Right now on NJ Spotlight News, vaccine clash.

In a break from current CDC recommendations, the American Academy of Pediatrics is advising parents to get their young children vaccinated against COVID-19.

Plus, policing the police.

Despite dozens of fatalities at the hands of law enforcement, a deeper dive by our reporters indicates almost none of them have been held accountable.

So this is a disturbing trend that advocates have told me often leads to no indictment charges and they're really calling on the state legislature right now to pass reform.

Also, utility relief is on the way as state agencies try to get a handle on skyrocketing energy costs.

So this is a huge turnout.

The community definitely came out to help with their savings on their utility accounts.

And building a future for kids.

As Newark parents prepare to send their little ones off to kindergarten, a new program is creating a college savings plan for them.

NJ Spotlight News starts now.

[MUSIC PLAYING] From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

Good evening, and thanks for joining us on this Wednesday night.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

We begin with a few of today's top stories.

First, the nation's largest organization of pediatricians is breaking with federal policy, recommending that infants get vaccinated for COVID-19 ahead of an expected surge in respiratory illness this winter.

It's a sharp contrast from positions taken by federal regulators under the Trump administration.

The American Academy of Pediatrics announced the new policy on Tuesday, urging infants between six months and two years old to get the vaccine because they're considered high risk for the worst effects of the virus at that age.

The academy also recommends that children between two and 18 years old get the vaccine if they haven't already, if they're considered high risk due to other conditions, or if they live with anyone considered high risk.

Trump's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has publicly shared his skepticism of vaccines and drastically changed the federal vaccine approval and regulation process since being appointed.

Earlier this year, Secretary Kennedy said children should not get the COVID shot, but a CDC study found that half of infants hospitalized for COVID-19 between 2022 and 2024 had no underlying conditions.

Well, the Academy hopes the new recommendations will boost vaccine rates among those youngest children.

And there are now more ways to get around in South Jersey.

Governor Murphy today announced a major transportation upgrade aimed at improving access throughout the region using three new initiatives.

An expanded electric bus fleet in Camden, a new express shuttle from Vineland to Atlantic City, and a $5 million boost to grow what's known as micro-transit for rural and underserved communities.

Now those are on-demand forms of public transportation like vans and shuttles.

The express shuttle is slated to launch this fall, offering direct weekday service for casino workers and commuters in the hopes it'll ease congestion and connect more residents to jobs.

Meanwhile, Camden's eight new electric buses will help improve air quality and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The microtransit options will be geared toward giving people rides to doctors appointments, jobs and school.

South Jersey has for years dealt with being a mass transit desert.

State leaders involved in the new plan hope to alleviate that.

All while they combat ongoing problems elsewhere at New Jersey Transit.

New analysis by Bloomberg found that NJT is less reliable than rail lines in our neighboring New York and Connecticut.

According to the data, Jersey riders deal with service disruptions six times more often than commuters on the other systems.

And coming up, policing the police.

Are state programs working to cut down on fatal police encounters and who's being held responsible when they don't.

Funding for NJ Spotlight News provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association.

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RWJBarnabas Health.

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More information is online at njrealtor.com And Forreston committed to delivering clean reliable American-made energy Tonight we're taking a deeper look at what can be a deadly intersection policing and mental health and the accountability that remains rare a 2019 state law was meant to change that yet more than six years later indictments are nearly non-existent and the public still has no clear or centralized way to track deadly police involved encounters.

The issue was put back in focus after the police involved shooting of a New Brunswick woman experiencing a mental health crisis.

Our senior writer Colleen O'Day and mental health writer Bobby Breyer teamed up to look into the issue and join us now.

Colleen, Bobby, thanks for coming on the show.

You both tackled this story from sort of two different lenses.

And Bobby, I want to start with you looking at this troubling trend when it comes to police involvement in mental health crises.

And you sort of zeroed in on this incident in New Brunswick that has renewed the spotlight on this issue.

Can you tell us a little bit about that and what you were able to uncover?

Yeah, Bri, what we know right now is that Deborah Terrell, a 68 year old resident of the John P. Fracano Towers, a senior high rise in New Brunswick was shot and killed by a New Brunswick police officer during a mental health crisis earlier this month.

It was the second time that police were called to that apartment complex that morning.

The first time around 5 AM, the time the shooting took place was around 8 AM, according to other news reports.

So that's what we've learned initially.

The investigation is still ongoing from the Attorney General's office, and we still have not seen a release of the body cam footage from that office.

The remaining outstanding question so far is really whether the States Arrive Together program, that program that pairs police officers with mental health, was on the scene at the time of the shooting.

