A 30-year-old Bridgeton man, Tremaine Hadden, was sentenced to 37 years in prison on Tuesday for the 2020 shooting of New Jersey State Police Detective Richard Hershey. Says said Attorney General Matt Platkin: “The prison sentence given to this defendant illustrates that my office will not tolerate violence against our law enforcement professionals as they attempt to do their jobs and protect the public.”
Club 35, a strip club in Sayreville that has been subject to investigation on charges of money laundering and promoting prostitution, is set to reopen. The case led to Thomas Pollando, the Sayreville Democratic municipal chairman, being charged on two counts of bribery, as he tried to influence the investigation. This comes as Brooke Acciardi, whose husband’s family owns the strip club, sued the Sayreville Police Department for unlawful search and seizure; she is seeking to settle her lawsuit for $3.5 million.
The New Jersey Department of Labor announced today that they had recouped $630,000 in unpaid wages for 314 Boston Market workers in the state. Additionally, the investigation yielded stop-work orders for 27 Boston Markets across the state. Now that the workers have received their wages, the markets have reopened. Said Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo: “We’re glad this investigation resulted in every dollar making it into the pockets of those who earned the money. Hopefully this action puts other bad actors on notice: ‘if you don’t pay your workers, we will shut you down.’”
State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver) is slamming the Paterson school district, after the school board approved a trip to New Orleans. Says O’Scanlon: “Paterson schools’ misuse of taxpayer money follows a pattern of self-indulgent travel by school board members to extravagant places like Las Vegas, Honolulu, and now New Orleans. This is one more reminder that excessive State aid increases for selected districts doesn’t necessarily reach children while aid cuts for other districts are devastating everywhere else. It is way past time for the Legislature to reform the broken school aid formula and disincentivize this sort of garbage.”
New Jersey Policy Perspective released a report today that found that while outcome goals for students have become more rigorous since 2009, funding has largely remained the same. The report calls on the state to adjust the funding formula. To achieve outcome results like Massachusetts, the report says New Jersey’s highest-poverty school districts will need at least $7,000 more per student. Says Dr. Bruce D. Baker, the report co-author and professor at the University of Miami. “If the state wants to raise the bar for what they expect of students, the state will need to increase school funding so all kids can meet that bar. It costs more to achieve more.”
Maria’s Women United hosted their annual awards and endorsements ceremony last night. The group is named after the late Maria Barnaby Greenwald, a former Cherry Hill mayor and Camden County freeholder and mother of Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald’s (D-Voorhees). The group endorsed 22 women running for office in South Jersey, including the women running in the 2nd and 3rd legislative districts – two of this year’s most competitive races. Special awards went to New Jersey civil rights icon Jeannine Frisby-LaRue, Assemblywoman Gabriela Mosquera (D-Gloucester Township), Shani Nuckols and Woodbury Councilperson Jo Miller.
Newark Mayor Ras Barka will be at an event on the evening of Monday, August 18th, that will address community-based ideas for uprooting cycles of violent crime. He will be joined by Aqeela Sherrills, co-founder of Community Based Public Safety Collective and Lenore Anderson, Co-Founder and President of the Alliance for Safety and Justice and author of In Their Names: The Untold Story of Victims’ Rights, Mass Incarceration, and the Future of Public Safety.
If you have a case brought against you in New Jersey, you will likely have to face a judge. As it turns out, New Jersey is the second-least likely state to throw a case out – only 11.84% of cases get terminated here. On this metric, New Jersey only trails New Hampshire, where only 8.43% of cases get tossed. Florida files the most court cases, with 276 cases filed for every 100,000 residents. This comes from a study by Tribeca Lawsuit Loans.
Two members of the Rollin ‘60s Neighborhood Crips gang, Tyheim Terry, “Ty” or “Rollin’ Ty,” 25, and Amir, “G Baby,” Edmonds, 22, pleaded guilty yesterday on a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) conspiracy. Additionally, Terry also pleaded guilty to charges of carjacking and brandishing a firearm; Edmonds also pleaded guilty to charges of possessing with intent to distribute fentanyl and cocaine and possessing a firearm. And James Hurt, 47, of New York, pleaded guilty in Newark federal court yesterday on a burglary conspiracy that targeted Asian small business owners.
Bergen County is set to have an all-new all-inclusive playground. The county received a matching $1 million grant from the NJ Department of Environmental Protection and the Garden State Preservation Trust (GSPT) to build the playground at Riverside Country Park – South, which is in North Arlington and Lyndhurst. Bergen County Executive James Tedesco said: “Our mission to create completely inclusive playgrounds in our County Parks serves as a reminder that we are committed to addressing the needs of our community, and that we will always have the people at the forefront of everything we do.”
Officials in Trenton today celebrated the East Trenton Library Community Center rehabilitation project. The renovated library will be a center for the community, with a special focus on education, business, and job programming.
And, one last thing: Legends of Zelda is one of the most popular video games in the country – but which character is the most popular? Well, in New Jersey that would be Princess Zelda. Says Ash Keene, operations manager at Replay Poker, the group that released the study. “Princess Zelda displays similar traits throughout the gaming: seriousness, intelligence, courageousness, kindness, and dedication to those she loves.”
