TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Two candidates who want to succeed the retiring Essex County Sheriff Armando B. Fontoura announced their intentions within four days of Fontoura’s March 19 decision to not run for a 12th straight term.
Gary Nash, of Newark, has thrown his hat into the June 4 Democratic primary election ring. The retired captain with three decades’ experience in the undercover unit and task forces has endorsements from Bloomfield Mayor Ted Gamble and retired Essex County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jeff Allen Chambers.
Current and senior Undersheriff Amir Jones, of East Orange, currently directs ECSO’s Field Operations Division, including the Patrol Division and Narcotics Bureau. The 15-year member is the son of East Orange/Essex County/State Democratic Committee Chairman LeRoy Jones, Jr., – and has Essex County Democratic Committee endorsement.
Fontoura, 81, has decided not to go for re-election this year and will retire on Dec. 31. “Essex County’s Top Cop” has been sheriff here for 34 of his 57 years in law enforcement. The Newark native started out as a Newark patrolman in 1967 and retired in 1986 as captain before joining the Sheriff’s Office.
Armando, now of Fairfield, had been undersheriff for five years when his then-Sheriff Thomas D’Alessio resigned to run for county executive in 1991. Acting Sheriff Fontoura won his first election later that year and was re-elected by landslides 10 times.
Ambrose Shoots Self in Foot
Retired Newark Public Safety Director and former Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Chief of Detectives Anthony Ambrose is reportedly recovering after accidentally shooting himself in the foot in Cedar Grove March 22. Current ECPO detectives chief Mitchell McGuire III said he was at the Ambrose Group office when Ambrose’s gun had somehow discharged. The Ambrose Group has law enforcement contracts with Irvington and Bloomfield.
IRVINGTON – U.S. Department of Justice-New Jersey District Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said, on March 14, that there are almost three billion reasons why three Irvington men are in federal trouble.
Sellinger, from his Newark office, said that Frederick Anderson, Rudolph Johnson and Frantz Pasteur had each been charged that day on one count of filing false claims against the government and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Anderson and Johnson have each been charged with three counts of money laundering and Pasteur of two laundering counts.
All three are accused of seeking over $2.9 billion from the IRS by filing 131 false tax forms claiming COVID-19 related Employee Related Tax Credits. The trio allegedly created dummy companies and filed false ERC claims with the IRS June 2021-November 2023.
The said entities, said Sellinger, “made nominal, if any, payments to the IRS, had limited tax histories and never paid any W-2 wages.” Their over $2.9 billion of false claims resulted in the U.S. Department of the Treasury cutting $1.03 million in refund checks. Those refund checks went into the trio’s bank accounts, where they used the proceeds to buy luxury cars and otherwise “fraudulently enrich themselves.”
Businesses had to qualify for the ERCs by showing that they had experienced at least a partial suspension of operations due to the federal COVID-19 restriction order. The ERC refund checks are equal to a set percentage of wages that businesses paid to their employees up to a set maximum limit.
The filing of false claims conspiracy charge carries a maximum 10 year prison sentence and $250,000 fine – as does each count of money laundering. Wire and mail fraud conspiracy carries a maximum 20 years and $250,000 fine.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer had Johnson and Pasteur released on bail. Anderson’s appearance before Hammer is to be announced.
EAST ORANGE – ECPO detectives are looking for the shooter who left a man dead here in Soverel Park March 13.
East Orange Police Department officers told their county colleagues that they were responding to gunfire reports from that park at about 4 p.m. that Wednesday.
They found a man “with multiple bullet wounds” and had medics rush him to Newark’s University Hospital. The man, unidentified as of press time, had died there at 5:15 p.m.
Witnesses told investigators that the assailant had fled the park. The suspect’s description is also pending.
The former Springdale Lake ice pond grounds, in the First Ward’s Doddtown section, opened as a city park after Matthias Soverel in 1929. It is now home to a softball diamond, two baseball fields, three basketball courts, a soccer field, a playground and a walking oval.
ORANGE – A city man, who was handed a 13-year sentence for first-degree aggravated manslaughter in State Superior Court-Elizabeth March 8, will not be coming home for at least 10 years.
Kareem Allen, 29, said Union County Prosecutor William A. Daniel that Friday, has to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence in a state prison before being considered for parole or early release. This was a condition Allen had consented to in exchange for pleading guilty Jan. 23 before Superior Court Judge Thomas K. Isenhour.
Allen had pleaded guilty to killing Malcolm V. Webb, 30, of Newark, in Elizabeth April 3, 2021. The duo had an argument in a restaurant along Dickinson Street in that city’s Midtown when Allen got into his car. That was when UCPO attorneys said Allen hit Webb with his car and drove on.