We have not heard that either yet from the Attorney General's office.

Yeah, and I want to get to that program, but you, in your reporting, you noted, you know, this was not an isolated case.

What type of patterns did you note through your investigating emerged from the way the state handles police involved shootings when there are folks who are having a mental health crisis?

That's right.

We know that these types of shootings automatically go under the investigation from the attorney general's office.

And then that relates to an investigation that takes place, ultimately leading to a straight state grand jury decision.

It should be noted that this latest shooting in New Brunswick really comes on the heels of the indictment, the lack of indictment, rather, against the Fort Lee police officer earlier this summer who shot and killed Victoria Lee during a mental health crisis in July of last year.

In addition to that, there has been two previous no indictment charges, criminal charges against police officers, the first one against the officer who shot and killed Andrew Washington in July -- excuse me -- in August of 2023.

In addition to that, the -- against the officer who shot and killed Natsi Seabrooks in Patterson a few years ago.

So this is a disturbing trend that advocates have told me often leads to no indictment charges.

And they're really calling on the state legislature right now to pass reforms, beyond just talking points and lip service, to really get to the heart of the matter, which would often be revising the state's use-of-force policy every other year, as well as kind of developing these what they call civilian complaint review boards to be able to review police conduct in municipalities and counties throughout the state.

I mean, at least one reform, Colleen, came from the Attorney General's office in 2019, which put them, as Bobby mentioned, in charge of keeping track of any police-involved fatality.

That could be obviously a shooting, but also when there's a high-speed pursuit, a chase, something of that nature.

I know you combed through a lot of data.

What did you find about how accessible that is?

And are we able to really track a lot of this now?

Yeah.

So, first, I do want to note that it was a law passed in 2019 kind of because legislators were really very concerned that there were very, very few indictments in any of these cases.

How few?

When you say very few, can you give us an example?

We didn't have numbers back then, but it was, it was, we were told almost none.

So what we know today is, and this is from looking through essentially press releases and then corresponding those or correlating those with use of force documents.

We know that there have been more than 100 deaths either in custody due to shootings, due to high speed chases, due to police officers, since late January of 2019, which is when the change in the law took effect.

Of those, there have been three indictments, one of which was later thrown out by a judge.

So there were only two indictments that stood, one in a shooting case and one in a high speed chase.

So advocates are saying that this system really has not proven to be any better than, than the previous system where county prosecutors used to investigate these and then bring them to the court.

Investigate these and then bring them to grand juries.

- Yeah, I mean, why haven't they created a public centralized database?

You said you combed through documents.

You reported you combed through hundreds of press releases, which I mean, not everybody has access to.

- So it's a really good question.

And the way that the Attorney General's website is set up, it's not easy.

Once you read, if you can go back, you know, several pages to find an old press release.

Once you read it, it puts you back on the first page, so you've got to kind of work your way back.

It's not an easy thing to do, and it's a very good question.

We have the use of force database, which has been in effect for several years now, and that tells us by department how many officers have used excessive force, and that can be anything from using your arms or a punch, using a taser, to discharging a weapon.

The only way looking at that database to know if someone was fatally shot is by looking under a column that is called reason suspect not arrested, and then it will say deceased.

And even all of those do not correlate completely with the number of fatal shootings that we've been looking at.

So even that's an imperfect measure.

Wow.

I mean Bobby I know you spoke with a number of advocates and families.

What are they saying needs to happen.

You know I spoke to the nephew of Deborah Terrell and he had spoken about the fact that he would like to see a shift in the culture of the police force in New Jersey.

He had said that while directives and laws and rules recently have been effective, at least to some degree, at raising awareness, he said an underlying cultural shift needs to happen, not just in New Brunswick, but also throughout the state.

He said until that happens, there's really going to be a repeated pattern of these instances.

And unfortunately, this is the fourth shooting incident that we've seen here in the state in which police have shot and killed somebody in a mental health crisis in recent years.

So his issue was more with the culture rather than the rules and regulations themselves.

Colleen, are there talks about reforming this further?

I mean, you mentioned that tab, the reason subject not arrested tab, it's an obscure category and I imagine that it really prevents folks from getting the real picture of what the real numbers are.

What's being done at the state or the legislative level?

So right now, nothing because the legislature's in recess.

We certainly, I don't think we will see the Senate or Assembly fully back in until after the election.

We see this in election years.

You know, but certainly the legislators who put this in place years ago, and there are a number of legislators who are very supportive of greater transparency, so we'll have to see what comes out of that.

We have also seen, by the way, though, in recent years, the last couple years, the, you know, we are a Democratic-controlled legislature, that the Democrats have been leery to put forth any additional, I guess you'd say, you know, legislation that would seem to look like it is anti-police.

