 4/4-4/5/16, our parking lot fence was ravaged. When we went to inspect it from the parking lot side, Little Mama summoned Herkimer cop Jason Crippen, who tried to intimidate us with the threat of trespassing and dog enticement charges. (Crippen later refused to take a well-documented criminal harassment complaint against another cash-heavy Herkimer criminal, Curtis Cool.)
Crippen has done quite well for himself, opening a 9000 sq ft upscale Revamp Fitness in downtown Herkimer. He told News Channel 2 he opened the gym partially out of his concern for Herkimer’s elderly population. Crippen continues his duties as a Herkimer police officer, serving elderly citizens such as us.
Little Mama’s management then showed up. (The SUV with the New Jersey colored plate, top right.) One of them visited us that day, our escaped dog in tow: early forties, blonde, well-spoken. She could have been a professional in any large organization, which of course she was. She tacitly apologized for any problems with “our friend Vickie.” The attacks stopped. Cold. It was like a light going out.
We think it was then that the regional child trafficking management team decided to relocate their Herkimer transit point. Child trafficking, like poisoning, only succeeds through stealth. We were well-known for sharing Herkimer crime on our blog, and Little Mama had idiotically attracted our attention. And then there were those government surveillance drones increasingly dotting Herkimer’s skies.
In August 2016, Little Mama and Pretty Boy relocated their Herkimer child trafficking operation and turned the Pleasant Avenue compound over to the Stanley Sykes gang for safekeeping, with Stanley moving into Little Mama’s 341 Eureka Avenue, still owned by Herkimer landlord Jay Smith.
Enter Master Herkimer Harasser Curtis Cool aka Curtis Doolen
12/17/16 Curtis Cool aka Curtis Doolen, has put Herkimer on the map: 6,100+ views of his videos and growing, as referring sites offer them for free download. One comment on a British site: “The Herkimer Police–the strong arm of the law.”
“I’ve got a strong law enforcement community which is actively conducting … investigations.” Herkimer County District Attorney Jeffrey S. Carpenter (9/8/16)Herkimer Police wouldn’t take criminal harassment complaint.
Linda Kaidan unwittingly making the Nanny Nanny Boo Boo, ignorant that it was exculpatory for harassment in Herkimer New York
Despite a change of command and increased patrols, Herkimer Police wouldn’t take criminal harassment complaint, even for this outrageous and well-documented incident. (We have more.) This one is fresh, others occurred under Herkimer’s previous police chief, Joseph Malone, who abruptly retired in the teeth of an ethics investigation. It demonstrates an alarming ongoing pattern of failure to protect by the Herkimer Police.
Typically the Herkimer Police say they’ll only take a complaint following a second incident of harassment because Herkimer District Attorney Jeffrey Carpenter won’t prosecute. Harassment must be repeated to qualify as a criminal offense, they assert.
Not true. Your tormentor must either “engage in conduct or repeatedly commit acts which alarm or seriously annoy the victim and serve no legitimate purpose,” according to New York state law. We endured 7 threats of grave bodily harm in 10 minutes, following a previous incident of public harassment. Our assailant called the police to protect him.
Herkimer Aggravated Harassment Incident of 8/23/16
Curtis Cool. Cop-coddled Herkimer drug thug and child trafficker
On Tuesday August 23, 2016, we were again verbally harassed and then threatened with multiple acts of physical violence by 328 Pleasant Avenue tenant, Curtis Cool, aka Curtis Dolan, first in our driveway and then on the public sidewalk. The previous night we’d again reported Cool for yet another of his multiple illegal late-night fires.)
The Herkimer Police and the New York State Police responded promptly and again defused Curtis Cool. The responding officers were very supportive and encouraged us to file a harassment complaint at the Herkimer Police station. Cool’s actions seemed to us to be obviously either 2nd or 1st Degree Aggravated Harassment. With Cool charged, we could obtain a Temporary Order of Protection, which would force him to move from his rented base at Harriett Tangorra’s 328 Pleasant Avenue house.
On Wednesday 8/24 we gathered our evidence–two cellphone videos, a surveillance cam video and a detailed narrative. At approximately 2:30 p.m, we went to the Herkimer Police station after first calling to see if it would be convenient to do so. The officer on duty, Officer Jason Crippen, said to come down.
