MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Presumption

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I have no problem whatsoever with Caroline Kennedy being named to the United States Senate seat from New York that Hillary Clinton will be vacating if she is confirmed as the new Secretary of State. In fact, I could offer a couple of powerful argument why Ms. Kennedy should be named (and I will later in this post) but an artist friend, Zina Saunders, sent me this piece that I could not resist posting:

Her Highn… I Mean, Senator Caroline Kennedy (by Zina Saunders, December 26th, 2008)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Caroline Kennedy’s quest for the Senate seat being left vacant by Hillary Clinton. Questions have been raised about Kennedy’s qualifications and experience and financial entanglements …to read more, go here and here.

Caroline Kennedy’s bid is audacious, sure, and carries a certain presumptuousness that I think Ms. Saunders sought to puncture in this art. I love the piece. It is great, especially her depiction of the putative kingmakers, the Rev. Al and Uncle Moneybags. But her audacity is precisely the reason why I think Ms.Kennedy should be named to this seat. She has the stature to be presumptuous, to expect that the seat would be handed to her.

Yes, some of the people handling Ms. Kennedy’s bid have made missteps, including the efforts to strong-arm some political leaders to jump on-board. They need to show some class. But I blame New York Gov. David Paterson for most of the backlash that is beginning to build against Ms. Kennedy. The governor is outspoken and plainspoken and, often, that is part of his charm. Not in this case. Paterson has appeared, at times, petulant.  with reporters when discussing Ms. Kennedy’s bid. He needs to show some class.

Any of New York’s political class who gets the nod, Andrew Cuomo included, would come into the role with a tremendous status gap that the 51-year-old daughter of a martyred president of the United States has never known since the day she was born and would never suffer from as long as she lives.

Who could better serve the interest of New Yorkers? A woman who comes the closest to being America’s royalty, or some sweaty New York politician? Yeah, Chuck Schumer is great and Al D’Amato was, whatever, but it should not be that hard. I can understand wanting to puncture the kind of presumptuousness that attend to people like Caroline Kennedy, certainly. It can be unbecoming.

But Ms. Kennedy brings to her bid a record of public service equal to, if not better than, that of many who have sought the office.

When our carpet-bagging First Lady, Hillary Clinton, first sought the office, was she really that much more qualified than Caroline Kennedy is now? No. I believe New Yorkers start out way ahead with Caroline as their United States senator.

December 26, 2008
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CRASH KILLS ONE, INJURES THREE; Teen in Stolen Car Dies Fleeing Police

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By David Gibson and Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writers | Wednesday, March 11, 1992

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | B01

A car theft in Paterson ended tragically in Elmwood Park near midnight Monday when the stolen car, driven by an unlicensed driver who had arrived from Puerto Rico four months ago, tried to elude pursuing police and slammed head-on into a car driven by a Garfield woman.

The driver of the stolen car, 19-year-old Manuel Cardona, was killed on the spot, and his two teenage passengers were badly injured. The Garfield woman, Sophie Soltys, 45, of Summit Avenue, also was seriously injured, authorities said.

Soltys suffered head injuries and bruised ribs and was listed in stable condition in the intensive care unit of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Paterson, where the two other survivors were taken.

A 14-year-old passenger in the stolen car was in stable condition in the pediatric intensive care unit with multiple trauma. A 16-year-old passenger was on life-support, said Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy.

Cardona, who was driving the steel-gray 1986 Hyundai, was pronounced dead at 12:06 a.m. at the River Drive and Summit Avenue accident scene, Fahy said.

Fahy, whose office is investigating the crash along with the Clifton and Elmwood Park police departments, said the Clifton and Elmwood Park police officers who chased the teenagers followed state guidelines regarding pursuits.

Police said Cardona had arrived in Paterson from Puerto Rico with his family two months ago and was not licensed to drive in New Jersey. He was living with relatives at 163 Redwood Ave. His family said Cardona had never been in trouble before.

The chase, which covered about two miles at speeds approaching 60 mph, came after a surveillance that began in Clifton about 11:40 p.m. Monday, said city Detective Capt. James Territo. He gave the following account:

Patrolmen Warren Lee and Pat Ciser, who was behind the wheel of their squad car, were parked at Randolph and Knapp avenues when the Hyundai passed them on Randolph Avenue moving toward Passaic. The officers began to follow. Noticing that the passengers were behaving nervously, they decided to check the police computer to see if the Hyundai was stolen.