Yeah.

Or, so, I'm not sure what else we will see.

You know, they're looking for more tough-on-crime kind of legislation.

Or at least that's the way they've been trending in the last couple of years.

All right.

Colleen O'Day and Bobby Breyer for us.

You can read all of their reporting on our website, njspotlightnews.org.

Thanks to you both.

Thanks, Bree.

Thanks, Bree.

In our Spotlight on Business report tonight, everybody claims to have a plan to deal with soaring electric bills, but will any of them work?

Well, Democratic nominee for governor, Mikey Sherrill, today made the issue the focus of her campaign, announcing she'll declare a state of emergency over utility costs on day one in office if elected.

Pledging to freeze utility rates for the average New Jersey family over the next year, though she didn't say exactly who that includes, and to reduce regulations around bringing new solar and nuclear power online.

She also promised to hold the state's four major electric utilities accountable for the rate increases and to sue President Trump and grid operator PJM for policies she says added to the power supply shortage.

But residents need to handle their higher bills now.

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan visited an event in Mercer County to connect people with Direct Relief and she joins me here in the studio.

Hey, Brenda.

Hey, Bri.

You know, while the campaigns debate this issue, people's bills just keep going up.

Now, we scoped out a special event aimed at connecting utility ratepayers with state and federal programs designed to lower the cost of skyrocketing energy bills.

St. Paul's AME Zion Church in Ewing opened up its meeting hall, and Board of Public Utilities staffers checked in about 125 applicants from Mercer County.

Folks we spoke with looked and sounded shell-shocked as they talked about bills ranging from $400 to $800 a month.

Some had already gotten shut-off notices for non-payment.

This all comes after the regional energy grid operator, PJM Interconnection, held energy auctions that caused bills in June to start spiraling upward, averaging 20% more per month.

And that's across all four major electric distribution companies, PSENG, JCP&L, Atlantic City Electric, and Rockland Electric.

And while people appreciated the guidance, they felt overwhelmed.

I don't feel so good with the bills going high like this.

This is horrible for people, especially for families that's trying to work.

It's bad.

Would you have to cut something out to pay this bill?

Probably would.

Food.

You'd skimp on your food budget?

And really, medical, because you know you have to pay for your pills now, too.

Medicaid don't cover everything, of course.

I'm disabled right now.

I'm only collecting disability for the moment right now.

And I'm just living off that.

How does it, I mean, how do you feel about the way these bills just skyrocketed?

How much more did it go up?

Tremendously.

I want to say at least a little over $100.

I'm paying extra.

Is there a Kenyatta Claiborne?

Is there a Kenyatta Claiborne?

And there she goes.

I thought that the turnout would have been smaller, but out of my surprise, I see it's been -- it's about 75 people here.

Starting at 930, we had a line already.

About 45 people were here.

So this is a huge turnout.

The community definitely came out to help with their savings on their utility accounts.

So this was a good thing.

What does that tell you?

That tells me that it's definitely a need and we have to continue coming out to the community and assisting them where they are.

So these one stops that we have had throughout the state has definitely assisted the community.

Staff from PSCNG, they're helping with putting protection on the utility accounts.

So they don't get cut off?

Yeah, so they don't get cut off.

It is a summer discrimination program that the board just announced and it's over September 30th.

So we're having the utilities protect every account if they have a shut off notice or any type of hardship.

If we don't take some measures to make some changes on the legislative side, things like that, I think it will get worse.

I mean, certainly we're going to have to do things like raise minimum wage, you know, because the thing is the cost of living has gone up over the last several years.

However, salaries and hourly wages have not necessarily gone up to match that.

And so that's the reality that a lot of people are dealing with, is that they're working as hard as they can, some working more than one job, and there's still not enough to cover the bills because rent has gone up, utilities have gone up, groceries have gone up.

Now the event featured staff from several different groups offering to hook up rate payers with several existing assistance programs plus some relatively new ones the BPU recently adopted to help blunt the pain.

Now those include over $430 million in direct relief for all New Jersey electric customers.

That's $100 for every customer and $150 for low and moderate income customers.

That doesn't have to be paid back.

But utilities will also put $30 credits on bills in July and August for $60 total.

Then for six months from September through February, bills will have a $10 fee to recover that cost.

Expanded monthly benefits for low and moderate income households begin in October through New Jersey's Universal Service Fund program.

They'll range from $20 to $200.

Finally, utilities have agreed not to do any shutoffs for nonpayment from July through September.

Now, the BPU noted in its last meeting there's a substantial under-enrollment in that Universal Service Fund program, meaning a bunch of eligible ratepayers still haven't signed up.

