The Republican Party is betting that America is more homophobic, racist and sexist so their path to attaining and retaining power is to play to our nation’s basest instincts.
While it may be better for our nation in the long run to cure us of those ills, to move our nation to a better future, it’s not in the Republican Party’s best interests. How else to explain all the bad people that they have pushed to the forefront of their leadership?
In the coming presidential election, all of the Republican Party candidates will be trying to top each other on who could be more backward than the other, who could hate more than other, who would turn the clock back faster.
Remember the night of Nov. 4, 2008, the night Barack Obama became President of the United States, how hopeful we all were about our nation’s future?
Republicans dimmed the light of our nation’s future and, now, 14 years later, we are staring into an abyss.
I am fearful for our future as a nation.
The currents of history—especially when we Americans struggle in the swirl of our shared BLACK HISTORY—is never constant, its ebbs and flows often clashing with the sensibilities of the age. As we appraise anew our BLACK HISTORY, our society must come together to teach today’s children what exactly we mean when we talk about JUSTICE and EQUALITY.
The persistence, for instance, of stark racial disparities in maternal and infant health that have persisted in the U.S. for decades despite vast advancements in medical care, unequal access to medical education and health care services stacked upon unequal economic opportunities for people of color that permeated a global pandemic, with resulting disproportionate deaths, pose enormous challenges that we need to meet head-on for us to thrive as a people. But how do we move forward as a people when we are mired in invectives over our shared HISTORY?
By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, February 1, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | Two Star B | NEWS | Page A03
A robbery suspect who had leveled a gun at a police officer dropped his weapon after a second officer, who came up behind the suspect, ordered him to freeze, police said.
The suspect, Thomas O’Kean, had just walked out of a Roy Rogers restaurant on Route 46. He allegedly had a bag of money in his left hand and a gun in his right when he was confronted by Officer Donald Anzalone, said Police Chief Donald Fleming.
Anzalone and Officer Craig Hartless had responded to a silent alarm at the restaurant about 11:25 p.m. Thursday, then waited for the suspect to come outside, because they did not want him to take the five restaurant employees hostage, Anzalone said.
O’Kean allegedly waited for the last customer to leave before accosting the manager, who tripped a silent alarm. After taking money from a safe, a cash-drop box, and a register, the suspect emerged from a side door into the parking lot, where Anzalone, who was behind cover, ordered him to freeze and drop his gun.
Anzalone said O’Kean instead began to slowly raise his weapon, which turned out to be a pellet gun, before Hartless also called on him to freeze.
“He had the gun leveled at me,” Anzalone said. “I don’t know why I didn’t shoot him. I think we both handled it pretty well. The outcome is what we like to see.”
O’Kean, who gave a Lodi address that police could not confirm, was charged with the armed robbery of about $1,800 from the restaurant. He was being held without bail in the Bergen County Jail.
ID: 17367597 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, January 30, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | Page: B01
Conditions that led Bergen County Jail inmates to file a class-action suit against the county and state remain largely unchanged since a sanitary expert last inspected the jail more than a year ago, the expert testified Wednesday in Newark.
Ward Duel, who was hired by the state Department of the Public Advocate after it had filed the suit on behalf of the inmates, said that upon reinspection Wednesday he found some improvements in health and food services. Duel said other jail facilities and programs had deteriorated, however.
The suit, filed in 1988, charges that overcrowding in the jail and its annex exacerbates violations of inmates constitutional rights. Of 984 inmates currently in the jail which has a rated capacity of 423 inmates 379 are state-sentenced prisoners.
Duel, an Illinois consultant who has seen prison conditions in 33 states, inspected the jail and testified extensively in 1990 on what he saw there.
Wednesday morning he reinspected the jail to look for improvements; during a resumed hearing on the suit, he said that he did not find many.
Inmates still contend with filthy walls, mouse droppings, sewage dripping from overhead pipes in the kitchen, unsafe electrical wires, leaky fixtures, and toilets that back up, he testified.
For instance, damage done to the annex during a June 1990 riot has not been repaired, Duel said. In that riot, inmates ripped out urinals and sinks and smashed toilets and windows. Some dormitory and cell areas in the annex have worsened, he added. In one area, he said, he was unable to turn on 18 of 36 lights.
