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NEWARK, Aug. 25 - With its gangs, police shootings and struggles to modernize, this city seems to have enough problems. Now it has one more. Dewey Street used to be a proud middle-class neighborhood, a chamber of peace and quiet in Newark's gritty heart. But last year when the state cleared out tracts of land to build a school, most of the families were driven away. And now that the money for the school has evaporated, more than three dozen lots sit abandoned, one after another. James Searcy is one of the last residents here, a 74-year-old man with milky...

A 28-year-old former math teacher at a Passaic middle school was sentenced to one year in jail for having an intimate relationship with a teenage student. Maria C. Saco of Passaic pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced Thursday to the Passaic County Jail. Saco was teaching remedial math during summer school in 2003 to seventh- and eighth-graders when she met the boy, then 14. The boy went on to high school, but Saco's attorney, Joseph Afflitto Sr., said the boy contacted her through e-mail. The two started a relationship that fall. Saco had even...

Sgt. 1st Class Minnie Hiller set down her M-16 and lowered herself gently into a foxhole. Forty targets would soon emerge from the scrub oaks and pine trees of a Fort Dix firing range. Hiller, a 50-year-old widow and grandmother who works in civilian life as a high school counselor, would have to hit at least 23 of them to convince the Army she was qualified to go to Iraq. "I don't care for guns," she said as she adjusted a stack of sandbags at the front edge of the hole and waited for the range master to clear her...

N.J. immigrants getting N.C. licenses Print this article Email this Article By Taft Wireback Staff Writer Courts in northern New Jersey are having trouble with fraudulent driver's licenses turning up in the hands of illegal immigrants, but they aren't licenses issued by the Garden State. They are licenses given by North Carolina to illegal immigrants who live in New Jersey but who come to the Tar Heel State by the busload or vanload to get the document that allows them to drive, work, bank and rent housing, said Sonia Barria, the court administrator for the town of Dover, N.J. "We...

One day in January, Charlie Shennett, a 60-year-old disabled mechanic, went to Passaic City Hall to find out why he hadn't received a tax bill for the vacant lot he owned on Summer Street. Shennett, who has lived in an apartment on Dayton Avenue in Passaic for decades, had dutifully paid taxes on the site of his childhood home since it burned down in 1987. At the tax collector's office, Shennett was surprised to learn that he no longer owned the property. Without his knowledge, the city had taken it several months earlier as part of a redevelopment effort. Later,...

Standoff in Passaic: Home stormed over code violations   Tuesday, July 20, 2004 PASSAIC - A crackdown on city housing violations escalated into a standoff Monday when a homeowner refused to cooperate, prompting authorities to call in a SWAT team, one that broke down a door and shot her with non-lethal weapons.Code enforcement officials arrived about noon, wanting to talk about, among other things, broken windows and a deteriorating porch - violations written three months ago, said Community Development Director Donald Van Rensalier.It just so happened that 109 Quincy St. was smack in the middle of an area targeted in...

New York -WABC, Feb. 10, 2005) — A boil water advisory has gone out to 17 area towns this morning. All are serviced by the same water treatment tank where the body of a missing New Jersey woman was found last night. Eyewitness News reporter Ken Rosato is at the scene in Totowa with more. The medical examiner arrived at the Passaic Valley water treatment plant last night. It was clear, the news would be grim. They had found the body of a woman missing for several days. The discovery led officials to declare a boil water advisory for several...

Loving Hispanic woman is a state agency's ideal Thursday, May 13, 2004 "It means so much to them to have a home, to have some stability," says Margaret Quintana, surrounded by four of her five foster children. Margaret Quintana's most prized possessions include the mementos of a typically proud mother: pictures of smiling children, and letters, cards, and poems from them that describe the difference that her love made in their lives.They are not her biological children. They are the dozens of foster children, most of them Hispanic, whom Quintana has taken into her home during the last 16 years.Quintana...

Newborn rescued from trash can Monday, April 28, 2003 By WHITNEY KVASAGER, HERALD NEWS A newborn girl is in good condition after she was found wrapped in two plastic bags and left in the bottom of a Sherman Avenue trash can.Three people walking down Sherman Avenue around 1 a.m. Sunday found the baby after following what they thought were noises made by a cat. City and county police responded, and an ambulance took the child to Passaic General Hospital. Police also contacted officials at the state Division of Youth and Family Services, which will determine where the baby stays until...

Fair Lawn officer killed in shootout     Play the video (04/18/03) BERGEN - A manhunt involving numerous law enforcement agencies was launched on Thursday night after a shootout in Bergen County ended with one police officer dead and another wounded.Fair Lawn Police Officer Maryann Collura was helping a Clifton officer who was involved in a car chase on Thursday night. The Clifton officer was chasing a red sports car that was eventually stopped on a church's front lawn.Authorities say when the officers tried to arrest the people in the car, at least one of the suspects and the Clifton...

(Paterson-WABC, April 10, 2002) — Officers were shaking down a local New Jersey jail Wednesday, where officials say several gang members were planning to riot and then break out. Authorities in Passaic say the plan to escape from the county jail this weekend included a riot and the killing of at least one corrections officer. Police were going through the jail late Wednesday, rounding up suspects. David Ushery reports from Paterson with details. Members of the emergency response team of the Passaic County sheriff's department were going through the jail, looking for the gang members who had allegedly planned to...