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[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, everyone, I'm Steve Adubato.

We are honored to, once again, be joined, it's been too long, Camelia Valdes is the prosecutor in Passaic County, good to see you.

- Good to be seen, Steve.

Good to be seen, thank you for having me.

- And let's officially let everyone know born and raised where?

- I was born in the Bronx, but raised in Newark.

- Just trying to clarify that.

- Always.

- Yeah, let's talk.

As we actually do this program, Prosecutor Valdes, President Biden is launching an initiative, a crime initiative, if you've read about it, it's actually as we're speaking, I believe he's gonna be speaking in Pennsylvania, adding more police, talking about more accountability, I'm not sure what that means in terms of the way police handle themselves, and in light of the George Floyd murder on camera if you will, trying to find the balance between more police but also better police who are more accountable.

How much sense does that make, A?

And B, how hard is it to execute that?

- It makes all the sense in the world.

I have the privilege of working with police officers who are doing their level best to secure communities, to make sure that we're keeping safe, but unfortunately, as you know, have also have had to come across police officers that needed to be held accountable.

And so as prosecutors, we have a unique responsibility of standing in the gap between the community and the police.

And the more police and the more police interaction with the public, the better it is for all of us, and not an easy task.

People don't like change.

People clamor for change, but they don't want to be changed themselves, but it's a conversation and the work that we have to do every single day.

- Prosecutor, let me ask you this.

that I want to ask you about as well is police morale, okay?

Yes, there have been horrific incidents, well publicized as they should be, police need to be scrutinized, these incidents need to be prosecuted and too many, disproportionate number of black and brown people, disproportionately men, have been on the wrong end of that kind of police brutality and violence.

However, at the same time, police morale at an all-time low.

How big a problem is that?

Because you want to talk about hiring more police, who really wants to be a cop these days?

- Sure, sure.

We just did a law enforcement career fair at Montclair State.

You know, thank you to Montclair State for hosting us, and police morale is at a all-time low because we don't hear about good police.

We are focused, as we should be, on police that have gone rogue, that have lost a sense of their oath, but there are plenty of police officers that are doing their level best to keep us safe, that are putting their lives on the line, that come to work just for the reward of service, public service.

We don't emphasize or focus enough on them because we're focused on those that have decided that the laws don't apply to them or that somehow they are above the law.

So police morale is something that we have to be very conscious of.

We have to make sure that we are highlighting the good work that they do and making sure that the public understands that overwhelmingly, police are trying to do the right thing in very dangerous circumstances.

And so we hear about police, bad police, but there are more good police than there are bad police and our job is to make sure that they feel appreciated, that they feel seen and that they feel validated because they're trying to go home to their families, just like all the rest of us.

- Prosecutor, let me ask you this.

A lot of folks talk about the Supreme Court decision on the right to carry a concealed weapon.

In your view, what would that mean in New Jersey, if more and more people, actually, there are estimates that 150, 200,000 more people may be seeking that permit.

What would that mean in your view?

- In New Jersey, although the Supreme Court struck down the New York provision that had people not having to explain why they needed a gun, in New Jersey, it's not going to change the legal requirements of having to go through the process of applying for a permit, making sure that a background check is done.

So it just takes away the need to explain why you need a gun.

Any time that there is anything that even can remotely lessen the impact of gun control measures in New Jersey, it's always a scary proposition because we are, we see that the state is besieged with gun violence.

So anytime any of those requirements are made easier, certainly that gives us in law enforcement, certainly as a prosecutor, it gives me concern because there are too many guns in New Jersey, certainly in my county to begin with.

But the practical effects of it in New Jersey at least is that those legal requirements are still going to have to be satisfied.

- Camelia, let me ask you this.

Fentanyl, how big an issue?

- It's a very big issue.

Heroin and fentanyl is what we see in Paterson and it is more deadly and it is spreading.

And so we need to be conscious of where that is and it is a big problem that we have, certainly we see it in Passaic County, but it's not just in Passaic County.

We see it in our major cities.

- So I want to follow up on this.

People expect government, prosecutors' office, the courts, police, to protect us, and more and more people believe that the court system and the system itself is letting more and more people who have serious mental health issues back out on the street who are committing, and again, disproportionately in New York, you see it, but that's just a microcosm of urban communities across this country.

