TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Supreme Court of New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, in his Jan. 10 ruling on Al-Damany Kamau’s appeal for compassionate release, stated that judges can consider “extraordinary aggravating factors” in deciding whether or not grant such a release.
Rabner’s ruling means that compassionate release, on the books since February 2021, is discretionary and not automatic. Kamau furthermore, continues to serve his life sentence for the June 3, 1993 homicide of Newark Police Det. John Sczyrek, Jr.
Kamau and his public defender had appealed to Rabner and the N.J. Supreme Court to overturn State Superior Court-Newark Judge Ronald Wigler’s Feb. 12, 2022 ruling. Wigler ruled that Kamau had “committed perhaps the most heinous, brutal, bold, cold-blooded premeditated murders ever committed in Essex County.”
Kamau, when he was Eddie Lee Oliver, had shot Det. Sczyrek in an Essex County Courthouse 11th floor hallway with a smuggled-in handgun. Oliver Sczyrek, dressed in plainclothes, was waiting to testify as a key witness against cousins Charles Oliver and Darryl Hill in a weapons possession and narcotics trafficking trial.
E.L. Oliver had also shot and wounded Essex County Sheriff’s Officer Ralph Rizzolo and Newark policeman Tom King before fleeing the court complex; he was apprehended a few blocks away. Tenesha James, a court employee and an Oliver girlfriend, was also arrested for smuggling in the gun; she served a 20-year sentence.
Kamau, 53, and his public defender have said that he qualifies for compassionate release. He has become bed-ridden his body from end state multiple sclerosis and would pose no danger to anyone.
Sczyrek, 30, was a Nutley High School Class of 1980 graduate. Over 4,000 law enforcement officers escorted his body from Nutley’s Holy Family Church to his burial at Glendale Cemetery.
IRVINGTON – Members of the Irvington Fire Department are hoping that 2023 will be kinder to its alumni than 2022. Last year closed out with the passing of John “Jay” Luba III, who died on Dec. 1, and Robert E. Morley, who died on Nov. 29.
Luba, 62, came from his native Sparta to serve as an IFD firefighter and dispatcher 1982-2005. The Trenton State College criminal justice graduate went on to work as a Sparta fire official, a Sussex County Sheriff’s assistant fire marshal and for Atlantic Health until his bout against lung cancer intervened.
Wife Laura, brother Mark, sisters Laura Luba and Amy Lowery, three stepchildren and a granddaughter are among his survivors. His Funeral Mass at St. Kateri Church and burial at Sparta Cemetery were held Dec. 6. Memorial donations may be made to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, t2t.org, and/or the St. Barnabas Burn Center, RWJBH.org.
Morley, 87, was an IFD firefighter 1961-90 who was president of IAFF Local 2004 and had retired as captain. The Jersey City native was a township resident 1952-78 and a 35-year member of ILA Local 1235.
The Korean Conflict veteran on the USS Midway coached youth baseball and football in Irvington and, later, Clark. Wife Maryann, sons IFD FF Michael and IFD Capt. Nicholas, daughters Kathleen Morley and Diane Nevins, six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and sisters Joan Clarkin and Patricia Epple are among his survivors.
Morley’s Funeral Mass at Clark’s St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church and entombment at Woodbridge’s St. Gertrude Cemetery were held on Dec. 5.
Three other retired IFD members had also passed away Jan. 8-Aug. 11, 2022.
EAST ORANGE – East Orange Fire Department Capt. Joseph Kinney, depending on where his remains were buried in Rosedale Cemetery Dec. 28, is still watching over the city he has served the last 22 years.
Kinney, 51, who was raised and had lived in East Orange 1971-2005, died in Paterson’s St. Joseph Medical Center Dec. 20. His cause of death was not disclosed.
Joseph Thomas Kinney, who was born in Belleville March 9, 1971, attended the Holy Name of Jesus School, where Doddtown meets the Franklin section and Rattlesnake Hill, and the Essex Catholic Boys High School at 157 Glenwood Ave. through his 1989 graduation. He went on to graduate from Montclair State University with a BA in communication studies in 1993.
Kinney, after a couple of broker assistance jobs, joined the EOFD in November 2000. He rose through the ranks to become captain and served Tour 4 and Tour 2, Engine 5. Kinney moved to West Milford, taking wife Roseann Cruz Kinney and daughter Elizabeth with him, in 2005.
Kinney’s remains may be within Rosedale’s West Orange section – a township he was also no stranger to. He loved attending the West Orange St. Patrick’s Day Parade and joined brother Kevin as members of the Friendly Sons of the Shillelagh Club. The brothers organized the annual St. Baldrick’s Foundation “Shave for the Brave” childhood cancer research fundraiser.
Members of East and West Orange’s fire departments joined his Dec. 28 Funeral Mass at Bloomfield’s Sacred Heart Church. His organs and tissue were donated to The Sharing Network of New Jersey.