The officers continued to follow as the car proceeded at the speed limit to Parker and Ackerman avenues. There, it abruptly made an illegal left-hand turn from the right-hand lane and headed over the bridge above the Passaic River, and into Garfield.

The car went north on River Road toward Elmwood Park, with the Clifton officers still following. At that moment, the officers were able to confirm that the car had been stolen in Paterson.

The officers then decided to pull the car over and issue a summons for the illegal turn made earlier.

“They activated their lights and, `Boom, the car takes off,” recounted Territo. The Clifton car gave chase and put out a bulletin for area departments to watch for the vehicle.

As the cars passed into Elmwood Park at Market Street and River Road, Elmwood Park Patrolwoman Debra Lysiak joined the pursuit. Two blocks later the car Cardona was driving sped up, police reports said, and went airborne as it hit a rise at a railroad crossing by River Drive and Summit Avenue. It was 11:53 p.m.

“As it came down on the pavement, the driver seemed to lose control,” said Elmwood Park Police Chief Byron Morgan II. “He veered into the oncoming traffic and hit a car in the southbound lane.” The car was a 1986 Oldsmobile driven by Soltys.

The fire department had to use the “jaws of life” to extricate the drivers of both the Oldsmobile and the Hyundai.”

Police said the Clifton patrol car was about 150 feet behind the Hyundai, followed immediatley by the the Elmwood Park police car, when the crash occurred.

No charges have been filed in the case.

Territo said the two Clifton patrolmen remained on duty and said they acted properly: “At this point we’re not looking at it as if anything was done wrong. We’re really looking into it as a matter of course.”

“It wasn’t like a high-speed, lengthy chase,” he added. “It was almost over before it started.”

Fahy called the pursuit a “proper chase,” and said the police did not exceed the speed limit.

Anna Cardona, the victim’s mother, was leaving late Tuesday for Puerto Rico, said Cesar Adorno, with whom she has lived for several years. Adorno said he would follow today with Cardona’s body, which will be buried in Puerto Rico.

“If this hadn’t happened we would have stayed here,” Adorno said. “Maybe to make a life.”

The dead man was a “real good guy” who had “never been in trouble with the police anytime or anywhere,” said Cesar Adorno, who has lived with the victim’s mother, Anna Cardona, for several years.

Cardona’s family, including his younger brother, came to Newark in November to be with an ailing cousin, Adorno said. They moved in with relatives in Paterson in December.

Adorno said Manuel Cardona, who was born and raised in the Bronx until his family went to Puerto Rico when was 4 years old, was studying for his high school equivalency diploma and was working part-time in construction. Adorno said the family did not know the juveniles

involved in the crash, or how Cardona came to be behind the wheel of a stolen car.
They last saw Cardona early Monday evening before he went to “hang out” with friends.

Police arrived at the home about 2 a.m. Tuesday with the news of his death.

Caption: The wreckage of the 1986 Hyundai whose teenage driver was killed Monday in a crash while reportedly fleeing police. Police said the car was stolen in Paterson. 2 – Below, police investigating the scene of the accident Tuesday. 3 – (4s, 3s, 2s, 1s) PHOTO – Manuel Cardona and his family moved to New Jersey in November. 2 COLOR PHOTOS – PETER MONSEES / THE RECORD

ID: 17371116 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)

March 11, 1992
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FOR BLACK YOUTHS, AN UNEASY START

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by Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, October 27, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

Toward the end of his workshop Saturday, the Rev. Clarence L. James Sr. asked boys in the front pew at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack what it takes to be a man on the street.

Sell drugs, someone said. Kill somebody, another said. Beat your woman, replied another boy. And on and on: Fight to get respect, have many women, rape someone, gamble, have a gun, pimp.

The street is one of the primary institutions where black males are initiated into manhood, said James, a Baptist minister and evangelist from Atlanta who has been conducting a weeklong revival at Mount Olive Baptist Church that addresses the issues facing the black family. The other institutions he named were prison, military service, and college.

He scrunched his face in mock disgust and winced with each reply.

