Town Watch

Newark, Irvington, East Orange, West Orange, Orange, Sotuh Orange/Maplewood by Walter Elliott

NEWARK – Prospective N.J. Motor Vehicle Commission customers are to check the agency’s website now through Oct. 16 while its Regional/Licensing Center here at 228 Frelinghuysen Ave. remain closed due to a COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus positive case among its employees.

MVC Spokesman William Connolly said that the regional center had closed since Oct. 2 while NJ Department of Health contact tracers interviewed the employee’s colleagues. The employee, who tested positive Oct. 1, was last at work here that day. It is believed that he had contracted the virus away from the center.

Closing the Newark Regional Center came just when the anticipated heavy volume of customers were arriving at the start of this month. The MVC had also closed an agency in North Bergen Oct. 5 when an employee tested positive there – plus offices in Paterson and Eatontown since Oct. 9 and Springfield and Delanco since Oct. 13. (The Wayne Regional Center has also been closed while under construction.)

The statewide MVC system has been trying to cut into a four month backlog of orders since July 7, when it reopened from its COVID-induced hibernation.

A reporter’s check of the MVC website Oct. 5 found 11 of its other agencies had reached capacity by 11:35 a.m. New customers were being turned away.

Customers are to consult nj.gov/mvc to see whether their transaction can be done on-line instead of in-person. One may also want to check on which other agency offices can perform what transactions and whether an agency has reached capacity.

IRVINGTON – The township’s police department reopened the full length of Bilal D. Beasley Civic Square, once the “Black Lives Matter” street mural was completed, early Oct. 8.

The elaborate mural – after three weeks’ work by municipal employees, public officials and volunteers – was more than painting the now familiar Black Lives Matter yellow block letters in front of the Irvington Municipal Building.

“BLM” was flanked by 32 painted names, from Sandra Bland to Christian Whitfield, from just south of the square’s Clinton Avenue T-intersection to the front of the Irvington Public Safety Building. “COVID-19” and an outline of hands folded in prayer completed the mural’s southward progress to Springfield and Lincoln avenues.

The township had prepared for the mural by closing most traffic for street milling, repaving and restriping. That foundational work included adding two asphalt speed humps and color-coded parking stall lines.

Traffic was limited to postal vehicles entering and leaving the USPS Irvington Branch office, township vehicles and vendors who set up tents for the mural’s official Oct. 4 dedication. Direct access to the public pay meter and Police Parking Lot No. 1 was allowed Oct. 6-7.

Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss, before a constellation of area municipal and Essex County officials plus dignitaries including National Action Network founder Rev. Al Sharpton and Cong. Donald M. Payne, Jr. (D-Newark), unveiled a “Black Lives Matter Tribute” sign by the Municipal Building steps Noon that Sunday.

The sign lists 100 names – from Matthew Ajibada to Alteria Woods – who have died while being approached by law enforcement or who have otherwise been in police custody.

EAST ORANGE – The husband-and-wife owners of a city-based school bus company have been accused by the Office of the Attorney General here Oct. 8 for covering up unsafe bus conditions and using unqualified and unchecked drivers for at least the last two years.

Ahmed Mahgoub, 62, and Faiza Ibrahim, 47, said AG Gurbir S. Grewal that Thursday morning, have each been charged with second-degree false representation for a government contract, misconduct by a corporate official, theft by deception and conspiracy. The East Hanover couple are also charged with a third-degree count of tampering with public records or information.

The co-owners of F&A Transportation are accused of hiring drivers who did not have CDLs or other qualifying certifications, having criminal records and/or are using narcotics. They are also accused of falsifying inspection forms to show that their vehicles had passed MVC inspection.

The AG’s charges came after its detectives found only nine of 51 drivers and vehicle files being complete. F&A is based out of 134 Evergreen Plaza with its Unity Transportation limousine service out of 626 Central Ave.

F&A, which has been in the student and patient carrying business since 2010, has contracts with boards of education and other clients in Essex, Passaic, Morris and Union counties worth an overall $3.5 million. The company, however, had been receiving complaints since 2017.

The Newark Public Schools took over F&A’s transportation of special needs students after a bus aide allegedly passed out while she was driving 12 special needs children and a second aide and crashed at 14th Avenue and Jones Street Feb. 22, 2019.

Linda Gray, 57, was accused of self-injecting heroin before noticing that her driver had not shown up. Newark police officers, who said they used Narcan to revive Gray, said they found drug paraphernalia on board. Gray’s attorney said she had a diabetic shock reaction.

ORANGE – The Scriptural passage, “one knows not the hour or the day” may have sadly applied to Rev. John Wesley Rice, Jr. Sept. 15.