Mother Margaret Burns Kinney, brothers Charles T. III, James J. and Michael P.; and sister Susan Klipp are also among his survivors.
ORANGE – Those who have had to choose between attending the City Council or the Board of Education meeting on the second Tuesday of the month will not have to do so for the rest of the calendar year.
The newly reorganized Orange Board of Education will now hold their monthly public meetings on the second Wednesday of the month for the remainder of the 2022-23 school year and the 2023-24 year’s first half. The panel has not stated the reason for the day later shift through Dec. 31.
OBOE members stress that the rest of their meeting calendar remains unchanged – including their usual scheduled 7 p.m. start and their ongoing five school “road tour.”
City Council meetings remain normally held on the second Tuesday of the month – with its latest virtual session atypically set for Jan. 17. The sessions are to start at 7 p.m. with a conference meeting, followed by the regular meeting.
WEST ORANGE – The West Orange Municipal Building, in the wake of Damar Hamlin’s Jan. 2 near-fatal cardiac arrest on live television, may be among the first towns to have their AED units reevaluated.
Mayor Susan McCartney, on Jan. 13, directed West Orange Fire Chief Anthony Vecchio to check all 31 of the township’s Automated External Defibrillators among its public buildings. AEDs are easy-to-use devices, installed in prominent public locations to help restart stopped hearts.
McCartney asked for the reevaluation after watching Hamlin’s heart stoppage and collapse early in that Monday night’s NFL Buffalo Bills-Cincinnati Bengals game. A Bills coach’s immediate CPR and a medic’s use of an AED on Cincinnati’s Paycor Field are credited in saving the safety’s life.
Vecchio actually has a two-year start on the mayor’s directive. He and his fire inspectors have been inspecting and replacing the AEDs since 2021 – when they had received an $80,233.64 Assistance to Firefighters grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
McCartney, as a council member approved the township’s “matching” 10 percent contribution to the grant in 2021.
Hamlin has sufficiently recovered to be transferred to a Buffalo area hospital Jan. 9. Although his recovery continues, Hamlin briefly visited his teammates’ training facility in Orchard Park Jan. 14. He cheered on the Bill’s Jan. 15 playoff wild card game victory against the Miami Dolphins.
SOUTH ORANGE – The Village Board of Trustees, as early as their Feb. 12 meeting, may well amend their five-year surveillance camera contract with Verkada to not provide facial recognition software.
Village President Shenna Collum, on Jan. 3, said that she will add the “No FR Software” clause to the 2021 contract with Verkada. Questions from the public to the trustees and the village’s Community Police Collaborative in December had prompted its elders and law enforcers to clarify the matter.
“There were a lot of concerns by our residents, ” said Collum. “The last thing we want is to be using something that disproportionately impacts people of a certain race.”
FR technology allows people’s faces to be recorded and compared to other faces stored in a database in real time. A joint MIT and Stanford University study, however, found that accuracy declines with darker skinned people – up to 34 percent of African or African American women were misidentified.
The State Attorney General’s Office has not set a policy on street cameras using FR -with or without artificial intelligence – leaving the question up to the municipalities. There are no such restrictions on private property – but there are calls for change.
Lawmakers and privacy advocates picketed Madison Square Garden Jan. 15 to have MSG Entertainment turn off its FR software. Since October, the owner of MSG and Radio City Music Hall have used FR to bar up to 60 attorneys who are working for firms that have lawsuits against MSG.
The village-Verkada contract calls for the replacement of 13 existing cameras and adding up to 80 more throughout South Orange.
MAPLEWOOD – A minor may well be in hot water with at least his or her or their guardian, after injuring a 7-Eleven employee across from Columbia High School Jan. 13, by press time.
CHS administrators have identified the youth from the employee’s description and forwarded the information to both the guardian and the Maplewood Police Department.
MPD patrol cars were called to 490 Valley St. 2:40 p.m. Friday afternoon. The store manager, who called 911, said he was closing the convenience store’s doors when the teen pushed his way through. The manager suffered “minor scrapes and denied medical attention.”
The youth had left the scene before the first police car had arrived. The manager was locking the doors due to interior overcrowding.
The 7-Eleven/Shell station at the southeast corner of Valley and Prospect streets was the first of four of the convenience stores in the township.
BLOOMFIELD – A township man, who had pleaded guilty July 29 to two counts each of possessing firearms while being a convicted felon and possessing narcotics, has been handed an overall nine-year sentence by a U.S. Federal Judge in Newark Jan. 6.
Judge Brian R. Martinotti, that Friday, sentenced Cedric Lewis, 32, to six years in a federal prison. Martinotti also added three years’ supervised release after Lewis had served his time.
The case began when the Essex County Sheriff’s Office were told that Lewis, a quantity of heroin and cocaine and the driver of a 2012 Jeep Cherokee were around the Newark-Elizabeth border Sept. 20, 2020. Elizabeth police officers spotted the Jeep, with Lewis holding a long gun on the passenger side, and followed them into Frelinghuysen Avenue until they lost sight of them.
