Lack of an update isn’t terribly surprising — what local news even exists anymore? Hoboken Girl?

Also this isn’t how things happened. The one video that’s been shared here shows the front passenger fleeing on foot. You can also see the beginnings of the rear driver side passenger, a woman with a stroller (possibly a child), exitIng. She then walked SE down Canal street alongside 235 Grand. Driver stayed in the vehicle less than a minute before driving off, on the same sidewalk as the female passenger, nearly hitting her & turning left eastbound onto Sussex.

Plenty of people were on the ground taking pictures/videoing. I saw at least one person clearly capture the license plate. Those individuals are apparently not choosing to share the video (or doing so elsewhere & it’s not making its way over to r/ JC).

All three passengers had apparently been in Taqueria antagonizing the staff before getting into the SUV idling on Grove. It could have been stolen. I only saw from the point where all three were in the vehicle, had already run into the two victims, and were in the process of turning around on Grand before Marin. They returned, did some donuts in the intersection, struck the front end of the black SUV (also seen in that video, disabled where it was hit), & left down Grand. They finally returned a third time a few minutes later, more intersection donuts, before reversing into Taqueria.

So nevermind accurate reporting on resolution of this mess, I haven’t seen very accurate reporting on the base facts of the night. Despite dozens of witnesses and multiple cameras out.

Unanswered emergency call sparks demand for ‘reform’ at Jersey City 911 center, but who’s to blame?

By Ron Zeitlinger | The Jersey Journal

A video posted online of a call to the Jersey City 911 call center going unanswered after a hit-and-run crash last weekend has the city administration fuming and may speed up the city’s consideration of privatizing the call center.

“We need to get to the bottom of this, you can see in the email the mayor is really upset with the 911 not being answered!! I want a full investigation and a detailed report ASAP!!!!!” Robert Baker, the Jersey City Department of Public Safety’s director of the public safety communications center and information technology, said in an email Sunday morning, less than 12 hours after the incident at the popular Taqueria restaurant on Grove Street Downtown.

A portion of the hit-and-run incident, in which a vehicle struck two people and slammed into the restaurant, was caught on video by a neighbor. As one person records the incident, another is heard calling police, but grows frustrated when no one picks up.

Baker’s directive was in response to an email sent by Mayor Steve Fulop earlier that morning to Public Safety Director James Shea, some city councilmembers and Business Administrator John Metro — “We really should move forward with this on the next agenda and start to take the steps we discussed to change the culture and improve performance here.”

Baker followed it with another email six minutes later: “I want to know how the 911 call-takers were, who were on and who was off Intrado at the time of the call, what call volume was at the time! We were receiving calls on this from other callers.”

The emails were obtained by The Jersey Journal.

The “here” Fulop referred to is the public safety department’s 911 call center, the subject of numerous complaints that calls go unanswered. In November, the city council rejected a resolution to hire a company for $213,000 to study and solve the city’s troubling 911 system.

The company, IXP, performed reviews in 2015 and 2018. At the November meeting, Councilman Yousef Saleh noted “we haven’t even adopted the recommendations from the 2018 report.”

Downtown Councilman James Solomon said Friday “It is 100% clear that the 911 system and center is in desperate need of reform. That is 100% clear and it has been clear now for a long time.”

At the November meeting, department employees told the council the 911 center is understaffed. Some workers, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Jersey Journal this week that the city has set up the 911 call-takers to fail because they have wanted to privatize the call center operations for years.

In the case of the Feb. 11 crash at Taqueria, call center records show the incident was reported at 10:59 p.m. and passed along to the East District two minutes later. A dispatcher, who also works in the call center on Bishop Street, dispatched the call to a police officer at 11:08, seven minutes later. Records show that two officers responded to the restaurant at 11:14 p.m., 15 minutes after it was first reported.

In another email obtained by The Jersey Journal, Roseann Manto, supervisor at the 911 call center, explained that there should have been five call-takers on the midnight tour that started at 10:50 p.m., and that “between incoming, outgoing and abandoned calls, we had 284 calls” between 10:50 and 11:40 p.m.

Manto said in the email that during the same time period, “besides the usual non-emergency calls, we were receiving calls for a car fire, three (other) motor vehicle accidents, domestic disputes, a street fight and an assault.”

She noted in the email that two call-takers were logged in at 10:50 p.m. since they had worked the previous shift, one did not log in until 10:56 p.m., and another was not ready to take calls until 11:11. A fifth call-taker, who was described as “chronically late,” did not log into until after midnight.

“Is the root cause ... a culture among employees, is it poor management, is it both? That is what needs to be investigated,” said Solomon, who added that he heard from multiple people who said no one answered their calls after the Downtown crash. “So I respect the mayor’s kind of hypothesis or theory here, but I’m not going to immediately buy in until me and the council get the evidence to back it up.”

Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said the city is investigating claims stemming from the Taqueria incident “to ensure any potential weak points are immediately addressed. We had a closed session with the City Council two weeks ago on this issue and we will continue to look for ways to improve.”

Whether the city moves to privatize the call center or reform it, Solomon said city officials should keep one thing in mind — “The only thing is that the people deserve a quick solution to the problem.”

Live across the street & turned on the police scanner after the action. Dispatch didn't come through until 11:07 (a couple minutes after an ambulance & ~7 minutes after this post ) & then it was described as a fight.

Cops show 11:10 & it's not until 11:40 that the situation is clarified to list two pedestrians struck as well as structural damage to Taqueria & it's reclassified as an aggravated assault, detective dispatched.