Court Opinion

ID: 9703361
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:53:18.313392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:47.900897
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
dissenting-.
This case illustrates further the reality that the true victims of inner-city crime are the residents themselves. When the citizens in this community cried out for police protection, the answer they received was “buy your own police.” Not so long *199ago, in the context of a case concerning private-landlord tort liability, a Michigan justice foresaw what we now experience.
Public safety is the business of government.
Today’s decision concedes the failure of government to make the streets and homes of certain areas reasonably safe and in effect transfers the governmental function of public protection to the unfortunate owners of real property in such places.
The intrusion of private industry into the business of public safety has been one of the most unfortunate phenomena of the 1960’s and the 1970’s. Already, there are subdivisions which operate their own patrol cars; private police and private guards are multiplying * * *.
[Johnston v. Harris, 387 Mich. 569, 198 N.W.2d 409, 411-12 (1972) (Brennan, J., dissenting).]
Unlike those who can take sanctuary in privileged areas, the citizens of Newark must contend with the crushing burden of crime. Everyone shares the concerns of the City’s residents. Its council members are no less concerned than those anywhere else.
But the problems that they face are seemingly beyond the financial capacity of the City. Our Court errs, however, when it denies the reality of the situation. It treats the ordinance as if it were a property-maintenance code within the general-welfare jurisdiction of the governing body.
Just as we would never tolerate an abdication by a governmental agency of its function to govern, see First Peoples Bank v. Township of Medford, 126 N.J. 413, 420-21, 599 A.2d 1248 (1991) (observing that permit-repurchase provision in ordinance insures that control of local development remains with municipality and not with private landowners), >ve cannot, consistent with law, sustain an abdication of the police function by a municipal governing body. The comments of the council members who voted in favor of the ordinance demonstrate its functional significance. One councilman said:
Now the City of Newark, likewise, has a responsibility with its Police Department, but given the limited number of policemen we have in spite of adding on each year, there is still a lack of adequate protection City-wide. So, this *200particular ordinance that I’ve introduced is simply one to help protect the lives of the persons that we serve.
[Emphasis added.]
Another councilman stated that “the residents want more police officers and they know they have to bear the cost of that because that is a service the taxpayers pay for.” Another added that in his view the presence of an armed-security guard in open spaces in an apartment complex or a high-rise with a large court would deter criminal activity. Nothing could be clearer than that the ordinance represents a well-intended desire to increase the number of police officers in the community.
Like every other function of government the cost of police service should be included within the cost of general municipal services. As enacted, the provision imposes the financial burden on the victims of crime themselves, for, as Chief Justice Weintraub once explained:
The bill will be paid, not by the owner, but by the tenants. And if, as we apprehend, the incidence of crime is greatest in the areas in which the poor must live, they, and they alone, will be singled out to pay for their own police protection. The burden should be upon the whole community and not upon the segment of the citizenry which is least able to bear it.
[Goldberg v. Hous. Auth. of Newark, 38 N.J. 578, 591, 186 A.2d 291 (1962).]
Paradoxically, the trial court, in sustaining the ordinance, took note of the fact that the background problem far exceeded the conditions at any of the sites affected by the ordinance. The court detailed the deficiencies in the State’s and county’s prosecutorial and law-enforcement functions and recited the need for more judges and public defenders, emphasizing that protecting people from crime “is a paramount function of government” (Emphasis added.)
In addition, a municipal ordinance may not preempt State gun-control policy. The premise of the ordinance that the Court sustains is that private citizens must arm themselves to insure their own safety. Is this not what the National Rifle Association has been saying? Does the holding not suggest, then, a contradiction with the State’s current gun-control poli*201cies? The Michigan Supreme Court summarized the appropriate allocation of responsibility:
The inability of government and law enforcement officials to prevent criminal attacks does not justify transferring the responsibility to a business owner * * *. To shift the duty of police protection from the government to the private sector would amount to advocating that members of the public resort to self-help. Such a proposition contravenes public policy.
[Williams v. Cunningham Drug Stores, Inc., 429 Mich. 495, 418 N.W.2d 381, 385 (1988).]
