In NJ, you can kill a cop, serve your time then get paroled!
Trantino to parolees: 'You can make it'
| Sunday, January 23, 2005 |
CAMDEN - If anyone should know about how to survive on parole and probation, it's Thomas Trantino, and Saturday morning he imparted his advice during a two-hour panel discussion on the topic.
"We have a choice and we can take responsibility for those choices, no matter what," Trantino told the audience of about 30 at an auditorium on the Rutgers University-Camden campus. "You can make it. No matter how bad things are."
Trantino was released from prison in 2002 after spending a state-record 38 years incarcerated for the killings of two Lodi police officers. Because of his infamy, he was thrown out of a halfway home, forced to live in a homeless shelter and rejected for several apartments and for a job.
He has since become program coordinator for the Quaker-supported Friends Transitional Support Services in Camden, which co-sponsored the event along with the Rutgers-Camden Department of Criminal Justice.
His appearance on the panel was strongly opposed by members of the Lodi government and Police Department, who were upset that he would be allowed to speak at a taxpayer-supported institution.
After the forum, Trantino said he was used to the manner in which the police force reacted to his existence.
"What are you going to do? It's a culture. It's a club ... and you respond to your peers. We've been talking about this all day. The way they survive is, when Tommy Trantino's name is mentioned, they snap to attention and say 'RRRR.'Ÿ"
He added that he wished members of the Police Department had attended the discussion so there could have been a real exchange of views. No department member was present either to protest or to attend the forum.
"I'm willing to talk to those police officers," he said. "I'm willing to go in to their training and talk to them. I used to talk to the police in prison and I have no problem with police."
Trantino said he is qualified to talk about the subject because he has been in prison and experienced reentry to the outside, and he is paid to help ease the transition for other inmates.
Trantino was joined on the panel by Leah Morris, director of training for the state Office of the Public Defender. She began her remarks by saying she was not representing the agency and speaking only for herself.
The panel's moderator, Dr. Drew Humphries, professor of criminology and sociology at Rutgers, read two statements before the conversation even began - one from Rutgers explaining that its role is to provide an open forum for discussion, no matter how controversial, and the other expressing disappointment that the New Jersey Parole Department had declined to send a representative as planned. Lenny Ward, district parole supervisor of community programs, backed out of the discussion after learning that Trantino would be a panelist.
Morris spoke first and offered three top-10 lists: the essentials for survival as a parolee or probationer, the most common mistakes and the cardinal rules. The top two rules: Keep reporting no matter what, and don't assume you won't get caught if you violate your parole.
Many in the audience had family members who are, or had been, incarcerated. At least one man was currently in a halfway home. There also were several transitional support professionals and members of the Quaker group. Trantino said he knew most of those assembled and thanked them for coming, despite the falling snow.
"What all this is about is, how do you survive life," he said, as he began his remarks. "How do you do it? I look at my own life as not really being in that struggle when I was younger because I had no tools, no idea of how to survive except on the lowest possible level there is."
Trantino said he left prison for the first time, as a 23-year-old drug and alcohol addict in the 1950s, with a Ph.D. in crime and distorted thinking.
"Who paid for it? Other people and myself too. ... And this led, as almost everybody knows, to my killing two policemen in 1963 and spending the next eight years in solitary confinement and the following 30 years incarcerated, where I learned how to survive."
He did not talk about the specifics of his own struggle to reintegrate into society, but he did point out the presence of Roger Lowenstein, the attorney in July defended him from charges of beating and choking his former girlfriend. A jury acquitted Trantino, sparing him from going back to prison for the rest of his life.
"We can't control what others do, and what event might occur," Trantino said. "Thank God [Lowenstein] was there, but we're not always that fortunate. That's part of the problem - to have people that care about us."
During the question-and-answer period, many attendees complained about the inadequacies of the criminal justice system and the war on drugs. Morris said many of those topics, and others, would be addressed in future forums sponsored by the Quaker group.
Maria, a relative of an inmate, said she and her mother came to "understand the system better." The two hope to provide positive support for their relative, whom they declined to identify. Both said they had learned a lot from the speakers, especially that their relative will need "a lot of love."