Do you believe that people with serious mental health issues that are not being taken care of or being helped where they should and how they should, that they are in fact creating even more crime, A?

And B, what should we be doing to address it?

- So it's a combination of mental health, it's a combination of poverty, trauma.

People do what they see.

And so if you grew up in an environment where violence begets violence, that's natural to you, that's normal to you.

So it's a conversation that we need to have about mental illness, but it goes beyond mental illness.

It's poverty, it's trauma, it's lack of resources.

It's all the social ills that we've been talking about for years.

We need to be able to talk about all those things.

Obviously, mental health is something that is extraordinarily important to our work, we need to be conscious of it.

And we need to be conscious of the fact that police are being called upon to deal with things like mental health, like issues that are really beyond what their training and expertise is, and it has to be a multidisciplinary approach where we have those partnerships that extend beyond law enforcement in order to really be able to address the issue.

- Got it.

I want to ask you about Miranda rights.

First of all, explain to everyone, 30 seconds or less, what are our Miranda rights?

- So Miranda rights are anytime that anyone is in police custody and they're being interrogated potentially about something, an offense that they have committed, they have to be issued Miranda warnings.

And Miranda warnings just, as we have come to know from television and otherwise, you have the right to remain silent, anything that you say can, may be used against you.

So in the recent Supreme Court case, although- - Excuse me, the United States Supreme Court ruled on, so did they say that cops don't have to give the Miranda rights anymore?

- No, no Miranda rights are still protected under the new Supreme Court case, but what the case does, it creates a situation where if police officers don't issue those warnings, an individual cannot sue the police officer, so it creates an immunity basically for if you don't issue those warnings and a person gives a statement, if the person is later tried and they're exonerated, they can't come back and sue the police for not issuing those warnings.

- Real quick before I let you go, do you have any concerns about this ruling?

- Certainly, it's one of the fundamental things that protections and civil rights that we have to ensure that people are making statements and their rights are being protected.

So if the police don't do that, then you can't sue them.

So that is certainly of concern, but we are going to ensure that our police officers certainly in Passaic County are making sure that they are abiding by those Miranda warnings and making sure that the public is protected - You're listening to, and that has been the prosecutor in Passaic County, Camelia Valdes.

Prosecutor, thank you so much.

- Thank you, Steve.

- We'll be right back.

To watch more Think Tank with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We are honored to be joined by the Honorable New Jersey State Assemblywoman, Shavonda Sumter, Chair of the Community Development and Affairs Committee, and also the President and CEO of Children's Aid and Family Services.

Good to see you, Assemblywoman.

- Great to see you, Steve.

Thank you for having me.

- You got it.

Listen, we are involved with Kean University in a series called "Urban Matters".

They have an urban institute there, the John S. Watson Institute focusing on urban issues, as you know.

The most pressing two or three urban issues in this state that we must address are?

- Wealth disparities between Black residents in the state of New Jersey and brown residents and non-minority residents.

We're upwards of $300,000 in net wealth for a non-Black resident in the state of New Jersey, and it really stems from lack of home ownership, educational opportunities, food insecurities.

So really, the Watson Institute has been instrumental in working with the Legislative Black Caucus, in which I'm also the Chair of, in highlighting these issues in partnership with the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and the Black Mayors' Association.

So we've doubled down in this space.

- We're gonna pick off another couple of issues after this, but to be clear, our colleagues and friends at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the study that they did in terms of the wealth gap, $322,500 for white families versus $17,700 for Black families, $26,000 for Latino families.

That's the wealth gap we're talking about.

- It's real, it is real.

Real dollars and cents in 2022.

- Would you say that crime is one of the top three issues in our urban communities, Assemblywoman?

- Jobs, it still stems from jobs, Steve.

So while crime has risen in the pandemic, mental health issues are also exacerbated because of the pandemic, but really jobs and earning a livable wage, as we talk about the wealth gap, because it creates access to health care, access to education, access to opportunity, which we still continue to fight for those pieces in our urban communities, and it's critical.

- Childcare.

