Courier-PostNARCAN-May14-2017-Page1

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HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

MIONRSEIDTEH:AN

$1,043 $154INSATVOITNAGLS
WITHTHMAONRE
IN MANCUOFUAPCOTNUSRERS’

Police want A MOTHER’S
‘tweaks’ to WORKOUT ...
revamped
bail system Cheryl Sierocinski
DeLorenzo and daughter
Officials: Many dangerous Leann DeLorenzo are part
suspects free before trial of a sisterhood of female
triathletes. Page 1C
MATT FAGAN @FAGAN_NJ
The four-month-old law that reformed the CHRIS LACHALL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

state’s bail system had the approval of the three Cheryl Sierocinski DeLorenzo of Paulsboro, right, and her daughter, Leann DeLorenzo, who resides in Philadephia, started
branches of New Jersey’s government, but local running together years ago, when Leann was playing on her high school boys' soccer team and wanted her runner-mom to
law enforcement officials aren’t sold on it — yet. help her train. A few years ago, the two started running marathons together, and now they're training to enter their first
triathlon.
A number of New Jersey police officials say
they aren’t against the reform, but are asking In Gloucester County, more
the state for some “tweaking,” specifically with Narcan means more lives saved
the risk assessment or Public Safety Assess-
ment portion of the reform, to avoid allowing se- Hospital systems to supply
rious or repeat offenders back on the street. medication to battle overdoses

The bail reform law, signed by Gov. Chris KIM MULFORD @CP_KIMMULFORD
Christie in August 2014, replaced the monetary
bail system with a risk-based system. Courts WOODBURY - The leaders of two hospital systems KIM MULFORD/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
had previously granted or denied bail based on in Gloucester County signed a two-year commitment
defendants’ ability to pay, a system that was Tuesday to continue supplying the county’s police de- Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean Dalton (center) signs a
criticized for harshly penalizing the poor ac- partments with Narcan, the medication used to re- two-year agreement with Inspira Health Network and
cused of low-level crimes. verse the effects of an opioid overdose. Kennedy Health in his Woodbury office Tuesday.

Judges now conduct individual risk assess- Inspira Health Network and Kennedy Health have
ments before deciding whether to hold or re- supplied local police with Narcan since April 2015.
lease defendants before trial. The new law also
guarantees defendants a trial within two years, Since they began administering the antidote in Sep-
with some exceptions. tember 2014, law enforcement officers in the county
saved more than 350 lives, according to data provided
Chief Justice Stuart Rabner of the state Su- See NARCAN, Page 4A
preme Court, who was a driving force behind
the changes, often cites a 2012 study that found Trump to Next Level of
one in eight inmates in New Jersey’s county jails grads: Face
were held there because they could not pay the critics Hospice Care
$2,500 or less in bail. Those defendants often re-
ceived less favorable plea deals or longer sen- Liberty commencement The Samaritan
tences, he added. speech shifts from tribute to Center at Voorhees
school to rebuke ‘failed
The bail reform effort enjoyed rare support voices’ of his opponents.
from all three branches of state government, Page 1B
and a piece of it was approved by New Jersey
voters in a 2014 referendum. Voters voted yes to INDEX
the referendum question, which asked whether
or not the state’s Constitution should be amend- Business ...............5B Opinion .............16A
ed to allow judges to deny bail to certain danger- Crossword ... 13C, 4U Sports ...................1D
ous offenders. Obituaries ......... 20A Travel ...................3U

Law enforcement officials said the reality Vol. 143 No. 51
does not reflect what the voters passed.
Warmer with a p.m. $1.50 Retail CP-0010569238 (800) 229-8183
Local police chiefs and the state’s Attorney T-storm SamaritanNJ.org
General’s Office have criticized the Public Safe- For home delivery pricing, see Page 2A
ty Assessment process, or PSA, saying it sends High 70 • Low 51
too many serious and at times repeat offenders, Page 2A
back to the streets rather than to jail.
I found a better way to
Mahwah Police Chief James Batelli said he advance my nursing degree.
supports the notion of bail reform, but the risk
assessment needs to be refined. He said his offi- I found WilmU.
cers detained a man from North Carolina who
was in possession of a machine gun, a handgun
and had a “rap sheet 20 pages long.” Unfortu-
nately the risk assessment, he said, does not
take out-of-state convictions into account, lead-
ing to false low scores. The suspect was as-
sessed and released pending a court date, Batel-
li said.
See REFORM, Page 4A

FILE

“The state needs to take a hard look at bail reform,”
Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale says.