Rice, 61, Senior Pastor of Love Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church here in the Orange Valley, suddenly died while visiting his mother, Henrietta, in Maplewood.

Rice, who was born in Newark June 10, 1959, had been senior pastor at 580 Christopher St. since at least 2008. He had started the Horizons Community Development rehabilitation clinic here and welcomed Iglesia de Dios Oasis de Amor for their worship services.

The Essex Catholic Boys High School-East Orange Class of 1977 graduate had also graduated from then-William Paterson College in 1981 with a business degree. He later attained his pastor’s degree from the Beebe, Ark.-based Lighthouse Christian Academy. Rice had also studied in between at Drew University.

It is believed that his widow, Elder Karon E. Rice, will continue leading the church and its clinic. Son and William Paterson graduate Wesley III, brother David and sister Maria Rice Bellamy are also among his survivors. Father and Elder John Wesley Rice, Sr. died in 2010.

Rice’s viewing and funeral were held Sept. 22 at West Orange’s Life Christian Church.

WEST ORANGE – A United States Postal Service letter carrier from Kearny, accused of dumping Vote By Mail Ballots and other mail by a North Arlington dumpster Oct. 2. may have either posted bail or remains in federal detention when you read this.

Nicholas Beauchene, 26, said U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito that Friday afternoon, was arrested and charged that morning with one count of obstructing mail and a count of delay, secretion or detention of mail.

Beauchene, who has been a USPS employee since July, is accused of dumping about 1,875 pieces of mail behind a strip mall at 19 Schuyler Ave. Oct. 2. Two passers-by alerted North Arlington police, who, in turn, called in USPS Police and postal inspectors that day.

Beauchene, who had been working out of the Orange Post Office, is accused of dumping the said mail sometime between Sept. 28 and Oct. 2. The mail was to have been delivered to recipients in Orange and West Orange Sept. 28 and Oct. 1-2. (West Orange’s mail is served out of Orange.)

The mail dropped and discovered included 99 VBMBs and 276 pieces of campaign literature for candidates running for places for West Orange’s Township Council and Board of Education.

Obstruction of mail carries a maximum six month jail time and $5,000 fine. Delay of mail carries a five month maximum sentence and a $250,000 fine.

SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – South Orange-Maplewood School District Superintendent Dr. Ronald G. Taylor unveiled a pilot “de-tracking” program within Columbia High School while addressing equity issues before the South Orange Board of Trustees at their Sept. 30 meeting.

By de-tracking, explained Taylor, CHS students will be allowed to move between levels within the same classroom after the first marking period. Teachers will have a rubric to grade and differentiate students within that same class.

Another district goal, said the two-down district superintendent, is to change the psychology of some students’ reasoning for taking fewer Advanced Placement classes than what they are qualified for.

“One of the reasons some of these students aren’t enrolled in some of these classes is because none of their friends are enrolled in these classes,” said Taylor at the trustees meeting in SOPAC. “Intentional integration initiatives (aren’t) a feel-good story; it’s a way for us to impact deep outcomes as well, in a generational way.”

By “generational,” Taylor added that elementary schools must better reflect their neighborhoods’ demographics. It would be a way to turn around a two-year decline within SOMSD of African American students not taking AP chemistry and physics classes.

“We’re far from where we want to be but we’re keeping our eyes on the prize,” said Taylor. “We always remind ourselves that there are no magic bullets, no magic beans.”

Taylor made his presentation on equity at the request of Village Trustee Donna Coallier.

MONTCLAIR – The owner of Cuban Pete’s Restaurant- six days after receiving his third COVID-19-related executive order violation in three months Oct. 3 – came within 30 minutes of having his 16-year eatery closed by the New Jersey Department of Health and Human Services Oct. 9.

Restaino, of Montville, said that state and Montclair Health Department officers, shutdown order in hand, came around 10 a.m. that Friday. He said there only four tables were occupied and no diners were inside at that time.

“For the first time in my life I felt like an alien – like I wasn’t an American,” recalled Restaino Oct. 10. “I told them that I was complying (to the 25 percent indoor dining limit and social distancing). They left, saying they’ll rescind the order.”

Restaino added that he would comply with Gov. Phil Murphy’s executive orders on socially distant interior dining. He was hit by Montclair health and police officers Oct. 3 for having more than the 25 percent limit – which was preceded by having diners indoors Aug. 7 and 25.

Although Murphy has since issued Executive Order 185, allowing up to interior dining to 25 percent, Restaino has appeared in Montclair Municipal Court to answer the August charges in September hearings.

Restaino, as late as Oct. 6, had said he was prepared to continue defying Murphy’s orders and go to jail to keep Cuban Pete’s open and his full 48-member staff employed.

