TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Those among New Jersey’s largest city who feel “miserable” may take solace that they are not as bad as Passaic or Gary, Ind., going by the Travado.net website.
Travado posted on Nov. 1 the top (or bottom) 50 cities on its “Most Cities in America, Ranked” article. The site tends to post similar surveys like, “The 50 Most Difficult U.S. Airports to Navigate.”
The site said it had ranked the 50 cities based on U.S. Census Bureau 2020 Quick Facts data and “AreaVibes.” Crime rates, cost of housing and cost of living, compared to the national average, were among the considered factors. It appears that Travado’s 2022 survey actually looked for “the most miserable city” in each state, since all 50 states are represented.
The City of Passaic ranked fifth, where the median income is $34,920 but 33.1 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. The costs of housing and living are 51 and 23 percent higher than the national average. Violent crime ran 51 percent higher than the national average.
Gary, Ind. got the dubious pole position in part by a $29,300 median income and a 35.8 percent poverty rate.
Passaic’s fifth ranking is an improvement compared to a similar 2019 survey by “Business Insider” The Passaic County city was just ahead of Newark in their results.
“Business Insider,” in 2019, cited Newark’s 28 percent poverty rate and mentioned the lead in its water supply “like Flint (Mich.)” Camden (eighth), New Brunswick (11th), Union City (15th), Trenton (17th), Paterson (19th), West New York (29th) and Plainfield (30th) were also ranked in the 2019 survey.
IRVINGTON – The Nov. 17 elections for the NAACP Irvington Branch’s offices may well be the first one in “Local Talk” land of an organization using Election Buddy instead of using in-person or mail-in ballots.
The 41-year-old branch announced its use of Election Buddy in a Nov. 14 press release as an alternative to personally appearing at its headquarters at 60 Paine Ave. The on-line service uses an online website and e-mail.
The service, on its website, has the NAACP’s National Branch as among its clients. Irvington Branch members “in good standing” casted their votes 4-7:30 p.m. that Saturday.
The branch’s nominating committee had posted the following on the ballot Nov. 14 for voter consideration for 2022-24 offices: President, Kathleen Witcher; Vice President, Jerry Anderson; Secretary, Rodney White; Assistant Secretary, Frank Blake; and Treasurer, Aileemah Cannon Horton. Blank and Horton are new branch members.
Branch election results have not been posted on its Facebook page as of press time.
EAST ORANGE – Longtime city resident Sheila Y. Oliver, in one of her most consequential moves as Acting Governor on Nov. 18, reset the December Run Off Elections from Dec. 6 to 13.
Oliver, by signing Executive Order No, 313, affects runoff elections slated for Trenton, Perth Amboy and Manchester. The otherwise Lieutenant Governor and Department of Community Affairs Commissioner cited voting machines in three Mercer County municipalities being impounded – while having their results still inside – for the one week extension.
“As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s imperative that we give our election officials – who have been working around the clock – the necessary time they need to effectively gather Election Day materials and ballots,” said Oliver. “We want to make sure every voter’s voice is heard. Postponing the runoff elections will allow election officials to receive ballots and count them all before the certification date and will allow voters to vote in the manner they choose – including by mail.”
Oliver is acting for the vacationing Gov. Phil Murphy. Murphy (D-Rumson) had signed an executive order that had added the April school board elections to the May 12, 2020 municipal nonpartisan election ballot in the wake of the global COVID pandemic.
Oliver had been elected with Murphy in 2017 and 2021. The former East Orange School District Board of Education member came to Trenton by way of being an Essex County District Three Freeholder and as a seven-time elected 34th State Legislative District Assemblywoman. She resigned as Assemblywoman and as Assembly Speaker upon her Jan. 18, 2018 inauguration as Lieutenant Governor.
The Newark native and Weequahic High School graduate has lived in East Orange the last 40 years.
ORANGE – Relatives and friends of Julftson Remy, 24, who was killed in Brooklyn Sept. 19, may be seeing some justice after one of the suspects had been arrested by NYPD officers in the same borough on Nov. 9.
An NYPD spokesman said that Kevin Faneus, 22, was apprehended along a Nostrand Avenue bus stop in East Flatbush that Wednesday in an Infiniti sedan passenger seat. Faneus, “a reputed Crips member,” was found with “15 counterfeit $50 bills in an envelope and an open container of alcohol.”
