Eideard

Jeffrey Brenner and William Bratton

If Camden, New Jersey, becomes the first American community to lower its medical costs, it will have a murder to thank. At nine-fifty on a February night in 2001, a twenty-two-year-old black man was shot while driving his Ford Taurus station wagon through a neighborhood on the edge of the Rutgers University campus. The victim lay motionless in the street beside the open door on the driver’s side, as if the car had ejected him. A neighborhood couple, a physical therapist and a volunteer firefighter, approached to see if they could help, but police waved them back.

“He’s not going to make it,” an officer reportedly told the physical therapist. “He’s pretty much dead.” She called a physician, Jeffrey Brenner, who lived a few doors up the street, and he ran to the scene with a stethoscope and a pocket ventilation mask. After some discussion, the police let him enter the crime scene and attend to the victim. Witnesses told the local newspaper that he was the first person to lay hands on the man.

“He was slightly overweight, turned on his side,” Brenner recalls. There was glass everywhere. Although the victim had been shot several times and many minutes had passed, his body felt warm. Brenner checked his neck for a carotid pulse. The man was alive. Brenner began the chest compressions and rescue breathing that should have been started long before. But the young man, who turned out to be a Rutgers student, died soon afterward.

The incident became a local scandal. The student’s injuries may not have been survivable, but the police couldn’t have known that. After the ambulance came, Brenner confronted one of the officers to ask why they hadn’t tried to rescue him.

“We didn’t want to dislodge the bullet,” he recalls the policeman saying. It was a ridiculous answer, a brushoff, and Brenner couldn’t let it go…

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A transgender employee hired to oversee urine tests administered to men has filed a discrimination lawsuit against a Camden drug treatment center that fired him after it confronted him about his gender last summer…

When his employer asked about his gender after he began work, El’Jai Devoureau responded, “I am a man, and I can do the job. They said, ‘You’re fired.’”

According to the lawsuit, Devoureau, of Gloucester County, was hired in June to observe men depositing urine in cups for drug analysis. The supervision is to assure that the sample is fresh and not from a different person. The employer may require male workers for such a job, Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund said.

In documents filed in January, after Devoureau filed a discrimination complaint with the state, the treatment center stated that it fired Devoureau because he was not a biological male. But it disputed that the termination was discriminatory…

After Devoureau began work, according to the lawsuit, an acquaintance recognized him and passed along to supervisors that Devoureau was physically female at birth and was transgender.

A day later, the lawsuit alleges, Devoureau was confronted by the program’s director, identified as Van Macaluso. She allegedly told Devoureau that he was fired because she had been told “he was not a man, that he did not have the parts of a man, and that the job called for a biological male,” according to legal documents…

“New Jersey is a national leader in transgender equality, and New Jersey is a worldwide model in protecting transgender people from discrimination,” Steven Goldstein, chairman of the civil rights organization Garden State Equality, said Monday.

“We’ve never seen or heard of such a brazen disregard for the law,” he said.”

New Jersey law recognizes Mr. Devoureau as male – hence his driver’s license. The U.S. government recognizes Mr. Devoureau as male – his Social Security account identifies him as such. Following the guidelines from New Jersey, Georgia changed his birth certificate to read “male”. As far as employment law in the United States is concerned – Mr. Devoureau is a man.

All other discussion pivots on whether a court of law should allow an employer to discriminate on the basis of their subjective viewpoint – not the law. I would hope the law prevails.

The road salt that cities and businesses stockpile to melt ice along sidewalks and treat Ohio’s roads and highways is increasingly polluting our drinking water, according to state environmental regulators.

Since 2009, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has found rainwater runoff from road-salt piles fouling public and private wells in five Ohio communities. Though not considered a health threat, the salty taste of drinking water grew so bad that the village of Camden in Preble County had to abandon its wells.

“After you get to a certain level, you can certainly tell there is a change in the taste,” said Melissa Williams, the Preble County health commissioner. “It will corrode your plumbing fixtures, also…”

For example, there are no legal limits on how much salt can be in drinking water beyond a federal guideline meant to safeguard taste. And there are no rules that govern how road salt is stored.

Of course. None of those things are important to politicians. Only the cost of the salt.

“The (Ohio EPA) director has broad authority to protect health and welfare,” said Mike Baker, the agency’s drinking-water and ground-water chief. “If you can’t drink the water due to taste, it’s a real concern.”

And no one in Ohio ever heard of there being a potential problem, noticed other states and regions doing anything different. Right?

Camden started pumping water from a temporary well on Nov. 17 after two road-salt piles at a business fouled the village’s three wells. Ohio EPA officials found that the business had installed illegal storm drains that let salt-contaminated rainwater soak into the ground…

Ignorance hands out another couple hundreds tons of salty bliss to folks in Ohio.

Police say a Camden, New Jersey, man had the audacity to return to the jail where he posted a $400 bond with counterfeit bills, demanding a refund.

Ronald T. White was charged with shoplifting July 7, but his bail was incorrectly written up. When he found out, authorities say, he returned to the Cinnaminson, New Jersey, jail the following week to demand his money back…

According to Cinnaminson Police Chief Steven Fowler, the department issued a warrant for White’s arrest after his counterfeit bail posting of $400, but because he was a Camden resident, it was out of jurisdiction.

“Even though it was a $5,000 warrant for his arrest, they have bigger issues over in Camden, being the murder capital of the world,” Fowler said…

White had posted bail using at least two bills bearing identical serial numbers, police say, and the serial numbers also matched those on one of the bills found on him when he returned to the Cinnaminson jail to reclaim his extra $200…

On Thursday, at White’s first appearance in Superior Court, his bail was set at $7,500, because of outstanding charges from Camden County added on to the Burlington County charges…

In the meantime, until he can post bail with legitimate bills, he will be held at Burlington County Jail.

Not the world’s greatest counterfeiting job – walking around with identical serial numbers. And, yes, the coppers on duty weren’t too sharp about catching the funny money in time.

But, Ronald – wandering back to the pokey to get your refund ain’t the brightest thing you ever did.