Report Suspicious Activity, Bedminster Chief Says

Bedminster Township is a quiet town, similar to all those in the Somerset Hills, and, according to Bedminster Township Police Chief Pat Ussery, there is not much violent personal crime.

“That is good,” he said. “There is a degree of property crime, thefts and burglaries, which all areas experience.”

For the most part, Ussery said, they handle these kinds of cases, as well as domestic violence, usually about one to two cases per week.

“They take several hours of officer time to process,” he said. “There are strict guidelines the officers have to adhere to when someone alleges domestic violence, and it can be time consuming.”

But the most prevalent thing the police department finds, Ussery said, is the fact that many residents don’t report when they see strange vehicles or other similar situations.

“We constantly feel ourselves repeating this,” he said. “All we get is, ‘yesterday I saw a vehicle that kept circling the block and it looked suspicious.’”

“What frustrates us is we ask why they didn’t call us yesterday, we could have stopped then and tried to discern what the people were up to,” he added.

Ussery said they constantly try to persuade neighbors and residents who are at home to call on the police department if they see anything suspicious.

“Just call, that’s what our philosophy is,” he said. “Some people are good about calling and that’s what we want.”

“Today in the information age, some people feel it’s a bother, and they think it’s probably nothing, so they delay in calling,” he added.  

Those who are committing these kinds of property crimes, Ussery said, are not invisible because they can be seen driving to different locations, staying around the area.

“They might look out of place,” he said. “It’s frustrating [when residents don’t call].”

Over the past year or so, Ussery said, the township has been hit with probably half a dozen burglaries in houses on Route 206 mostly, but the perpetrator was eventually caught.

“We don’t believe this was part of an organized ring, the person was just opportunistic," he said. "The person was rolling through the area on Route 206, and pulled into a residence when no one was home.”

The person made entry into the homes and took some items, Ussery said, taking a wallet that was left just inside a kitchen door, among other items.

“We were fortunate because the individual was picked up by the New York PD trying to buy drugs, and he had proceeds belonging to others,” he said. “That generated a call to us, and the case was closed. That was the most recent, and it was in the first 10 days of September.”

On the business side, Ussery said, there have been reports of shoplifting, with hair products and other items being stolen from pharmacies, among other things.

“We have been networking and sharing information,” he said. “With a whole lot of jurisdictions that have been experiencing the same actions by people in a four- or five-state area, the person hasn’t been caught yet, and it will be an indictable offence.”

Ussery said they also experience commercial burglaries, with people gaining entry into office buildings and taking laptops and other equipment.

“It hasn’t been going on recently, but our overnight troops are extremely sensitive to that in the wee hours of the morning,” he said.

In Bedminster, Ussery said, people are extremely fortunate because of the types of activity that are not occurring, particularly despite the fact that the town is near the junction of routes 287 and 78.

“We have historically been peaceful,” he said. “We like to think our level of vigilance is such that Bedminster is not an attractive target.”

“When an incident does occur, we have a detective lieutenant who is a bulldog and will pursue leads and information,” he added.

And, Ussery said, the department works with other bureaus to find suspects and solve similar crimes.

“People who do commit property crimes in Bedminster have a greater chance of being run down,” he said.

Despite this vigilance, Ussery said, the department is unable to do the kind of community policing it would like to. Originally, he said, there were once 18 people in the department, and they had a patrol specifically assigned to community policing.

“In the economic crunch that has obviously affected municipalities, we have downsized to 15 people,” he said. “It is a big deal because it greatly cut down on our ability to do association meetings in the Hills, and perform meet and greets.”

“We try to engage in that activity when it’s afforded to us, but the troops are now thin enough that we are hitting service calls and don’t have resources,” he added.

Aside from this, Ussery said, they usually have about six driving under the influence arrests for a month, and about five drug arrests a month, which all results from traffic stops on the Route 202/206 corridor.

“We have some well-traveled roads between Lamington and Burnt Mills that are bridge roads, and the Route 206 corridor is an extremely heavily traveled road,” he said. “We get a good volume of people moving through at any hour of the day, and certainly during rush hour.”

“And with that comes traffic crashes, and we have probably gone through an average of 15 accidents a month up to 30 to 35 a month in the last decade,” he added. “It doesn’t completely strip the guys of the ability to do police work, but it is a lot.”

These kinds of incidents, Ussery said, are essentially driven by population.

“Even though Bedminster hasn’t grown much from 8,000, the areas surrounding us have ballooned, so the amount of traffic has grown considerably,” he said.

And as for the larger open spaces, Ussery said, they usually don’t present much of a police problem.

“We rely on the fact that the community is affluent enough in areas that residents are alarmed and the golf courses are alarmed,” he said. “Even though we occasionally experience a residential burglary, it’s not anything that saturation patrol is going to be able to diminish because it’s a lot of open space, and we normally have two cars patrolling the 26 square miles.”

Ussery said they do get out on back roads and make passes on interior roads but there is nothing that bad going on.

“We make sure nothing untoward is going on to the degree we can,” he said. “Nowadays we rely on the fact that everyone has a cell phone, and we exhort people if they see something to say something.”