Faneus, who is being held without bail on murder and weapons possession charges, has said that he was the driver in the black BMW – and not the passenger – who shot Remy at Glenwood Road and E. 36th St. Sept. 19.
Remy, who was born and raised in Orange, was delivering the BMW at 2:40 a.m. in exchange for $2,200 in cash. “J.J.” and father Jean ran Maple Auto Sales here – and J.J. a second rental agency. Remy and the employee who arranged the sale through Instagram drove 40 miles in the BMW and a Mercedes-Benz GL.
Neither Remy nor the employee realized that one of the suspects’ driver’s license was fake until they made an on-site records check. They followed the BMW in their Mercedes until the shooter fired rounds into the GL. The injured duo walked 10 blocks to Downtown Medical Center; the clerk was treated for a leg injury; Remy died there.
Remy’s mourners have recently replaced a makeshift memorial on the Neal S. Sullivan Associates parking lot by 36 North Day St. with a “J.J.” mural posted on the Sullivan building’s north wall. The shooter, who may have driven a Toyota Rav4 SUV to the Glenwood and E. 36th meeting, remains at large.
WEST ORANGE – Township and Newark police officers are investigating an injured man’s report that he was shot while in a West Orange shopping plaza parking lot here Nov. 21.
The WOPD staff desk sergeant had received a call from Newark colleagues at 12:25 a.m. Tuesday. The NPD caller said that they have a man in University Hospital with a gunshot wound.
The victim told medical staff and police officers that he was shot in the Essex Green Center by the Shop-Rite supermarket Monday night. He then drove himself about four miles east on Interstate 280 to the hospital.
Two details of WOPD officers were simultaneously dispatched to different areas. One detail, went to Newark to retrieve the just-released victim and his car. The man gave a statement at the WOPD headquarters and his car was impounded for searching.
The other detail closed off the parking lot near the supermarket to search overnight for a bullet casing and other evidence.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Yohan Fernandez, 20, of Newark, is starting to serve the 15-year sentence for the June 6, 2021 homicide here of Columbia High School scholar-athlete Moussa Fofana, 17, while you read this.
N.J. Superior Court Judge Ronald Wigler, from his Newark bench, handed down the 15-year sentence Nov. 16 in exchange for Hernandez pleading guilty to a count of aggravated manslaughter.
Hernandez’s plea bargain with the Essex County Prosecutor’s office, while expected for the last two months, is less than satisfactory to Moussa’s family and officials from both towns.
Critics had called for an at least 30-year sentence on Hernandez. They have held a march between CHS and the Maplewood Municipal Building protesting the punishment and have appealed to Wigler at earlier pre-trial hearings when the plea deal was leaked out.
“Please don’t think that this 15-year sentence represents the value of Moussa’s life,” said Wigler to the family and courtroom gallery audience. “There’s not a number or a number of years in jail I can give him (Hernandez) that will make your lives whole again. I’m sorry but I’m satisfied that under all the circumstances, this plea is fair and appropriate.”
Fofana, 17, was a CHS junior who was shot by Hernandez last year while on the grounds of the South Orange-Maplewood School District’s Underhill Sports Complex.
New Police Chief
Mayor Dean Dafis and the Maplewood Township Committee formally appointed Albert Salley as its next Chief of Police and had him sworn-in during their Nov. 14 meeting. Salley, who is MPD’s first African American police chief, succeeds the late Jimmy DeVaul, 53, who died on Oct. 21.
BLOOMFIELD / GLEN RIDGE – The manager of a North Center store thanked borough police officers for catching one of two shoplifting suspects that fled from his premises on Nov. 1.
Two Glen Ridge police officers saw two people being chased westward by a third person into the borough that Tuesday. They joined the pursuit until they had caught one of the duo.
The third person said he was the manager of the CVS Pharmacy at 331 Broad St. He identified the caught man as one of the pair who took two boxes of diapers and ran.
Michael Salici, 33, of Nutley, was taken to Bloomfield Police Headquarters, where he was identified, charged with a summons and released.
Stabber Surrenders Himself
A Nov. 15 Bloomfield Police report has a man, suspected of stabbing another man on Nov. 11, turning himself in that Tuesday. He had matched the description by the victim of a man who got out of a BMW and stabbed him in the back at Belleville and Williamson avenues that Friday.