EPD officers put out an all points bulletin after the Jeep was found abandoned in Newark but with an AM-15 rifle aboard. A search warrant was executed on Lewis’ apartment here at 21 Lackawanna Sept. 28.
Members of the Bloomfield Police, the sheriff’s office, US Marshals and US Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found two handguns with extended magazines, quantities of heroin and cocaine, drug paraphernalia and $800 cash. Authorities added an “armed and dangerous’ label onto Lewis’ APB.
Lewis was arrested that December in Atlanta. No details have been disclosed on how Lewis became a convicted felon in the first place – except that he had been released from prison in July 2020.
The status and whereabouts of Lewis’ Jeep driver remains undisclosed.
GLEN RIDGE – The family of a 16-year-old boy here have been making his funeral arrangements, and the ECPO Crime Scene Investigation Bureau have been conducting a probe into his fatal Jan. 15 crash in adjacent Bloomfield, since Jan. 16.
The CSIB and local paramedics were summoned to Brookdale Park by the county sheriff’s office and Bloomfield police at 11:30 p.m. Sunday. They had converged on the site of a single-car crash on the park’s West Circuit Drive.
While authorities were conducting a crash investigation in the county park, all four of the car’s occupants were rushed to local hospitals. The quartet were minors from Glen Ridge.
The 16-year-old boy was rushed to Paterson’s St. Joseph Regional Medical Center – where he was declared dead at 12:04 a.m. Monday. He was the vehicle’s rear passenger.
Anyone with information is to call the confidential ECPO tips line.
MONTCLAIR – The Township Council may be receiving an update from its hired outside legal firm on its investigation of harassment allegations against suspended Town Manager Timothy Stafford as early as its Jan. 17 conference meeting.
That briefing from a Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper attorney will be held behind closed doors at the Municipal Building that Tuesday night. The Council had hired the Westfield firm Nov. 14, three weeks after putting Stafford on administrative leave.
The appraisal comes 11 days after a news source found the sworn statements of two other women township employees about instances of Stafford’s alleged harassment became public.
The statements, recorded by other lawyers, came from former Senior Services Director Dr. Katie York and Montclair Animal Shelter Celia Trembulak. York and Trembulak recalled incidents where Stafford had verbally abused them in public and/or before other municipal employees. The accounts go back to 2014, when Stafford was hired as acting manager. (The Council dropped “acting” from Stafford’s title in 2020.)
It is not clear as of presstime whether York and Trembulak’s sworn statements were made as part of harassment and whistleblower suits filed by Padmaja Rao and Juilet Lee or for Affirmative Action Officer Bruce Morgan’s late autumn investigation.
Former CFO Rao and former Deputy Clerk Lee filed separate suits against Stafford and the township three days apart last October. Rao’s filing prompted the council to suspend Stafford with pay and call Morgan to conduct an internal investigation.
Morgan’s month-long probe, in a document copy leaked to a reporter, found that Stafford had created “a hostile work environment” within the Municipal Building.
BELLEVILLE – The Municipal Clerk’s office is undergoing a changing of the guard here at Town Hall now through Feb. 1.
Kelly Cavanaugh is to formally turn her office keys to her successor, Alberto Cabrera, between Jan. 30’s end of business and Feb. 1.
Cavanaugh, whose 31-year employment includes her last 20 as Township Clerk, is retiring. Mayor Michael Melham, Town Manager Anthony Iacono and the council presented Cavanaugh a proclamation honoring her service at the latter’s Jan. 10 meeting.
Cabrera, 60, however, may already be seen behind the clerk’s office counter before press time.
The council approved Cabrera’s appointment later that same Tuesday night meeting. The Weehawken resident had been Guttenberg Town Clerk since May 2008.
NUTLEY – The township’s public affairs department and Vitalant Blood Services of New Jersey have named their annual Jan. 30 Community Mobile Blood Drive in memory of resident and cupcake entrepreneur Keith R. Jaret.
Jaret, 62, was the owner/operator of Petit Cafe and Jaret’s Stuffed Cupcakes here, Hoboken and Endicott, N.Y., plus a Totowa bakery. He had died at home here Feb. 8, 2018 while awaiting a liver transplant.
Wife Maureen said that the “Rock and Roll Chef” had a mass found on his liver over Christmas 2017. He had contracted Hepatitis C in 1991, which was traced to a blood transfusion given him after an arm injury in 1980.
The Nutley Health Department had held a blood drive for him Jan. 29, 2018. A son, two daughters, two grandchildren, three brothers and two sisters were also among his survivors.
Jan. 30’s blood drive is open to donors between 16 and 79, in good health and have made appointments. Donors must not be exposed to the COVID-19 virus or be sick in any other way.
The mobile unit will be at the Nutley Public Affairs Building, 149 Chestnut St., 2:30-7:30 p.m.