“I think one of the conditions that contributed to the lack of good housekeeping is that the building is so dark,” he said. “You need good lighting in order to have good housecleaning.
“My overall evaluation of the annex has not changed. I was disappointed to see the new pods deteriorating.”
One of the areas Duel said had improved, food services, was the focus of a Jan. 11 protest in which an inmate was bitten by a guard’s dog when corrections officers tried to restore order. Inmates involved in that protest are scheduled to testify in the hearing next week.
Neither Deputy Bergen County Counsel Murshell Johnson nor Deputy Attorney General Catherine M. Brown would comment on Duel’s testimony Wednesday. The hearings are scheduled to continue today and are expected to last at least through February.
Jerrold B. Binney, chief of staff to Bergen County Executive William “Pat” Schuber, said Tuesday that the county has set up a jail advisory committee that monitors the sanitary and safety conditions cited and is developing a master plan to develop long-term solutions to problems in the jail.
Talks to settle the suit out of court broke down late last year. The hearings are being conducted by James R. Zazzali, a special master appointed by U.S. District Judge Harold A. Ackerman in September 1989 to make recommendations based on the hearings.
ID: 17367448 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 29, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | Page B01
In an ironic twist to a class-action suit seeking to reduce overcrowding at the Bergen County Jail, a high-ranking county official says the county could wind up a loser if it wins the case.
Jerrold B. Binney, chief of staff to county Executive William “Pat” Schuber, said Tuesday that the state might walk away from the jail’s problems, if the recommendation of special master James R. Zazzali goes against the Department of the Public Advocate. It filed the federal suit in behalf of jail inmates in 1988.
The state and county are defendants in the case. Hearings on the suit were scheduled to resume today, after negotiations on an out-of-court settlement reached an impasse late last year.
Of 984 inmates in the jail which has a rated capacity of 423 379 are state prisoners, said a spokeswoman for Bergen County Sheriff Jack Terhune.
Binney, who has been designated by Schuber to speak for the county on the issue, said that the county has maintained all along that the state is to blame for the overcrowding and a host of other problems at the jail.
If the state and county win, he added, the state would have no incentive to decrease the number of state prisoners in the jail, or to increase its per-diem subsidy for state prisoners.
Binney says the county may sue the state to get it to address the county’s concerns.
“We’ve already done that in one instance, on the per-diem issue,” he said. “We’ve joined the Gloucester County suit on the per-diem cost because, right now, it is draining our treasury.
“We get $45 a day from the state,” he went on. “That’s what we’ve been getting for about 12 years, and everybody knows the costs have been going up. We feel that at a minimum at a minimum it’s costing us $65 a day to house those state prisoners, and that’s not even including some capital costs.”
The Bergen County freeholders are to consider the per-diem issue at their next meeting, deciding how much to ask of the court in the Gloucester case.
Deputy Attorney General Patricia Leuzzi, representing the state Corrections Department in the suit, said she had not been notified that Bergen County joined the Gloucester suit.
Leuzzi also said she was reluctant to discuss the issues discussed during settlement talks, but that the state does not dispute that the per-diem rate needs to increase. The state Legislature is responsible for such an increase, she said.
“The budget is limited,” she said. “The governor and the Legislature are making difficult decisions on what can be funded. Things are being cut back. There are complaints from every constituent.”
Deputy Public Advocate Audrey Bomse, who is handling the class-action suit, said the state deliberately overloads the county jails in order to avoid having its prisons declared unconstitutional.
Bomse said that overcrowding exacerbates the violation of inmates constitutional rights, and that an expert for the public advocate would testify today that, with the exception of health care, “almost next to nothing has been done to ameliorate” problems at the jail.
Among the problem areas cited were lack of exercise, poor lighting, improper sanitation, inadequate protection of inmates from other inmates, and a rising level of violence between inmates and corrections officers.
Corrections Department spokesman James Stabile said that overcrowding results from state prisons taking in more inmates than they let out. In 1991, for instance, 11,559 inmates came into state prisons and 8,216 were paroled, leaving a monthly average surplus of 279 inmates.
New Jersey is one of only five states in the nation not under a court order to drastically reduce its prison population, said Betsy Bernat, a spokeswoman for the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. The project seeks to reduce prison populations.
