First Black Woman to be Elected to City’s Council and serve as Council President
TOWN WATCH by Walter Elliott
Mildred Crump Resigns
NEWARK – The Municipal Council’s makeup immediately changed during their Aug. 24 special meeting in the wake of Council President and At-Large Councilwoman Mildred Crump’s sudden resignation.
Crump, 82, citing health reasons, had City Clerk Kenneth Louis announce her departure at the Tuesday afternoon meeting’s start. She leaves with 10.5 months left to her fifth term. She has served on the council for 15 years over a 27-year span.
The Crump name on the council continues through her son. Chief of Staff Cecil Lawrence “Larry” Crump, Esq. was promoted late Tuesday to at least complete his mother’s term.
Luis Quintana, “the Dean of the Municipal Council,” was immediately reappointed as council president. Central Ward Councilwoman LaMonica McIver was promoted to Council Vice President. Both L. Crump and Quintana were voted by council members and were sworn into their new positions that Tuesday meeting.
The Detroit native has been a frequent trailblazer within and outside of City Hall, starting with her becoming the first African American Braille teacher in Michigan and New Jersey. Her advocacy for the disabled, women, children, senior citizens, working families and those in need led her to run for, and get elected, to an at-large council seat in 1994.
Newark’s first African American woman council member lost her seat when she finished third in the 1998 mayoral race to incumbent Sharpe James and State Sen. Ronald L. Rice. The Rutgers University masters in public administration graduate was returned as part of the swept-in Mayor Cory Booker team in 2006.
A majority of participating voters returned Crump in 2010, and as part of Ras Baraka’s Moving Newark Forward Team in 2014 and 18. She became the first female Council President in 2010.
IRVINGTON – The Aug. 19 police pursuit from Newark of four robbery suspects and their apprehension in East Orange have at least three Irvington ties.
Newark Public Safety Director Brian O’Hara said, on Aug. 20, that his officers first reported to a pair of robberies in The Ironbound 10:35-50 a.m. that Thursday. Both victims, one at Union Street by Hamilton and the other at Monroe and Market streets, said two suspects got out of a car and proceeded with purse-snatching. One of the suspects either pushed an object into her abdomen in the first, and stabbed and punched the other, while the second made the grab.
Both victims said the suspects came and left in a white 2018 Mercedes-Benz – the same one that was reported as stolen earlier in Irvington.
An Irvington police patrol spotted the wanted Mercedes in the township and alerted their Newark colleagues. They and the Essex County Sheriff’s Office – pursued the Mercedes until the suspects abandoned it on the Garden State Parkway’s right shoulder and ran through Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. The foursome was arrested by East Orange police along the 600 block of Central Avenue.
A 14-year-old girl was taken into juvenile custody along with a 14-year-old Newark girl and two 16-year-old Newark boys. The foursome were charged with two counts each of robbery, conspiracy, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose plus a count of aggravated assault.
EAST ORANGE – South Maple Avenue’s southernmost block has been renamed after one of its residents, the late Fourth Ward Councilwoman Sharon Fields, here Aug. 16.
A ceremony that Monday unveiled a “Hon. Sharon Fields Way” street sign by Fields’ family and city officials at the southeast corner of Maple and Central Avenue. It will be visible for those headed to the nearby Dionne Warwick Institute of Economics and Entrepreneurship and across from the Dunkin’ Donuts.
The sign honors Fields who was a Fourth Ward Councilwoman 2005-15, Her public service includes being an administrative assistant at the Essex County Juvenile Detention Center and as an aide to then-State Assemblywoman Sheila Y. Oliver plus the Newark Board of Education and the Seton Hall Law School Legal Education Opportunity Program.
The East Orange Democratic Committee district ward leader was also honored for her volunteerism, including the Offender Aid and Restoration Project for Children and the East Orange Falcons Football Team.
Fields, 73, died in Newark’s University Hospital June 27.
The South Maple and Central T-intersection acquired the then-EOSD Lincoln Elementary school in 1909 and one of the first Dunkin’ Donuts shops in the early 1950s. Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, across Central Avenue, opened its front gate in 1859.
ORANGE – Details on what led to an Orange police officer getting shot some two blocks northeast of the department’s headquarters may be well released after press time.
“Local Talk” has learned that the officer in question was responding to a call from Elm and Hillyer streets when he was shot in one of his legs just before 9 p.m. the T-intersection itself is just across the border in East Orange.
One report has OPD units responding to “an officer assist” with a foot pursuit of a suspect on the Orange East Ward-East Orange Brick Church border at 8:45 p.m.