“I’ll do whatever I can to keep the restaurant open,” now said Restaino Oct. 10. “I may not like the orders but that’s what I have to do. What I’ve learned is that no one is above the law.”

BLOOMFIELD – Township Public Safety Director Samuel DeMaio, during his virtual Community Meeting on Policing here Oct. 13, is calling in an independent third party to settle a Bloomfield Avenue patrolling dispute with the Bloomfield Information Group.

DeMaio, after going over the latest Bloomfield Police Department crime statistics Tuesday night, announced that he has invited the Rutgers-Newark Center on Policing to review the squad’s intake and interpretation of policing data. The COP, since 2001, has collaborated with the Safe Surrender fugitive program and currently with the U.S. Department of Justice-Newark Police Department Consent Decree.

“Bloomfield’s Top Cop,” made the announcement at the first community meeting held since the Bloomfield Information Group published a Sept. 30 report on minority drivers being stopped by township police.

BIG, using the department’s own 2016-20 traffic stop statistics along Bloomfield Avenue, said that “Black drivers, making up less than one-fifth of the township’s population, made up more than one-third of the traffic stops.”

The group said that 13 of the 127 BPD officers who conducted traffic stops were 2.3 to 2.5 times on average more likely to stop African American or Latino motorists than Caucasian drivers in those four years. Two of “Bloomfield’s finest” were 2.9 times more likely and one topped the list at 3.4 times.

BIG particularly cited the police stops along Bloomfield Avenue, which make up 88 percent of township-wide stops, are “where more of the township’s Black and Latino residents reside. The area also borders the predominantly Black communities of East Orange and Newark.”

While BIG’s findings align themselves with a similar 2016 Seton Law School study, DeMaio, who was hired as director in 2014, has maintained: “It’s crime-driven profiling, not racially-driven profiling. The makeup of the community the officers are patrolling in is certainly going to have an impact on who it is that they’re having interactions with.”

GLEN RIDGE – Around 40 registered voters here walked a mile from the borough’s South End en masse to drop off their Vote By Mail Ballots before the Municipal Building here Oct. 5.

The estimated group, some of whom were carrying babies with them, gathered about a mile south of Bloomfield Avenue that Monday afternoon and began to walk north along Ridgewood Avenue. When they turned west onto Bloomfield venue, the mask-wearing walkers began to spread out for social distancing before depositing their ballots one at a time into the Essex County-supplied box at 825 Bloomfield Ave.

Resident-voter Brian Sargent told a reporter that he began organizing the meet-up and drop off Sunday morning on social media. Sargent said he wanted to hold a walk to have “some kind of good feeling out of voting.”

There was no political discussion, on one hand, throughout the walk. The walk, on the other coincided with President Donald J. Trump’s leaving Walter Reed Hospital, where he was treated for COVID-19, to The White House.

BELLEVILLE – A township man who was originally arrested Aug. 5 on fentanyl manufacturing and distribution charges has recently had money laundering charges.

The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office said they had re-arrested Raymond G. Ulloa, 31, Aug. 10 and arraigned him in Hackensack’s Central Judicial Processing Center. Ulloa had been released Aug. 7 on his own recognizance.

The use of Ulloa’s car by Tatiana DeLaCruz, 21, of North Bergen, near the alleged East Rutherford fentanyl mill was what led BCPO and borough police detectives to serve a search warrant on the said vehicle. That was where law enforcers said they found $75,000 cash. (DeLaCruz’s name is also listed as Ulloa’s co-resident in real estate documents.)

Ulloa, Donald Wallace, 25, of Newark plus two other men from Mahwah and Elizabeth were originally arrested Aug. for making $1 million worth of fentanyl, disguised as oxycontin and Percocet pills, from East Rutherford and Mahwah.

NUTLEY – The Nutley High School Maroon Raiders football team, through no fault of their own, will have to wait until hosting the Orange Tornadoes as their home opener here at Oval Park Oct. 17.

The Nutley Board of Education received word from their West Essex Regional High School colleagues Oct. 8 that they had to, for now, cancel their match that was set for Oct. 10.

Three students had tested positive for COVID-19 earlier that week, prompting the four-town high school to go all-remote learning Oct. 12-18. All of its extra-curricular activities, including preparing for the Nutley game, was called off through Oct. 18. (Another eight high schoolers have since tested positive as of Oct. 13.)

While the contact is believed to have been made off school property, a WERHS spokesman said that several “students, parents and staff had quarantined themselves as a precaution.”

Contact tracing may be a challenge, given that WERHS’s student body comes from Roseland, North Caldwell, Fairfield and Essex Fells.

The Raiders-Knights game would have been a clash of the 1-0 undefeated teams. NHS got its win over the West Side High School Roughriders, 31-18, on Newark’s Untermann Field Oct. 3.

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