Councilman David Merwin

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release – July 6, 2019

Early this morning our Old Bridge Community suffered another double fatal car accident. This is the third fatal accident that has resulted in four deaths this last week. There have been many others as well in the past few months.

For some time now, I have been strenuously advocating for the reinstatement of the Aggressive Driving Program by our Police Department. My efforts have fallen on deaf ears. This past December our Mayor thought it was a public safety priority to establish a strong Police presence at the Christmas Light Display, at a cost of nearly $30,000.00, which would have been much higher if we did not have 11 rain-out days. This money could have funded the Aggressive Driving Program. When it comes to public safety, he turns his back on us. We need our Police Department patrolling our roads to help prevent fatalities like the one that occurred this morning.

Our police department is already stretched to the maximum with their regular duties such as first aid calls, fires, accidents, and neighborhood disputes. They cannot diligently patrol our streets and issue motor vehicle summonses until we allocate our funding priorities properly.

The Aggressive Driver Program placed the men and women of our Police Department back on the roads strictly enforcing the motor vehicle laws of our state. I am again calling upon our Mayor, who is also our Public Safety Director, to have our Chief of Police reinstate the Aggressive Driver Program in order to protect the safety of our community.

This program works it’s magic two ways – it has our officers on the roads issuing summonses and it creates a very high visibility for our community patrol. These actions will be the biggest deterrent to the criminal element planning anything in our community.

Mr. Mayor, if you are reading this, please re-start the Aggressive Driving Program in Old Bridge for the safety of our residents.

David Merwin Councilman Ward 1
Democratic Candidate for Mayor of Old Bridge 2019