The shot officer, said a city spokesman, was rushed by a colleague to Newark’s University Hospital. The injury was listed as non-life-threatening and fully recoverable.
The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office took the on-scene investigation’s lead by 9:30 p.m.
WABC-7 Eyewitness News reported that one suspect was taken into custody, and another remains at large. Two handguns and a shell casing, as shown on WNBC News 4 New York footage, were recovered.
WEST ORANGE – A pair of malnourished pit bulls, separately found by township residents or officials in Eagle Rock Reservation Aug. 15-16, are getting prepared for adoption while you read this.
A West Orange Department of Recreation employee found the male in the reservation that Sunday morning and contacted the Montclair Animal Shelter. The male – named “Smooch,” or “Bo” – had his ribs showing and nails so long that it hurt him when he walked.
The son of West Orange Board of Education member Jennifer Tunnicliffe found the female pit bull in another part of the reservation that Monday. “Baby,” who also showed signs of starvation was also taken to the Montclair shelter.
Shelter and animal control officers suspect that “Smooch/Bo” and “Baby” were probably owned by people who practice backyard breeding – where dogs are mated for profit. These two dogs were likely abandoned after their mating days were over.
The Montclair shelter may put both canines up for adoption since the seven-day waiting period for their owners to show up has passed. A GoFundMe.com has been established with the Essex County Sheriff’s Office as a reward for finding the backyard breeder(s).
Date Correction
The $13 million bond issue the Township Council had recessed, or tabled Aug. 17 will have their first opportunity to lift from the table at their Sept. 14 meeting – not Dec. 14 as first reported.
SOUTH ORANGE – A village resident may have found out the hard way Aug. 17 that a Presidential pardon can only go so far.
Ken Kurson found himself being arrested and answering to state eavesdropping and computer trespassing charges in a State of New York Manhattan courtroom that Tuesday. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. said he had brought the charges on Kurson, who was a “New York Observer” Editor-in-Chief.
Kurson was among the 73 individuals who were pardoned by President Donald J. Trump on Jan. 20 – his last full day in office. Trump granted Kurson clemency from federal-level charges of cyberstalking and harassment.
Kurson was being considered for a National Endowment for the Humanities board of directors seat in 2018 before his alleged actions against his ex-wife and her fiancé became known. He was accused of adding keystroke-recording spyware onto his ex’s computer from September 2015 to March 2016.
Federal attorneys accused Kurson of making his ex-wife’s private content public and writing false Yelp reviews of the fiancé’s doctoral practice. The charges caused him to withdraw from pursuing the MEH seat.
“We will not accept Presidential pardons,” said Vance of his state charges, “as get-out-of-jail-free cards for the well-connected.”
Kurson, according to CNN, was released on his own recognizance after entering no plea.
MAPLEWOOD – The attorney for the man accused of fatally shooting Moussa Fofana and wounding his Columbia High School classmate here June 6 is pursuing a claim of self-defense.
That is what public defender Sterling Kinsdale was making before Superior Court Judge Michael Ravin at Yohan Hernandez’s detention hearing in Newark Aug. 11. Kinsdale was speaking for Hernandez, 20, of Newark, who was watching his hearing via Zoom from Newark’s Essex County Detention Facility.
Kinsdale said Hernandez told him that he fired a shot at someone who took a swing at him and his younger brother while both parties were on Underhill Field June 6. He said that he “did not know who the other individuals or what their motives were.”
Ravin, Kinsdale and ECPO attorneys agreed to retain Hernandez because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a detainer on him. That detainer may lead to Hernandez’s deportation, pending the prospective trial’s outcome.
The Fofana murder case remains active with possible additional arrests.
BLOOMFIELD – An “on loan” township police officer was recently commended by Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore Stephens II although he had to wait for the case’s conclusion to receive it.
Stephens, in his Aug. 9 press release on the outcome of “State of N.J. vs. Harold Colbert, thanked BPD Det. Salvatore Cordi and Newark Police Division Sgt. Taray Tucker for their part in the investigation that led to Colbert’s arrest and conviction.
“Det. Cordi and Sgt. Tucker were serving on the ECPO’s Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force at the time of the shooting,” said Stephens. “They helped to bring the case to a successful conclusion.”
Cordi and Tucker were among those who were assigned to investigate the Nov. 1, 2018 murder of Daquan Cuttino, 25, of Newark The officers were part of a rotating detail of county task force members supplied by Bloomfield, Newark and other municipal police departments.