“Today’s shooter will become
tomorrow’s victim or vice versa.”

JERRY SPEZIALE

PATERSON POLICE DIRECTOR

4A COURIER-POST, Sunday, May 14, 2017 courierpostonline.com

RODRIGO ABD/AP Alaska guide
provides info
Workers in March use a crane to lift a segment of a new fence into place on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico, where Sunland Park, New on heated
Mexico, meets the Anapra neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. greenhouses

As Trump seeks billions for RACHEL D’ORO
wall, US still paying for fence
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOMAAN MERCHANT Mexico. cases still pending.
About 650 miles of fence were built Those cases have been bedeviled by ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Cold-cli-
ASSOCIATED PRESS mate greenhouses have long been an
eventually, just 100 miles of them in Tex- complications and delays and have left option for increasing the limited grow-
HOUSTON - Before the wall, there as, which has the longest border of any many landowners wary of what’s com- ing season in Alaska, where fresh pro-
was the fence. And the U.S. is still paying state with Mexico. The uneven course of ing next. duce is a rarity in a harsh environment.
for it. the Rio Grande, rough terrain and pri- But for many remote communities that
vate land ownership created a host of en- One settlement completed this week rely on costly imported diesel fuel for
As President Donald Trump tries to gineering and legal obstacles and re- was for $137,500 for about 1½ acres their power source, they’re too expen-
persuade a skeptical Congress to fund quired hundreds of deals with individual next to the Rio Grande west of Browns- sive to operate.
his proposed multibillion-dollar wall on property owners for some of their land. ville, near a golf resort. The U.S. didn’t
the Mexican border, government law- build fencing on the resort but did so on Now, the state has released a hand-
yers are still settling claims with Texas In the Rio Grande Valley, the south- much of the land nearby. It then took book that shows schools and communi-
landowners over a border fence ap- ernmost point of Texas where most mi- nearly a decade to agree on compensa- ty groups how to build greenhouses
proved more than a decade ago. Two set- grants are arrested, sections of the 18- tion. heated with a plentiful local resource:
tlements were completed just this week. foot-tall metal fencing stop and start in wood. The 98-page guide comes as
neighborhoods and on farmland. “It is exceedingly frustrating to the greenhouses gain popularity in the vast
The legal battles over a stop-and-start landowner to have to wait nine years to state for several reasons, including im-
fence that covers just a portion of the The U.S. government can use the pow- resolve a case and to have the govern- proved technology and heightened
border have outlasted two presidents. er of eminent domain to seize private ment come in and take possession of it awareness, according to officials who
property for a public purpose as long as that long before he receives so much as worked on the handbook.
If the Trump administration presses it pays the landowner what the Constitu- a single dollar,” said Ken McKay, a law-
ahead with plans to build some version of tion calls “just compensation,” but that yer who represented the family part- Thousands of schools in the conti-
the towering, impenetrable wall the process can take years if a landowner nership that owned the land. nental U.S. have gardens, and some
president has promised, the government contests the seizure. have greenhouses where students
may have to take hundreds more land- Three legal experts told the Associ- learn to grow food. But Alaska’s situa-
owners to court, perhaps even some of The Justice Department eventually ated Press that the Secure Fence Act al- tion is unique given the lack of fresh
the same ones. filed around 400 claims against landown- ready gives the Trump administration produce from local sources in remote
ers under the Secure Fence Act, though the authority to build something new parts of the state.
The Secure Fence Act, which Presi- the government didn’t build on all the and bigger on land it purchased for the
dent George W. Bush signed into law in land it claimed. fence. A barrier resembling the kind of “There’s nobody that comes close,”
2006 with the support of many Demo- wall Trump promised during his cam- said Bob Deering, renewable energy
cratic lawmakers, set aside money for The department says it hasn’t started paign might be seen as an evolved ver- coordinator for the Alaska region of the
fencing to cover one-third of the roughly any cases related to a new wall and re- sion of the existing fence, they said. U.S. Forest Service, the handbook’s
2,000 mileborder between the U.S. and mains committed to settling around 90 main funding source.

