Mayor Josh Halpern speaking during Monday’s council session. (Photo from Zoom. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Overriding objections by Mayor Josh Halpern, Fair Haven’s borough council endorsed a resolution calling for common-sense federal gun laws Monday night.
The 6-0 vote followed a showdown between Halpern and several council members over his blockage of resolutions he said are not local issues.
Councilman Bob Marchese urged the council to ban recreational pot sales while allowing for medicinal trade. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Mixed in among discussions of yard sales and tree removals at the Fair Haven council’s semimonthly meeting Monday night were two issues of concern statewide and beyond: marijuana and guns.
Amy Downey offered cookies prior to the start of a Moms Demand Action orientation meeting that drew a full house to Shapiro’s Tuesday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The murders of 17 people by a gunman in Florida last week prompted a hasty new-member orientation in Red Bank Tuesday night for an organization dedicated to what it calls “common sense gun laws.”
Volunteers with Moms Demand Action said the February 14 slaughter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland has unleashed a surge of interest unseen since the group’s founding five years ago in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut murders of 27 children and adults.
Held in response to the the sniper attack that killed 59 concertgoers and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas Sunday night, the event ended with a shared lighting of candles. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Once again, Red Bank area residents gathered for a march and vigil Wednesday night to protest senseless, gun-related violence in America.
This time, the brief event, attended by about 50 participants, had a more consistently political, rather than spiritual, tone.
Red Bank-area religious and political leaders are once again organizing an anti-violence vigil, this time in the aftermath of the Las Vegas sniper attack that killed at least 58 concertgoers and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas Sunday night.
A Red Bank man arrested last August as an alleged member of guns and heroin distribution ring has been indicted by a Monmouth County grand jury, the county prosecutor announced Monday morning.
Russell Vann, 54, right, was one of 20 defendants named as alleged members of “a criminal enterprise responsible for the distribution significant quantities of heroin and the trafficking of firearms,” Prosecutor Peter E. Warshaw, Jr. said in a prepared announcement.
Two other men arrested in the sweep and previously identified as Red Bank residents were not named in the indictment. They are Charles Dixon, 54, and Raymond Jackson, 41.
Three Red Bank men were among more than 30 suspects arrested in a massive law enforcement sweep focused on the sale of heroin and assault weapons, authorities said Thursday.
Russell Vann and Charles Dixon, both 54 years old, and Raymond Jackson, 41, were caught up on drug distribution charges in raids led by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s office over the past month, the agency said in an announcement.
All three were alleged to have been “midlevel” drug dealers in a hierarchical” syndicate run by a Long Branch man, who was also arrested. No street addresses for Vann, Dixon and Jackson were immediately available.