Our initiative, "Reimagine Childcare", you were one of the co-sponsors of the very historic and significant Thriving by Three program which provides a $28 million grant program aimed at expanding availability and improving quality of infant childcare, toddler childcare in New Jersey.

Why is that initiative, Thriving by Three, so important?

- So Steve, in New Jersey, we want to take care of all of our children.

5000 infants and toddlers were not attending any childcare, daycare institution in the pandemic.

In fact, some children who were born during that time only know their parents because we were socially isolated for the safety of our loved ones.

So coming out of this, in childcare facilities we had women primarily as the work force most impacted by the pandemic by not being open in shutdown.

So infusing over $28 million in grant programs, it will impact all families and help all our infants and toddlers to learn social skills, to have a safe place to learn and grow while parents may have to go to work or take care of other family needs.

So it was important that we invested money into this service line of zero to three for early start, for safety, health and wellness of our children in New Jersey.

- Assemblywoman, talk to us about gun violence in our urban communities.

It's systemic, it's longstanding, and there's no simple solution.

What is one policy, one action that must be taken that can at least stem the tide, improve the situation, because it ain't gonna get fixed any time soon?

I don't know if there is a fixing, but there has to be a decrease in some significant way.

Please, Assemblywoman.

- So as the Legislative Black Caucus, we've done a number of initiatives around gun violence in our communities.

One of the ones that I love to uplift is partnership with social service entities.

When there's a shooting, wrapping around the entire family.

It's not just policing, but it's the trauma of post a shooting that hits the family and those impacted in an entire community.

We had a horrific loss of a young man who was a senior in high school earlier this year, just delivering groceries to his grandmother.

And the impact in our community was a ripple effect that has a lasting effect.

So making sure we have the social support services to support our families during this trauma so that they can find healthy ways to heal, and that piece is important, and also safe ways to report.

If you see something, say something.

It's important that we allow our community safe access with our prosecutors to report if they know of a shooter in their communities and neighborhoods.

- Let's talk concealed weapons.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled on a New York Case that will make it, I don't want to say easier, but it's changed the laws that relates to the ability to carry a concealed weapon.

New Jersey has certain safeguards, according to some, in terms of how you get that permit to carry a concealed weapon.

But what concerns do you have about that United States Supreme Court ruling on concealed weapons, and making it frankly, I'm not gonna say easier, but legal in more situations than ever before, please.

- Steve, I'm concerned about the access to semi-automatic weapons, so multiple magazine clips.

In New Jersey, we reduced the number of magazine clips that you can have, stamping guns so we know who owns them.

Let's take the Buffalo Supermarket shooting where they had an armed law enforcement retired person in the supermarket, where the person was shooting and had body armor on during a mass shooting of innocent persons.

So making some of those pieces illegal that ship mail order to people so that they can cause harm.

This is not the military.

Military grade style weapons has no place in civilian hands to potentially cause harm, and we've had upwards of over 200 mass shootings just this year alone, and we're in the seventh month of the year.

It's exhausting.

Uvalde, Texas, the school shooting, it gets horrific, post even Connecticut shooting where New Jersey really went to work on making sure that we put safeguards in place.

But we have to have families engaged.

We have to have registered owners have responsibilities for the sale of their guns, which New Jersey did, so really putting some smart vehicles in place.

And also I'm a proponent of the mental health screenings, because you never know when a psychotic episode may occur, and then we're sitting here with someone who has a legal weapon to discharge in an open space for innocent victims.

- Let me try this real quick.

The Supreme Court also has made a historic, significant, and some say controversial decision about Roe versus Wade, changing a law that's been in existence for 50 plus years.

The greatest concern you have, if any, about that Supreme Court decision is?

- Access to health care.

New Jersey has some of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the country, so access to reproductive health care is impacted by this decision.

Folks like to just uplift the fact that abortions are now, I just can't believe it, that some states, middle of the country, are making it harder to get access to reproductive health.

- Excuse me, Assemblywoman, it is likely that there'll be 50 plus states that, after the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe versus Wade, it is likely that more than half of the states will ban abortion.

Again, it depends upon what period of time when a woman is pregnant.

- Or number of weeks.