Responding Elizabeth police officers found the “severely injured” Webb and had him rushed to a local hospital – where he died later that day.
A visitation and funeral for Webb, who was born March 8, 1994, was held at Newark’s Israel Memorial AME Church April 10, 2021. His body was entombed at North Arlington’s Holy Cross Cemetery. Arrangements were made with East Orange’s Cushnie-Houston Funeral Home.
WEST ORANGE – It appears that the developer who wanted to replace the vacant China Gourmet restaurant in the Eagle Rock section with a combined Sonic and Popeye’s restaurant has withdrawn that application.
MPB Realty’s proposal for 468-470 Eagle Rock Ave., did not appear on the West Orange Zoning Board of Adjustment’s March 21 public hearing agenda. The matter had been presented by MPB, of Dallas, at the May 18 meeting.
The Chinese restaurant would have been replaced, in the proposal, with a single-story building. The new structure would have had 2,525-square feet of indoor signing space for Popeye’s and 24 seats. The Sonic, however, would have 764 sq. ft. four outdoor dining; its 1,616 sq. ft. interior would be for food preparation and storage only.
The revamped location would have included 38 property buffer trees, 30 parking spaces – nine of which canopied for Sonic, a bike rack, two trash enclosures – and a pair of drive-through windows.
Although the western driveway would end with a right-turn-only exit and a center island would prohibit attempted left-turn exits, neighbors and community activists objected to adding traffic to Eagle Rock Avenue’s blind rise.
The application was made before Mayfair Farms restaurant and catering across the street closed. It was also filed and heard before the township planning board approved provision for two concrete pads, to possibly hold two fast-food restaurants, on nearby West Orange/Target Plaza.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – South Orange-Maplewood School District Acting Superintendent Kevin F. Gilbert took the lead March 11 in apologizing for a Ramadan handout that was circulated to Columbia High School staff earlier that Monday that contained “inflammatory” language.
Teachers and aides at the two-town high school received a document supposedly about the basics of Ramadan from TeachingWhiteMuslims.com. The New Jersey-based organization, would later hold a March 22 Iftar “for Muslim Public School Educators” in Clifton.
Teaching White Muslims, on its website, states it adheres to having educators including “social justice, anti-racist and anti-Islamophobia curriculum.”
What flagged district administrators’ attention by noon that day was a document’s passage that calls the U.S. as a “co-conspirator with Israel, preventing Muslim Palestinians from partaking in Ramadan as the Israeli Zionist occupation enacts a genocide against them.” This was after the document began showing up on social media.
The document wasn’t reviewed or reviewed by any district office or personnel and, why the intention of the document was to provide a resource, serious content was overlooked,” said Gilbert in a community statement. “The resource contained language that, at any time, would be inflammatory – but, particularly now, is deeply problematic and inappropriate for our schools.
Gilbert, without naming anyone, cautioned teachers, students and staff in using resources from outside. Future outside resources will be reviewed “to ensure that they meet our standards of respect, inclusivity and belonging.”
BLOOMFIELD – The Bloomfield Fire Department, with the assistance of nine neighboring departments, contained a fire’s damage to two houses here March 18.
The first BFD units, said Fire Chief Louis Venezia, were responding to a house fire at 41 Pitt St. at about 2:30 p.m. that Monday. They arrived to find “heavy fire enveloping the first floor, extending to the second floor.” Flames were spreading to the adjacent 31 Pitt St.
The incident commander, after noticing that all of 41 Pitt’s occupants had evacuated themselves, promptly attacked the blaze. He also called a second alarm and for mutual aid.
Units from Newark, West Orange, Montclair, Belleville, Nutley and Clifton came to assist BFD at the North Center section scene. Units from Irvington, Orange and South Essex covered the township’s fire stations.
Chief Venezia told “Local Talk” March 35 that 31 Pitt, a 2.5-story wood frame house, was heavily damaged and deemed uninhabitable. 41 Pitt, a three-story house, also received serious damage but repairs are being made.
The crew of Engine 1 was meanwhile dispatched to quench a car fire on the northbound Garden State Parkway north of Exit 148 (Belleville Avenue/JFK Parkway) at 5 p.m. The GSP’s two right hand lanes and right shoulder were closed until after the fire was put out and the vehicle removed 30 minutes later. Chief Venezia said that there were no injuries from either blaze.
MONTCLAIR – Contractors for the Montclair Public Schools’ Woodman Field renovation have been working at full speed to complete the project before the first spring high school games are played on April 1.
The Board of Education and Montclair Township came to an agreement at the end of a March 8 conference headed by Superior Court Judge Stephen Petrillo. The school district may resume the work so long as it does not require Montclair planning or zoning board permission. This agreement was signed by both sides and presented to Judge Petrillo March 14.