“That is not the kind of man we need,” James said. “We need husbands for our daughters, fathers for our children, a provider.”

The audience consisted of 100 males, including 50 boys from Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck, Westwood, Rutherford, and Paterson. James discussed the role of black men during slavery, black men and education, black men and the military, and black men in the family.

The Rev. Gregory J. Jackson, pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church, said the workshop was an important part of the church’s yearlong celebration of the black family.

“The idea is that we are losing too many of our boys and men to jail, drugs, alcoholism, crime, et cetera,” he said. “We need to develop ways for saving our boys . . . find ways that we can help lost boys make a transition from adolescence to manhood.

“Many of these boys have fathers who are dead or in jail. They are our kids. We’ve got to help the kids grow up as men. You can’t just leave them out there for the world to raise. ”

James said part of their rites of passage into manhood must include educating them about their African heritage and instilling pride in that heritage.

The street, prisons, the service, and colleges have failed the black man because they have failed the black man and his family, James said. He cited the church as an institution where God-fearing Christians can help turn black boys into moral, upstanding men.

Samuel E. Adams, 35, of Englewood said the workshop is a godsend to the black community and that it should be done weekly.

“We first must be taught who we are to love ourselves,” he said. “With this knowledge we are gaining, we must take care of our own. We will never gain respect as a people until we start owning and controlling our community and our resources. ”

Caption: PHOTO – ROBERT S. TOWNSEND / THE RECORD – Youths and their elders joining in prayer at Hackensack’s Mount Olive Baptist Church.

ID: 17359261 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

October 27, 1991
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KILLER’S HOME WAS WELL-KNOWN; HIS NEIGHBORS HAD COMPLAINED

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By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, October 11, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | 1 Star | NEWS Page A11

Type: PROFILE

The white brick and stucco home at Derrom and 14th avenues where Joseph M. Harris lived has been inspected many times by city zoning officials following complaints by neighbors that it was an illegal rooming house.
Neighbors standing outside Thursday as police entered and left sounded the same complaints, saying blaring horns, loud arguments, and fights at the house often punctuated the evenings. Harris is accused of killing four people during a murderous spree early Thursday morning.
City records show zoning officials began receiving complaints that the home was an illegal rooming house in 1985, zoning officer Thomas Shadiack said Thursday. “We went out there and found there were two rooms in the basement that were rented out,” he said.
Marianna Costa of Haledon owns the stately, spacious home where Harris lived in a second-floor room, above a kitchen at the back of the house.
The house has five bedrooms, five baths, and parquet floors throughout, Costa said. There are two fireplaces, one cobblestone and the other green marble, and one room has a bar with leather trimming and stainless steel fixtures.
Costa bought the house more than a decade ago for her daughter, but a year or so later the daughter decided to move and Costa made an option-to-buy agreement with Carmen Johnson, who put $2,000 down and agreed to pay several hundred dollars a month toward the purchase.
The city cited both Costa and Johnson for illegal conversion of the house to a rooming house after the September 1985 inspection, Shadiack said. Costa convinced a judge that Johnson was responsible for the house, he said, and Johnson pleaded guilty to the charge. She was fined $1,000, plus $25 in court costs.
Records show that zoning officials, responding to more complaints by neighbors, went to the house five times between February 1987 and June 1989 and asked for an affidavit listing the occupants of the house in October 1988. The city sent several letters to Costa and Johnson as a result of those inspections, but no legal action was taken.
Johnson on Thursday denied the home was a rooming house and said all those living there were related to her and didn’t pay rent.
In a Dec. 12, 1988, affidavit, filed by her lawyer, Clifford S. Hinds of Paterson, Johnson listed the following as occupants: herself, her husband, Earl; sons, Archie and Herman Burrell; daughter, Christine McDonald; and husband’s nephew, Harris.

Keywords: PATERSON; RIDGEWOOD; MAIL; EMPLOYMENT; SHOOTING; MURDER; JOSEPH M. HARRIS

Caption: (Early editions only) PHOTO – ED HILL / THE RECORD – Members of a police bomb squad on Thursday leaving the home at 215 Derrom Ave. in Paterson where Joseph M. Harris lived.

ID: 17357902 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)

October 11, 1991
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