Bernat said the reasons vary among the five states. Vermont, Montana, and North Dakota have no prison overcrowding largely because they are sparsely populated states, and Minnesota doesn’t because it imprisons only the most dangerous criminals.
She agreed with Bomse that New Jersey, which operates at about 135 percent of its prison capacity, was able to stave off a court order by “backing up its prisoners into the county jail system.”
ID: 17367308 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, January 26, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03
Just in time to comply with a federal law that takes effect today, borough police on Friday installed a device that will enable people with speech and hearing impairments to contact police headquarters.
“This is long overdue,” Detective Michael Burns said Saturday. “It opens a whole new world of communication for people.”
The legislation, called the Americans With Disabilities Act, was signed into law in July 1990. Under one of its provisions, police must be equipped with a Telecommunication Device for the Deaf, or TDD.
New Milford is one of more than a dozen Bergen County police departments that either recently purchased such a device or, like Allendale, have been using one for a number of years. But spokesmen for more than 40 other Bergen departments contacted Saturday said they still lack the equipment.
Most models of the machine are about the size of a small console telephone, with a typewriter keyboard and a display screen.
To contact police, users need a matching device at home. They type their message and it is carried through phone lines to police headquarters, where it is displayed on a screen and copied on a printer. The home units also can receive messages.
Lee Brody, a pioneer in the development of the TDD and now a vendor of the devices, said about 6,000 families across the state have one in their homes, most of them in Bergen and Middlesex counties. However, many people with impairments do not have the devices, he said.
Burns said he first became aware of the law’s requirement in October, when a company wrote him a letter trying to sell the department a TDD. After researching the law with the federal Justice Department, he solicited prices and found they ranged from $300 to $4,000. Burns said he opted for one that cost $625.
“It’s a state-of-the-art unit which allows us to handle any type of call,” he said.
The law mandating the equipment is a far-reaching measure requiring that any place serving the public be made accessible to the disabled.
ID: 17366997 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, January 25, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | One Star | NEWS | Page A04
A Bergen County Jail prisoner claims he was injured when he was subdued by a police dog during an inmate protest over food.
Another inmate said the prisoner was bitten by the officer’s dog, but Sheriff Jack Terhune would say only that he assumed the inmate was bitten, because he needed medical attention.
Inmate Gary Jones, 32, said in a call to The Record that he saw a guard dog bite Gregory Cannell on Jan. 11 during a melee that ensued when several inmates dumped their food trays in protest over the portions they receive at mealtime.
Terhune said Thursday that Cannell received medical attention after he was taken into custody with the assistance of the guard dog. Cannell, 26, of Union City, was then returned to an isolation cell because he and Howard Tucker, 19, of Newark, face a charge of assault on a law enforcement officer in the disturbance, Terhune said.
Cannell was one of several inmates who tried to push past a corrections officer into a hallway after about 10 inmates had dumped their trays, Terhune said. Several officers responded to the correction officer’s call for assistance, he added, declining to say whether anyone else was hurt.
Jones was one of five inmates who called The Record around midday on Jan. 11, before the disturbance later that afternoon, to say they were on a hunger strike in protest of their meal portions, and of general conditions. Jones reported the incident to The Record several days later.
The state Department of the Public Advocate, which is representing the jail inmates in a suit to reduce overcrowding at the jail, is looking into the incident and may have the inmates involved testify at a hearing next week.
Assistant Deputy Public Advocate Audrey Bomse said she was aware of the incident but had not received a report from either side. The charges of assault filed against the two inmates were not surprising, Bomse said.
“I’m not going to prejudge this. Sometimes that is the case, but sometimes it is also used as justification for the use of excessive force upon inmates,” Bomse said.
Keywords: BERGEN COUNTY; PRISON; ANIMAL; ASSAULT
Notes: Cut in late editions.
ID: 17366953 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
Byline: By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, January 24, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | Page B01
A convicted killer who escaped from a Connecticut prison and was recaptured in Paramus over the weekend was charged Thursday with two armed robberies in Rutherford and Montvale, authorities said.
Police linked Frank Vandever to the Jan. 7 robberies of a Rutherford jewelry store and a Montvale 7 Eleven after Vandever was captured at Garden State Plaza on Saturday, Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy said.