So it's getting complicated for people to understand what their rights are, especially if there's a compromising pregnancy.

We read recently about a 10 year old who had to leave her home state who was in fact raped by a 29 year old, to have a safe procedure.

- In Indiana.

She went from Ohio to Indiana.

How would that be different in New Jersey, because New Jersey, through the governor and the legislature, have "codified" the legal right to abortion?

What does that exactly mean?

- So it means that you can come to New Jersey and have a safe procedure, and that we will not extradite you back to your home state.

We will protect the privacy, because this is also a health privacy issue, of the woman and the choices that she chooses to make.

Or of the female, let me say it that way, versus of the woman, of the female.

It's 30 million women and girls impacted by the Roe v. Wade decision that the Court made, 30 million.

- New Jersey Assemblywoman, Shavonda Sumter, Chair of the Community Development Affairs Committee, also the Chair of the Black Caucus in the state legislature.

Assemblywoman, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

To watch more Think Tank with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by Nancy Holecek, Executive Vice President, Chief Nursing Officer at RWJ Barnabas Health, one of the significant underwriters of public broadcasting, including our production company.

Nancy, first of all thank you for joining us.

- Thank you, Steve, thank you for having me.

Make the connection between human trafficking and the healthcare system, but also nurses in particular, please.

- Absolutely, so human trafficking is a global and local issue and if you don't mind me just quoting a couple of percentages, globally, it's about approximately 25 million folks are trafficked globally.

And one in four of those are children, 71% are women or girls and 29% are men or boys.

And of that 25 million, in New Jersey, unfortunately, we have the 13th highest call volume in the United States and ninth, we are ninth in the US for reported cases.

The link between those numbers that I just shared, human trafficking and our healthcare system and our nurses and clinicians in particular is because at least 80%, if not a little bit more, of those victims who are trafficked do seek healthcare while they're being trafficked.

63% seek healthcare in an emergency department and others may seek healthcare in a dental office or for substance abuse, you know, various other environments.

And so there is absolutely the opportunity for our nurses on our clinicians to be the first point of contact for those that are most vulnerable and to make that connection - But Nancy help us understand this.

First of all, I didn't even make the connection in my own mind between victims of human trafficking and the healthcare system, but what is the responsibility of a clinician, particularly a nurse, a physician, but a nurse, who, as we know, nurses often deal more directly with patients, what exactly could and should they do, Nancy?

- Well, it first really starts with raising awareness, Steve, and education.

And so partnering with state agencies and making sure we have great relationships and partnerships with our local law enforcement, making sure that there's bidirectional education around this particular issue, providing our staff, our clinicians and our staff with the appropriate tools, evidence-based tools to screen, to be aware and sensitive to folks that come in that may be acting a little bit differently, either looking for emotional signs or for physical signs of abuse.

And so, again, because these victims are seeking healthcare, and we are, as you said, usually probably the first person that sees them, it is really our opportunity to intervene.

And when I say intervene, I say that not in an aggressive way or an assertive way, in a very sensitive way.

So this is a sensitive subject, sensitive issue, and need to approach it cautiously and sensitively.

- But real quick on this Nancy, but many of these victims, if not all of them, are incredibly fearful of the potential reprisal of someone helping them and it be known that they asked for help or accepted help.

It's complicated, is it not?

- It's very complicated, Steve, and no doubt, they are, I'm certain fearful.

We have heard stories from survivors and we may not make, we may not make a referral on the first connection.

We may just start a relationship with that victim, but that's why I say we approach it cautiously, sensitively, applying the the evidence-based tools and the assessments that we know and then gently approaching the subject in a private, safe location for that potential victim, asking questions, just some something as simple as, "Do you need help?

Are you okay?"

And letting them take it from there, giving them the power to make that decision at that time or seek us in the future.

- Hey Nancy, thank you so much, all the best to you and the team.

- Thank you, Steve.

- And also, thank you to all the extraordinary nurses out there who never get enough attention.

- Thank you, Steve.

- Thank you, Nancy.

I'm Steve Adubato, thank you.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Kean University.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

TD Bank.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

Choose New Jersey.

MD Advantage Insurance Company.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

AM970 The Answer.

Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

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