The Universal Service Fund, which is open to low and moderate income residents at 60% of state median income, and only has about a 20% enrollment rate at this point in time.

So that means 80% roughly of the eligible households are not enrolled.

That program is very helpful for getting energy bills down to a more reasonable place for those residents and those customers.

This should be helpful for people, but in no way solves the problem.

So I hope this helps some people get over the hump.

This is a very difficult time.

Now ultimately, bills will continue to rise, and this is just blowing up in time for the political campaigns this fall, Brianna.

Yeah, you got that right.

I wonder though who the public's going to blame for this.

Well, an FDU poll was done that shows about a quarter of Jersey voters blame the utility companies.

But it also depends on your political party.

About a third of Democrats blame utilities.

More than half of Republicans though blame Governor Murphy.

Poll director Dan Cassino says most folks really don't know why energy bills are rising so they're blaming whoever they don't like.

Makes sense.

Great reporting, Bren.

Thank you for that.

- Thanks, Brie.

- Support for The Business Report is provided by the Newark Alliance Presents the 2025 Halsey Fest, featuring the vibrancy of Newark's Arts and Education District and Halsey Street.

Halsey, a neighborhood built on hustle and heart.

The 2025 Halsey Fest schedule is available at halseynwk.com.

- Well, as summer starts to wind down, families are of course getting ready for back to school, and parents in Newark got some unexpected good news today.

The city's school district will open college savings accounts for every kindergarten student.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagas was at the district's press conference this morning and joins us now with more details.

So Jo, how's this program gonna work?

- Well, Brianna, the way it works is every student entering kindergarten in the Newark Public Schools this year will be given $25 to open a 529 college savings account.

Now, anyone with kids knows the years go very quickly, but also $25 won't pay for college.

The goal here in the district is to begin teaching financial literacy courses to the little kids and their parents so that they understand while they're very young the value of saving and how to grow that money.

>> Be a principal.

They might be little, but they're not too young to have a dream.

And for many of these kids who are just weeks away from starting kindergarten, those dreams include being back in a school setting.

But their goals require a college degree that's getting more costly by the minute.

It's incredible.

It's really hard to really explain how to really feel about the moment, but you know, the 529 plan is perfect for starting and saving up for college because who knows 2038, what's it will be like.

Today, we take a major step in addressing the challenge that not every student has the financial means to attend college with the launch of Newark Saves, providing comprehensive financial literacy workshops and college planning sessions at every single one of our 42 elementary Newark Public Schools Superintendent Roger Leon made the announcement today with a rising kindergartner from each of the five city wards along with their parents.

He detailed how the district will work to engage as many families as possible with the literacy education courses and ways the students can grow their own accounts through academic achievement.

for students who achieve good grades, maintain perfect attendance, and participate in enrichment activities.

Families can also earn additional deposits by parents attending parent-teacher conferences, back-to-school nights, and all of the other incredible school events for their children.

They have a bright, bright future, so to start it now is perfect.

And if you're wondering how the district can afford these payments with school budgets stretched so thin, it comes from a partnership with Prudential Financial that put up $150,000 to make these initial investments.

FOCUS, the Hispanic Center for Community Development, will assist with outreach efforts.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz shared their support of programs that help close the gaps in generational wealth that affect so many families of color.

We recognize that financial literacy in certain zip codes is something that's so far beyond.

Starting to teach financial literacy at a time when children are just imagining their first days of school, bringing in families that perhaps don't understand how critical it is for us to live within our means and to make the dollar stretch as best as possible, to save some money and figure out what are the best investments.

The earlier they know, the more that they can comprehend along the way and start saving from smaller and understand the concept of holding money and not just spending money.

By supporting Newark Saves, we reinforce our strategy to build bridges to financial security for generations, both locally and globally.

Giving opportunities for young people when they come into this world to have a fighting chance and the superintendent and Newark Saves is giving young people in our city the opportunity to do that.

Hopefully we can get some other people to join Prudential in adding some more money to help our babies realize their dreams because college is becoming more and more expensive.

Now during the press conference, executive staff in Newark pledged more than $8,000 to the Newark Saves program and Alamo Insurance, which is a Newark-based company, pledged an additional $10,000.

The district is hoping to see more outside support like this so they can expand the impact they're hoping to have.

In Newark, I'm Joanna Gagas, NJ Spotlight News.

That's going to do it for us tonight, but a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can always follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

And if you want to help support the programming public media brings you and keep stations like this one thriving, head to njspotlightnews.org/donate.

I'm Briana Vannozzi For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Have a great night.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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