In New Jersey, we differ from other jurisdictions over whether private security officers, by their status alone, have the right to carry handguns. The Attorney General has recognized that the status as an employee of a licensed private-detective agency or security service is insufficient to establish justifiable need. The Attorney General has concluded that
the standard of "justifiable need” [to obtain a license for a handgun] requires an applicant-employee of a security agency to demonstrate that he performs statutorily-authorized duties under circumstances that present a substantial threat of serious bodily harm, and that carrying a handgun is necessary to reduce the threat of unjustifiable serious bodily harm to any person.
[In re Preis, 118 N.J. 564, 572, 573 A.2d 148 (1990).]
The trial court was of the view that in the event private security guards were not available, the apartment owners could hire off-duty municipal police officers or special police officers. However, the law is equally clear that special police officers may not carry weapons when off duty unless they have a permit. N.J.S.A. 2C:39-6.a.(7)(b); Belmar Policemen’s Benevolent Ass’n Local 50 v. Borough of Belmar, 89 N.J. 255, 263, 445 A.2d 1133 (1982); In re Rawls, 197 N.J.Super. 78, 87, 484 A.2d 53 (Law Div.1984).
Finally, the Attorney General has stated that regular members of a municipal police department, during their off-duty hours, may engage in police-related activities for private commercial establishments as employees without being in violation of the Private Detective Act so long as those activities do not constitute the business of a private detective, security guard, or watchman. Preis, supra, 118 N.J. at 576, 573 A.2d 148 (refer*202ring to Atty. Gen. F.O.1978, No. 11, cited in Rawls, supra, 197 N.J.Super. at 88, 484 A.2d 53).
The three cases on which the majority relies, Hudson Circle Servicenter, Inc. v. Kearny, 70 N.J. 289, 359 A.2d 862 (1976); Sunrise Village Associates v. Borough of Roselle Park, 181 N.J.Super. 567, 438 A.2d 945 (Law Div.1980), affd, 181 N.J.Super. 565, 438 A.2d 944 (App.Div.1981), certif. denied, 89 N.J. 413, 446 A.2d 144 (1982); and Bonito v. Bloomfield Township, 197 N.J.Super. 390, 484 A.2d 1319 (Law Div.1984), do support the proposition that government has the power to require the assistance of private citizens in the performance of its protective services. Those cases, though, in no way require us to uphold the City’s ordinance. Sunrise Village Associates, the only case involving the protection of large multiple dwellings, thus provides the closest analogy to this case. In finding that the ordinance did not transfer the governmental duty to provide police protection to a private party, the court relied on the fact that the required uniformed security guards were not “empowered to * * * carry weapons.” 181 N.J.Super. at 573, 438 A.2d 945. In Hudson Circle Servicenter, this Court also emphasized that the business services required of the truck-stop operator did not extend to the traditional police function of carrying weapons. 70 N.J. at 306-07, 311, 359 A.2d 862 (“Kearny’s ordinance does not shift the entire burden of providing police protection upon the truck stop owner”; no evidence that Kearny sought to compel formation of private police force). How then do we explain the leap made in the Newark ordinance to require armed security when, presumably, the absence of the requirement that the guards be armed sustained the ordinances in Sunrise Village Associates and Hudson Circle Servicenter? The answer is that we cannot.
I do not take issue with the municipal power to require some assistance from private entities in providing security, as the municipalities did in Hudson Circle Servicenter, Bonito, and Sunrise Village Associates. My concern is that the Newark ordinance goes too far, thereby permitting the City to shift its *203responsibility onto the shoulders of private entities. Furthermore, the ordinance is unfair to plaintiffs, or their tenants, to the extent it imposes an added financial burden on them. The ordinance calls for armed police protection, an essential function of government. As such, the financial burden of providing the service should be borne by the community as a whole.
I would reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and hold that the City of Newark’s ordinance unfairly imposes on plaintiffs the traditionally governmental function of providing police protection to the extent that it requires the property owners to provide armed security guards. With the imposition of the armed-security requirement, the City has crossed “the line dividing security services from police services.” Ante at 192, 623 A.2d at 1372.
Justice GARIBALDI joins in this opinion.
For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices CLIFFORD, HANDLER, POLLOCK and STEIN — 5.
For reversal — Justices O’HERN and GARIBALDI — 2.