South Brunswick remains a relatively safe community. State Police statistics show that overall crime in South Brunswick in 2016 — 11.9 crimes per thousand residents (533 overall) is less than half the state figure of 24 crimes per thousand. Violent crimes are less frequent — 0.4 in South Brunswick, compared with 2.4 statewide.
Here is what the month-to-month trend has been since January 2016.
The breakdown of crimes committed in 2016 looks like this:
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Through the end of April, $5 from every purchase of As an Alien in a Land of Promise will go to the New Jersey Coalition to End Homelessness to aid their work advocating on behalf of New Jersey’s most vulnerable.
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At a time when black men and women are being gunned down by law enforcement on what seems like a regular basis, a television show that focuses on the social costs of these shootings and their aftermath may seem both timely and brave. Handled properly, such a television show might just enlighten the general public.
Shots Fired is not that show. The Fox program suffers from numerous flaws — starting with its basic premise. As Shots Fired opens, we see Officer Beck, gun drawn as the camera reveals a white victim and it becomes clear that Beck is the shooter. The Justice Department is called in, an apparent effort to manage perceptions, and our stars — Sanaa Latham as federal investigator Ashe Akino and Stephan James as federal prosecutor Preston Terry — are tossed into the expected tempest. If this premise seems, well, overly determined verging on offensive in the current climate, it is. But then we get the twist — the death of a black teen, most likely at the hands of the cops, a death left uninvestigated by police — and Shots Fired plugs into the zeitgeist.
Except that it doesn’t. The premiere episode, which sets up the federal investigation of this apparently corrupt southern police force and the community’s unbridgeable racial divisions, sinks under the weight of terrible and cliched writing (including an unnecessary Akino backstory involving a custody case), and generally melodramatic storytelling. Rather than offering a groundbreaking TV moment, Shots Fired is standard-fare, if subpar, television show.
I had high hopes going in and, perhaps, the show will find its footing as it moves forward. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Nothing offered during episode one makes this seem anything more than a pipe dream.
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South Brunswick has issued a Nixle alert announcing funeral services for Mayor Frank Gambatese, who died Friday. The viewing will be Tuesday, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., and the funeral will take place Wednesday at 10 a.m., all at St. Cecilia’s R.C. Church, 10 Kingston Lane, Monmouth Junction.
Residents are hoping to squash a plan for a 200-unit housing complex on a 12-acre parcel off New Road – despite repeated rulings on behalf of the developer by the state Superior Court.
The property, known as the Stanton tract, is the remaining portion of a larger parcel and has been the focus of litigation and debate since the early 2000s. In 2006, the township purchased and preserved 90 acres of the property, with the remaining portion serving as a legal and political football over the last decade.
The issues at hand, according to the residents, are:
The developer has been fighting rather tenaciously to make this happen, with several plans being floated in an effort to break through the impasse. These have included tying the project to a proposed solar farm on the adjacent landfill — a federal Superfund site — and the inclusion of affordable housing units that could be used to meet the township’s obligation, which the the courts have set at nearly 1,400 units, pending further challenges. That’s a lot of units, and the Stanton Girard plan purports to help the township meet the challenge.
I’m not buying it, but I’m also concerned that the township maybe turning away from what has been one of the more admirable records on affordable housing in the state. Thanks to failures by the state Council on Affordable Housing (its various attempts to quantify need and spread responsibility throughout the state were overly complicated, often unrealistic, and resulted in significant pushback) and multiple governors (Chris Christie’s hostility to COAH and the Mount Laurel rules is legendary), municipalities like South Brunswick were left with little direction, even as the need for housing continued to grow. The result has been a messy attempt to require towns to squeeze 20 years of new housing needs into a new plan.
I’ve spent much of the last five years reporting and writing about those at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder — those on state and federal food aid, in homeless camps and shelters, immigrants who have had their wages stolen. Some of these people work in the warehouses along the N.J. Turnpike and deserve better housing than the often subpar apartments they are forced to rent. The amount Laurel decisions and the Fair Housing Act were meant to address this.
South Brunswick must maintain its commitment to building low-income housing and should work with other communities to spread it around the New Jersey, helping to alter the landscape in what is one of the most segregated states in the country.
All of this might point toward approval of the Stanton Girard plan — except that the 12-acre parcel in question is just too small, lacks functional access (without taking property from its neighbors), and will create more problems than it will solve and should be denied. (You can add your voice to the opposition by signing the petition here.
We also need to be realistic. Save purchasing the property and preserving it via a deed restriction, something will be built there. We need to determine what makes the most sense — perhaps a smaller, all-affordable complex — and offer that alternative to the courts.
These are my initial thoughts on this, so if I’ve gotten anything wrong, or neighbors — or the township or builder — have anything to add, let me know.
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Hank Kalet 