Herkimer Police Say Nanny-Nanny-Nanny-Boo Excuses Aggravated Harassment
Officer Crippen asked us to wait while he looked at abundant evidence. He briefly reviewed a short portion of our first cellphone video, seen below, then stopped and refused to write up a complaint. “It would just be a waste of time,” he said.
Boy-next-door: Criminal-coddling Herkimer cop Jason Crippen, Herkimer Police.
His reason? Officer Crippen said one of us (Kaidan) had triggered Cool’s menacing and threats of grave bodily harm by making a nanny nanny nanny boo gesture from our driveway at Cool as he peppered us with taunts and obscenities. Officer Crippien’s implication? That Herkimer County District Attorney Jeffrey Carpenter would not prosecute Cool, as Kaidan’s nanny-nanny-boo-boo would exonerate Cool, holding him harmless for his threats and menacing.
Here’s the portion of the cellphone clip reviewed by Officer Crippen before dismissing us. It has been closed-captioned for the selectively hearing impaired. (Full Screen/click on the CC icon.): [Yo! It’s Curtis Cool: Parents strongly cautioned.]
The incident continued a moment later as Kaidan, refusing to be driven inside her home by Cool, asserted her right to walk along the public sidewalk in front of Cool’s house. Here’s an extract from that clip. (Officer Crippen didn’t review it, so we didn’t close caption it):
Both full-length videos from 8/23 (7 threats of grave bodily harm), and our surveillance camera footage confirming the events, place, date and time are on our flash drive, gathering dust at the Herkimer Police station. Included with them is our narrative of the incident and our video of Cool’s previous public harassment of us on 8/11/16. (During this last he cited his landlord, Harriett Tangorra in demanding our arrest. For having surveillance cameras. ) Officer Crippen used our narrative to review the first clip. Seeing the nanny-nanny-boo-boo, he gave Cool a pass and sent us packing.
“It’s obvious that over time Herkimer has ceded its streets to drugs and thugs. Gonna be hard taking them back.
Officer Crippen’s Advice: Hide In Your Home
The 3 Wise Monkeys of Herkimer
Officer Crippen’s advice was the same as that of Herkimer’s drug thugs when we first unwittingly moved to Pleasant Avenue: Hide: “Keep away from him and just stay in your apartment, ” Crippen advised.
It’s our house. We own it. It’s next door to the thug. A sidewalk is a public place. We asserted our right to use it. We’ll continue to do so. It’s obvious that over time Herkimer has ceded its streets to drugs and thugs. Gonna be hard taking them back.
Officer Crippen then belatedly added this was just this opinion. And that we might try our luck with one of the responding officers–maybe they’d take the complaint. Crippen seemed miffed that we’d distracted him from his law enforcement duties.
If the Police won’t take A criminal harassment complaint, WHo wins?
This is the 4th time in two years we’ve had the Herkimer Police ooze out of taking some flavor of a harassment complaint against cash-heavy criminals. We’ve heard the same from others. This isn’t policing, it’s depraved indifference. It throws Herkimer’s people to the wolves for the sake of politicians cynically running for office as crime fighters. And it emboldens criminals like Cool, who recently moved away unscathed despite many police and fire department visits. (To our knowledge, Cool was never cited for his illegal bonfires nor charged with harassment.) When Herkimer Police refused again to take a criminal harassment complaint, they made it clear that law and order is not their priority.
And so it goes on, with Herkimer’s reputation as a lawless jurisdiction attracting more criminals and endangering even more people.
“A matter of public safety”
Herkimer’s good cops seem to leave if they can, the few bad ones content to stay, cozied up to criminals and even sometimes running interference for them. Crime goes unreported and soars, with entire streets abandoned to drug traffickers. Herkimer’s reputation as a lawless jurisdiction attracts more drug and child traffickers. It becomes an even more dangerous place to live. There’s a strong smell of rotten fish in the air.
What does it matter that Herkimer Police wouldn’t take criminal harassment complaint?
Who stands to win if we all lose? Criminals, greedy landlords, criminal defense attorneys. And some politicians: Incumbent Herkimer County District Attorney Jeffrey Carpenter is trumpeting a lowered violent crime rate in support of his reelection. It’s easy to lower the crime rate if your police don’t take criminal complaints. To take them and act on them, though, is “A matter of public safety.”
called 911, falsely stating that she was a licensed daycare provider and that children were in danger. 
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Herkimer Police wouldn’t take criminal harassment complaint.
