Breaking News to Break In

Driving through Jersey City is the most challenging part of the job. I race through potholed streets like a toy car in the circus, like a clown, honking and swerving over other clowns. People crowd, fight and run together in in this race of 600,000 people packed into an area of 60 square miles. That figures to be about 10,000 people per square mile in Hudson County. Such a number doesn’t make one a pessimist-- it makes them an angry realist. My third day at the Jersey Journal starts with the normal assignments-- a few shots at a local school, a story about a local bar, a volleyball game. Slowly making my way down to Bayonne from Jersey City, traffic is at a snails pace. I’m grinding my teeth and counting the inches between my bumper and the next, when the distant sounds of sirens begins to catch my attention. I roll down the window to stick my head out and look, and BAM!-- a BMW comes screaming through the safety lane inches from face, two bike cops racing after him. Now I have a dilemma. I don’t consider myself an siren chaser, but I know we are suppose to follow any spot news while we are in the city. I decide to tear off the traffic and follow behind the cops. Only 50 yards further and the BMW swerves into oncoming traffic and barrels back over a divider, ruining the $100k car. Two men jump out of the car and run towards some railway tracks. I’m trying to get over and park when I look up and see one of the men pull out a gun. He looks all over, not really pointing the gun, but not really giving it up. The two bike cops get over to the tracks and jump off. The man flings the gun into a bush and runs. Now I’m just dumbstruck. I realize I have been staring at all this through my windshield and forgot to get a hand on my damn camera. I pull over and run out. The man is already in handcuffs as an endless stream of police cars come swerving in. I snap two frames and he is put into the put into the back of the car. Beads of sweat are running down my back.

My phone rings my editor. “I just got some photos of a high speed chase on 440!” “What? Listen-- some woman drove her car over into Newark Bay and firefighters are in the water trying to get her out. They think she might be DOA.” I run back into my car and tear off South. Of course I have little idea of where I am going, but I have a street name and compass. As I come up to the street, ten minutes later, four ambulances nearly hit me, coming out from the scene. I missed them. Thankfully the woman was rescued by several firefighters that broke through her window and got her out. Those ambulances were carrying the woman and the men who suffered from exposure. (The firemen’s voices who participated in the rescue can be heard here). I wait at the scene as the woman’s car is recovered from the water and than head out to cover girl’s volleyball.