In villages off the state’s limited
road system, for instance, goods must
be flown up or barged in. Steeply
priced vegetables can be more than a
week in transit and past their prime by
the time they arrive at stores.

The new handbook covers subjects
aimed at putting more locally grown
food in Alaska kitchens and school caf-
eterias. It also contains curriculum and
case studies of projects by several
schools, including the one in the small
Prince of Wales Island community of
Thorne Bay, in southeast Alaska, which
installed a 750-square-foot aquaponics
greenhouse three years ago. The school
was able to heat its greenhouse year-
round with cord wood cut by students.

“They could never have afforded a
greenhouse if they were heating their
school with diesel heat,” said Devany
Plentovich, manager of the Alaska En-
ergy Authority’s biomass program.

Inefficient wood-burning stoves and
outdoor boilers have created a huge
pollution problem in Fairbanks. The
boilers used in the greenhouses are far
more efficient, burning most of the pol-
lution that otherwise would go into the
atmosphere, thanks to a second com-
bustion chamber absent in less sophis-
ticated systems, officials say.

Reform crime and offenses in at least 25 years. torney General and the Public Defender “We all have the same problem as
“We could see a complete reversal, meet regularly to assess all aspects of Bergen County, as everyone in the
Continued from Page 1A criminal justice reform and discuss any state,” Walker said, adding law enforce-
and my concern is that bail reform could improvements that might be made ment is seeing too many “dangerous
“He was telling our officers that in play a major role,” Speziale said. through legislation or adjustments to suspects” being let out.
North Carolina, he’d be in jail,” Batelli the PSA, Grant said.
said. He said the Paterson Police Depart- Pequannock Police Capt. Christopher
ment’s Safe City initiative has done a Still, he said any changes may take DePuyt agreed with his colleagues, but
The new system relies on police offi- fine job in reducing group violence and time. The courts are keeping statistics also voiced a new concern. He questions
cials and the courts to assess the likeli- incidents. Those advances could be on recidivism rates and failure to ap- the roles of local law enforcement offi-
hood that a defendant will flee, commit jeopardized if those with “violent tend- pear, but it is still too early in the proc- cials when suspects don’t show up to
new criminal activity, or obstruct jus- encies” return to the streets. “Today’s ess to release the findings, he said. their scheduled court dates.
tice by intimidating victims and other shooter will become tomorrow’s victim
witnesses using a point system. or vice versa,” Speziale said. “The legislation authorizing the use He said with the former monetary
of the PSA rightly requires that the eval- bail system, the defendant could pretty
The risk assessment system asks ar- In a letter dated April 7 and sent to uations be based upon empirical evi- much be counted on to appear in front of
resting officers to input the suspect’s the Acting Administrative Director of dence,” Grant said. the court as scheduled. Now there are no
data, including the crime, age, prior ar- New Jersey Courts Glenn A. Grant, the financial consequences.
rests, prior convictions, and other per- director of the state’s Division of Crimi- Riverdale Police Chief Kevin Smith
sonal and background information for a nal Justice, Elie Honig, wrote the crite- said he is the Morris County Police “Will this become the purview of lo-
score of 0 to 6. ria for detainment “undervalue the dan- Chief Association’s point man in review- cal departments?” he asked.
ger posed” by defendants who possess ing the new system. He has been compil-
If the score is between 0 and 3, the firearms while committing crimes. ing information from the county’s de- Wayne Police Department spokes-
suspect is issued a summons and a court partments and will forward his findings man Capt. Laurence Martin said current
date and released. Scores of 4 to 6 indi- “Much of the criticism from law en- to the State Police Chief’s Association. bail reform policies prevent less-seri-
cate possible incarceration, local law forcement ... has focused on cases in- The hope, he said, is to speak as one ous offenders who cannot afford bail
enforcement officials said. The high- volving weapons, predominantly fire- voice to call attention to their concerns. from being jailed, but the policies need
scoring suspects move on to phase two, arms,” Honig wrote. to be “tweaked” to further take into ac-
Decision Making Framework, where “What we are finding is the risk as- count individual circumstance. He said
the courts determine whether the sus- Honig also noted in the letter that sessment is not taking into account the input from law enforcement stakehold-
pect should remain in jail or be released. statewide, too many suspects of multi- use of weapons,” Smith said. ers, such as police, court personnel, ad-
ple arrests were being released despite vocacy agencies and lawyers, is needed.
Law enforcement officials say the having been released previously. In one Smith and Butler Police Chief Ciro
new risk assessment system does not example, a 21-year-old Essex County Chimento said they also want to see ad- “I’d like to see the process take into
place enough emphasis on weapons pos- man was released after allegedly in- ditional weight given to suspects who account the municipal police depart-
session or persons using weapons in the flicting “a deep laceration over the vic- have been arrested multiple times. Both ments and the impact it has on them,” he
commission of a crime. tim’s eye” and despite the fact that he said they agree with the change in the said, “because when you release recidi-
was convicted of unlawful possession of bail reform policy, but more improve- vists they commit crimes.”
Paterson Police Director Jerry Spe- a handgun. ments are needed.
ziale said his department is seeing the Mahwah’s Batelli said he under-
failures of the risk assessment first- “That an individual would choose to “We are frustrated,” Chimento said, stands and is not surprised that any
hand. re-offend while on pre-trial release or adding that while he doesn’t yet have changes to the risk assessment system
post-conviction supervision serves as a hard data, he has seen an “elevated rate will take time, but he worries nonethe-
“The state,” he said, “needs to take a clear indicator that he is a significant of recidivism.” less.
hard look at bail reform.” risk to the safety of the community,”
Honig wrote. Passaic County Police Chiefs Associ- “It is easy to criticize and it’s not
By returning violent criminals to the ation President and Ringwood Chief Jo- quite as simple to fix it,” Batelli said, but
streets, the reform threatens all the re- Grant, overseeing the court’s role in seph Walker said the bail reform “needs added he fears that in the meantime
cent gains his department has made, bail reform, said there is still some work a lot of work.” He said as it stands now, some suspect will slip through the
Speziale said. to be done. “it is not law-enforcement friendly.” cracks and seriously hurt or kill some-
one.
In 2016, Speziale said, Paterson expe- “There are understandable concerns Walker said the association does not
rienced its lowest levels of violent raised in the Attorney General’s letter,” have an official position, but he said the “Question is, how quickly can you re-
Grant said of Honig’s letter. members have expressed concerns at solve it?” he asked.
meetings.
The courts and the offices of the At-