The township-district pact ended some six weeks of work stoppage and dueling court injunctions the started when the Montclair Planning Department reviewed the BOE approved and bonded plans Nov. 6 – and realized that some of the work required township approval. Both sides had tried to settle out of court Jan. 26-March 4 until the township issued a stop work order over fencing installation Feb. 2.
Montclair’s school board agreed to keep fencing to a minimum. The district will also plant more perimeter trees and shrubbery, sought by Champlain Essex Conservancy neighbors, to replace the 100- to 15- year-old trees that were felled last fall.
Fire Chief Herrmann Retires March 31
John Herrmann is doing some housekeeping and counting the days until he retires as fire chief here on March 31. Herrmann, who announced his pending leave March 13, will be ending 43 years as one of “Montclair’s Bravest,” including as chief since 2014. Town manager Michael Lapolla, as of press time, has not named a deputy chief to become acting chief or any other succession plans.
Herrmann, on one hand, received numerous commendations, brought in a new ladder truck and helped bring MFD’s Fire Protection Classification up to Class 2. Several controversies — including a dubious promotion exam process, firefighters getting paid to take others’ shifts and a renewed shared services agreement with Glen Ridge brought a discrimination lawsuit by several African American firefighters and a June 2023 firefighters’ no confidence vote.
GLEN RIDGE – While priests of St. Francis of Assisi American National Catholic Church have been conducting communion since March 14, some parishioners may remember Margaret A. Horan.
Horan, 78, had been the parish’s Eucharistic Minister here until recently. The said officer assists the priest in offering the transforming bread and wine during Mass and offers the said materials to parishioners who are sick or otherwise homebound.
Horan, a lifelong Bloomfielder, died at home March 14. The Newark native had been a legal secretary for the Degonge, Garrity and Fitzpatrick Law firm in the township until her 1986 retirement. She and husband James had raised Nancy in the township and in the parish.
Horan’s Funeral Mass was held here at St. Francis, 195 Ridgewood Ave., March 19, followed by a private cremation. St. Francis has long worshiped in the Glen Ridge Congregational Church’s chapel.
Brothers Joseph P., Richard L. and James S. Barry and grandchildren Mario Joseph and Lauren Sinatra are also among her survivors. Sister Doris Reese predeceased her.
BELLEVILLE – Residents and motorists in the township’s Valley section have been dealing with mixed tradeoffs since the new QuickChek has opened at 109 Courtlandt St. March 6.
Residents here and from neighboring towns saw Mayor Michael Melham and several Township Council members hold a formal ribbon-cutting here March 8. The modern gas-and-go store replaces the older, smaller one at 501 Washington Ave., corner of Little Street. 501 Washington now houses AFC Urgent Care.
The new QuickChek was built on a block bordered by Courtlandt, Rutgers, Stephens and Academy streets that was the old School 1 site; there is space left over for Premier Developers to build a small housing development. The site is two blocks east of the NJ Route 7 Rutgers Street Bridge that also serves Kearny and North Arlington on the east side of the Passaic River – and the intersection with Main Street.
Melham, on his personal Facebook page March 8, said that a plan for alleviating area rush hour congestion is coming. “Later on this year, we expect the County and State to begin reworking all the traffic heading south on Main Street to allow vehicles to FINALLY make a left over the bridge.”
The proposal, said the mayor, will keep southbound Main Street traffic to make two left turns to get to Rutgers Street and the bridge. “This causes traffic to back all the way up to Washington Street.”
“Local Talk,” on one hand, has observed heavy rush hour congestion on Rutgers Street between the bridge and Main Street up to Washington – and spilling back two blocks on Washington. Residents and motorists, however, noticed two car accidents by the new QuickChek March 6-8 and the missed opportunity to build a jughandle at Main and Rutgers at land now occupied by some new development.
It is hoped that, while Melham and town elders come up with a Main and Rutgers streets traffic plan, that they take into account the impending closure and renovation of the Nutley-Lyndhurst Kingsland Avenue DeJessa Memorial Bridge some two miles up river.
NUTLEY – Township firefighters – with the help of Nutley police and two neighboring fire departments – put out a Prospect Street house blaze here March 23.
The NFD blotter said that the first township fire units arrived at the 2.5-story wood frame house at Prospect by Chase Street at 10:12 p.m. Saturday. Any occupants had self-evacuated.
The incident commander promptly called for mutual aid. A unit each from Bloomfield and Belleville came to the scene. Nutley police units meanwhile detoured local traffic from Prospect and Chase.
Although the fire was promptly extinguished, firefighters closely examined the roof around the chimney. Township and ECPO Arson unit investigators, as standard operating procedure, are probing the fire’s cause as of press time.
No first responders or civilians were reported as injured.