Ronald Rutan, who also escaped from the Connecticut prison and was recaptured last week, was also charged Thursday in the holdups, Fahy said.
Vandever and Rutan are also suspects in the robbery of a 7 Eleven in Waldwick on Jan. 9, the prosecutor said.
Connecticut authorities on Thursday charged Vandever, 37, and Rutan, 34, with breaking out of the Somers Correctional Center on New Year’s Eve, and with kidnapping a couple and stealing their truck at knifepoint the day after the escape.
The two inmates broke out of prison by cutting through the bars of a window near the kitchen and then through two perimeter fences, authorities said. A fence alarm failed to sound.
Vandever, a former stockbroker serving a 40-year term for murdering a client, and Rutan, a convicted burglar, then led authorities in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey on a manhunt. Rutan was captured in Spring Valley, N.Y., on Jan. 15.
Rutherford Police Chief Edward P. Caughey said that at about 5 p.m. on Jan. 6 Rutan went alone into Crosby Jewelers at 50 Park Ave. and asked a clerk if he could look at diamonds because he was shopping for an engagement ring.
Rutan returned with Vandever about the same time the next day. Vandever held a knife on the store clerk and Rutan brandished a gun that was later determined to be a toy, Caughey said.
Despite a warning from Rutan when he announced the robbery, however, the store manager pressed a silent alarm.
“When he pulled the alarm, they both turned around and fled,” Caughey said.
Neither victim was injured, and nothing was taken from the store.
About 11:46 p.m. the same night, Rutan held a 10-inch knife to the abdomen of a 7 Eleven clerk in Montvale, said borough Police Chief Joseph Marigliani. After Rutan left with about $300, Vandever, who allegedly was in the store pretending to be a customer, paid for a newspaper and also left.
The clerk then called police.
Fahy said he intended to prosecute the case after the two men are dealt with by Connecticut authorities.
ID: 17366857 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, January 23, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | 1 Star | NEWS | Page B01
Celestino’s, the Edgewater restaurant that opened 10 months ago at the site of the old Barge Inn, was destroyed by a pre-dawn fire Wednesday, authorities said.
A married couple who woke up to smoke and flames were routed from their second-floor apartment, but no one was injured, said Lt. Louis Gotthold of the Edgewater Fire Department.
The first firefighters who arrived at the scene, shortly after the first alarm sounded at about 1:20 a.m., saw flames shooting out of the windows in the three-story, wood-frame structure at 1020 River Road, Gotthold said. Firefighters worked hard to keep it from spreading to surrounding buildings, he said.
“It burned out of control for two hours, at least,” he said.
Gotthold said the Bergen County arson squad is investigating the blaze to determine its cause.
The fire was reported by a security guard from a high-rise across the street from the Italian restaurant, Gotthold said. About 60 firefighters from Edgewater, Fairview, Cliffside Park, and Fort Lee fought the blaze, he added.
Jack Warren, a former Edgewater Planning Board chairman and a manager of the Barge Inn for about six months, said the building was so old that it probably would not have taken much to ignite it.
In numerous incarnations, the inn had a reputation as a rough-and-tumble saloon that often caused headaches for borough officials. It was the last of the once-numerous saloons on the town’s 2 1/2-mile waterfront.
Celestino’s, as conceived by Celestino and Mario Genciarelli of Paterson, aimed to be a high-class restaurant. Warren said the restaurant appeared to live up to the hopes its owners and borough officials had for it.
“I haven’t had a whole lot of contact with the establishment since the bar closed, other than to eat there occasionally,” Warren said. “They changed the decor somewhat. They seemed to be doing fairly well.
“The food was good and the atmosphere was really nice. The management seemed to be doing a good job, and it was a pleasant place. ”
The Genciarellis could not be reached for comment.
Developer Lennard Schwartz, who owned the building, envisioned an artists colony in the space above the restaurant, and 10 studios were created. A rear second-floor apartment was occupied by the only known residential tenants of the building. The tenants were staying with friends Wednesday, officials said.
The damage was so severe that the two top floors were being torn down Wednesday, Gotthold said.
Caption: PHOTO – AL PAGLIONE / THE RECORD – A crew removing debris after the Wednesday fire that destroyed Celestino’s on River Road in Edgewater. No one was hurt in the blaze.
ID: 17366792 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)