The Ruins of Trenton

Mayor Douglas H. Palmer and private investigators hired by the city borrow tactics from the Ku Klux Klan when investigating unfavored city employees suspected of violating the city's residency ordinance, according to Trentonian columnist L.A. Parker.

The Palmer apologist wrote a column today attacking city residents who openly allege that Trenton's longtime mayor no longer maintains a bona fide residence in the city, but in doing so he unwittingly attacked his own master, who openly uses the same tactics.

Mr. Parker alleged that phantom residents may be engaging in investigative tactics in an attempt to prove the mayor does not fit the legal definition of a resident, and then made the highly predictable and racially-charged leap of faith that those tactics had roots in the KKK.

But Mayor Palmer utilizes the same investigative tactics in a much more insidious manner in having city employees followed, photographed and generally harassed whenever the mayor decides it is time to prosecute an employee not enjoying his favor.

Favored employees - like former Police Director Joseph Santiago - do not need to worry about such harassment, because Mayor Palmer openly espouses a view that he has the ability to apply city law as he sees fit, like a Persian emperor or Russian czar.

What's really interesting about Mr. Parker's column is that he is known to bend the truth, spin a story, and engage in other politically-motivated activities that have resulted in a wholesale rejection of much of whatever is written within his column, and even in many of his objective news pieces.

That leads to the thought that maybe Mr. Parker is also spinning, bending the truth, or otherwise lying in his Saturday July 5 column about Mayor Palmer's residency. That makes the column even more peculiar.