Stephens did not elaborate on what or how Cordi and Tucker contributed to Colbert’s apprehension. A State Superior Court-Newark, on Aug. 9, had convicted Colbert, 45, of Irvington, guilty of Cuttino’s murder plus unlawful possession of a weapon and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose by a convicted felon. His sentencing is set for Oct. 1.
Cordi was sworn onto BPD Aug. 12, 2013.
MONTCLAIR – Mourners are respectively taking to the Montclair High School Auditorium and/or The JazzHouse Kids donation box to honor Albert Pelham and Thurston Briscoe.
Pelham, 71, best known as NAACP Montclair Branch President and Montclair African-American Heritage Foundation, died Aug. 19. The Montclair native, who was born in Mountainside Hospital, March 30, 1950, started the Montclair Neighborhood Development Corporation’s Project Oasis and 20-year human resources director for the Statewide Parents Advocacy Network.
The above was Pelham’s second career, having been downsized from Prudential Insurance in 1997 after 18 years’ work. The MHS Class of 1968 graduate enlisted in the U.S. Army 1969-71 and earned an accounting degree from Bloomfield College in 1979.
The six-year Christians Changing Culture member is survived by wife Audry Jones Pelham, son Dwayne Jones, daughter Rhonda Pelham, grandchildren Charles IV and Cameron and sisters Dolores Clark, Dorine Gibbs, Joan Pelham and Waulina Pelham among others. Burial at Glendale Cemetery is to follow Friday’s 10 a.m. viewing and 11 a.m. funeral. Donations may be made to MAAHF Albert Pelham Scholarship Fund, PO Box 462, 07042.
Thurston Briscoe’s mourners are to meanwhile make memorial donations to Jazzhousekids,org, 347 Bloomfield Ave, 07042 since an in-person service has not been currently planned. Briscoe, 74, a longtime WBGO-Jazz 88.3 FM executive and former NPR radio producer, had battled against throat cancer and Alzheimer’s disease until Aug. 16 at the Morristown Medical Center.
Briscoe, who was born July 4, 1947 in Great Bend, Kan., came here to take on WBGO’s program direction in 1990. He applied his 15 years’ radio production and jazz enthusiasm to help make the 24-hour station one of the most listened-to jazz stations in the U.S.
Briscoe was a Wichita State University theater and speech therapy major who fell in love with music on radio while a classical and jazz host on the campus’ KMUW. the late 1960’s Army enlistee became a reporter/producer/jazz show host on Eugene, Ore.’s KLCC, and National Public Radio affiliate, in 1976. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1980 to become the inaugural arts unit member of “Morning Edition” and “Jazz Alive!”
Partner and State Sen. Nia Gill, son Bradley, grandson John and brother Phillip are among his survivors.
BELLEVILLE – The township may well be getting those two side-by-side soccer fields, that Mayor Michael Melham told “Local Talk” about July 6, on or around Sept. 15.
The Township Council unanimously approved a resolution at their Aug. 17 meeting for Melham and Township Clerk Kelly Cavanaugh sign a memorandum of understanding with the Players Development Academy Urban Initiative and RWJBarnabas Health Clara Maas Medical Center.
The MOU will allow PDA and Clara Mass to build, run and sponsor two new 70-by-40-foot fenced rectangular fields. The fields, to be sited on the grounds of a Belleville public elementary school property, are the same size as the one opened July 6 at Newark’s Bo Porter Recreational Complex at 378 Lyons Ave.
PDA, RWJBH Newark Beth Israel Hospital had backed and built their field for the same purpose as Belleville’s twin fields: to promote youth soccer in areas where interest is high but access to free fields is scarce.
NUTLEY – The latest turn in the township’s attempt to redevelop the former Ciccolini Brothers property came within the Township Commission’s Request for Proposals document.
Those who have ideas for the long-vacant Ciccolini appliance showroom will more than have 537 Franklin Ave. to work with. The “Area in Need of Redevelopment” includes 547 Franklin to the showroom’s immediate north.
547 Franklin is best known as the “Pancake Palace” building, a 106-year-old structure with a street-level restaurant and four apartments above.
Why 547 Franklin, whose pancake house is active, but its apartments are “off-market,” is being considered with the damaged 1950s-era showroom is unclear. There is no record of that building suffered any damage when 537’s roof partially collapsed after a rainstorm 4:27 p.m. June 8.
Nutley’s elders are looking to develop “a mixed-use residential development with active commercial and retail uses fronting those portions of Franklin Avenue.”
The township bought the Ciccolini property for $3.45 million in 2019. It is slated for demolition.
