Murphy’s shameful omission in State of the State address (Opinion)

If you’re not paying attention, Phil Murphy can look like an aww shucks kind of great guy. If you ARE paying attention, he looks like a snake in the grass. Especially if you think omission is as bad as a lie.

During Tuesday’s State of the State address he talked about the problem of auto theft in New Jersey. It has skyrocketed. When he began congratulating his administration for all it’s doing to combat it, he mentions police pursuits but never gives the full story.

Here’s what he said:

Over the past year, our administration has focused clearly on this problem.

We grew the State Police’s Auto Theft Task Force to give it greater ability to investigate and disrupt car theft rings, including adding new detectives and prosecutors.

Police pursuit policies were revised to explicitly permit the pursuit of stolen vehicles.

And we marked $10 million in federal American Rescue Plan funds to purchase and install automated license plate recognition technologies for local police to better track and trace not just stolen vehicles, but those being used to shuttle would— be car thieves into targeted neighborhoods.

Huh. Interesting that he said police pursuit policies were revised to explicitly permit the pursuit of stolen vehicles. He said this as if he was righting an age old wrong. As if there had been a problem and he, Phil Murphy, was the solution.

When in reality he, Phil Murphy, was the problem.

We always had police pursue stolen vehicles. It was only under Phil Murphy that police pursuit policies were changed to NOT allow officers to pursue stolen vehicles.

It was such a train wreck of a policy that many believe it greatly added to the rising number of car thefts once the criminals caught on that they wouldn’t be chased if they didn’t pull over.

He himself created the very flawed policy that he is now taking credit for “revising.” Funny how he never mentioned that part.

Pathetic.

Even more pathetic is something else he said in the very same speech.

Speaking of the people of New Jersey, he said, “So, let’s never insult their intelligence. Let’s always be honest and straightforward with them.”

Then just minutes later he went right ahead with this shameful omission and insulted our intelligence.

Writer Josephine Hart once said, “A concealed truth, that’s all a lie is. Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered.”

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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