The suspect was taken to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility after being charged with aggravated assault endangering an injured victim and weapons possession. BPD did not identify the suspect as of press time.
MONTCLAIR – Those Montclarians who knew of former Fourth Ward Councilwoman Sandra O. Lang, Esq.’s devotion to the township returned a measure during her respective visitation at Martin’s Home for Service and funeral at Trinity Presbyterian Church Nov. 17-18.
Lang, 79, a two-term Township Council member, died here Nov. 10. Sandra Olive Lang began her lifelong Montclair residency at her May 10, 1943 birth. The Montclair High School Class of 1961 graduate went away to Hampton University for a bachelor’s degree and to Rutgers for her masters in business administration and Juris Doctorate.
Lang, on most days, commuted to Manhattan to work for IBM and as a sales representative for McGraw-Hill. Back home here, she was also a YWCA member, a YMCA campaigner and President of the NAACP-Montclair Branch. She had also been secretary of the Union Montclair Housing Corporation for 20 years until her death.
Nieces Annette and Andrea Land and Wallena Gould and nephews James (Tariq) Lang, Jr., Saladin Lang and Doug Wilson are among her survivors. parents Roxie (Myatt) Lang and James Lang and brother James Andrew Lang predeceased her.
“She was a woman of high character who believed in helping people who needed support most,” appraised Fourth Ward Councilman David Cummings at Nov. 14th Township Council meeting. “She didn’t hold back her feelings; you knew where she stood. She was the essence of decency and humanity.”
BELLEVILLE – The attorney for Township Construction Code Official Frank DeLorenzo more than announced the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office ending their investigation of his client here at the Nov. 7 Township Council meeting.
The NJAG Office, earlier in November, said that they had concluded their investigation, without taking action, of Mayor Michael Melham’s embezzlement claims against DeLorenzo.
Melham had accused DeLorenzo of writing invoice quotes for attending township planning and zoning board meetings and drawing the expenses against developers’ escrow accounts. The mayor’s claim led to State Police officers serving a subpoena against township officials at Town Hall Sept. 21.
“We showed that the allegations were false,” said Lee Vartan, Esq. during that Monday night meeting’s public hearing segment. “Frank’s invoices were reviewed and renewed. The developers were appropriately noticed and invoiced. At the end of each year, the township issued Frank a 1099 form and Frank paid taxes on the additional income.”
It is believed that a dispute had developed between property owner Melham and DeLorenzo when the latter had refused to approve a permit that would have violated township zoning ordinances. The disagreement happened before Melham ran for mayor in 2018.
It is also understood that the civil “DeLorenzo vs. Belleville” whistleblower harassment lawsuit still continues.
NUTLEY – Friends and family from both around the Avondale section here and in Newark’s Weequahic neighborhood paid last respects to John A. Morrison at Bloomfield’s O’Boyle Funeral Home and in a Celebration of Life Mass here at St. Mary’s Church Nov. 17-18.
Morrison, 88, a Newark policeman-turned Nutley-Belleville Irish-American civic association officer, died here surrounded by family Nov. 12. John Albert Morrison, Sr. was born in Newark Dec. 19, 1933 and was raised in Newark’s South Ward.
John and brother William Morrison II were members of St. Charles Borromeo Parish and School. John graduated from the St. Charles High School Class of 1951 before enlisting for a 1952-56 tour with the Navy.
(The St. Charles School, 85 Custer Ave., is now the KIPP: TEAM Academy Charter School. St. Charles Borromeo Church left 84 Custer – now Greater Paradise Baptist Church – to merge with Blessed Sacrament Parish at 19 Van Ness Ave. in Clinton Hill.)
The honorably discharged Morrison became an NPD officer through its police academy. He retired as an Essex County Superior Court Grand Jury clerk. Morrison married the former Patricia Lacey and moved here to raise John Jr., Tracey Sylvester, MaryAnne Cowper, Patrick Morrison and Carol Morrison.
Morrison was president of the Belleville Irish-American Association. He was named Deputy Marshall of the Belleville/Nutley Irish-American Parade.
Grandchildren Lacey and Lauren Morrison, Joseph and Jenna Cowper and Samantha Sylvester and great-grandson Charlie Cowper are also among his survivors. His beloved Patricia died in 2006.