Narcan along with higher medication prices, the trum throughout South Jersey and “I’ve been blessed to help countless
rise in overdose victims and the increas- throughout the state.” amount of people, just giving back and
Continued from Page 1A ing number of doses required to revive reaching out my hand to anybody that
some victims. Kyle Reven, a volunteer recovery needs it,” the Gloucester County resi-
by the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s coach with City of Angels, said he was dent said.
Office. In comparison, police officers A single dose of the generic version among those saved with Narcan: twice
have administered Narcan 284 times in of the drug, including the atomizer, in Gloucester City and once in West Narcan is deployed throughout
the City of Camden since 2014. costs about $40. Deptford. He called those incidents Gloucester County, Dalton noted, in
“turning points” in his life that led him heavily populated municipalities like
Prosecutor Sean Dalton said every Last year, Gloucester County police into long-term recovery. Washington Township (37 times), Mon-
department is stocking the medication administered Narcan 153 times. So far roe Township (84 times), and in tiny bor-
and pointing people toward recovery re- in 2017, they administered the drug 80 “The last time I was Narcaned, I was oughs like Pitman and rural Newfield,
sources. times. In both years, three victims did at an all-time low in my life,” Reven where it has been used five times each.
not survive. said. “I was unemployable. I had nothing
“They’ve embraced this program,” going on. It was a dark place for me.” The data does not include Narcan ad-
Dalton said. “We’re thrilled with that.” Kennedy CEO Joe Devine said the ministered at home, in hospitals or by
opioid problem affects people from ev- He was approached by a person in re- emergency medical personnel.
Inspira CEO John DiAngelo noted the ery socioeconomic sector and back- covery who helped him get into treat-
cost of providing Narcan has soared ground. ment. Sober for two-and-a-half years, Kim Mulford: (856) 486-2448; kmul-
Reven said he’s now doing the same for [email protected]
“We see it all over,” Devine noted. others.
“It’s really something that’s broad spec-