Passaic County Freeholder T.J. Best took one hit after another last week, losing his aunt, his godfather, and a mentor to COVID-19. Then a fraternity brother went into the hospital. Times like these make a person feel under siege, and yet the county elected official said he parts company with another mentor, Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly (D-35), on the question of Paterson bringing in the National Guard.

“I do question that,” Best told InsiderNJ. “It’s a slippery slope. Kids in Paterson are taught to run from cops. There is less trust now for uniforms and guns than ever. Now, if it’s assistance, I’m 100% for that, but why don’t we get out of work employees for that? I don’t see militarization of these circumstances as the best way to give assistance. Again, I consider the implications of guns and uniforms.”

Best doesn’t think the city is reporting the right numbers of COVID-19 casaulties. It’s not a cover-up, he said. He just thinks a less than sychronized system has contributed to lowballed figures.

“My aunt was a resident of a healthcare facility and she went into Preakness Hospital in Wayne. She declined extremely fast. By the time her COVID-19 test came back she had passed.” But COVID-19 wasn’t the official cause of death, at least not initially.  She was the first death at that facility, followed by an additional 12 people; as of yesterday, another ten people there were infected, bringing the total to 31.”

He knows the inside of it, and when he looks at the state processed numbers, sees the lag.

Then other people are dying who have not been tested.

He concedes all of it, and yet all that said, he sees certain policies in place exacerbated – not helping – the crisis.

“In Paterson, people are literally on top of one another,” said Best. “People live in apartments mostly, where they don’t have laundry and don’t have the capacity to store a week’s worth of food. So they’re forced outside. What that means is you get a situation such as you have in the 4th Ward, where right now, if you were to there, you would find 1,200 to 1,500 people outside in a five block radius. I mean, easy. I did it last night. I drove over there with my nephew. I couldn’t beieve it. I saw children in a group of 12 riding bicycles. I saw people on a front porch smoking hookahs and not changing the tip.”

What he sees consistently has led Best to conclude that Governor Phil Murphy needs to rescind his executive order closing parks.

“It’s one of the policies that needs to change,” said the freeholder. “We need to open green spaces. People are going to go outside. We can’t station armed guards outside forcing them to stay inside. People are going to go out. We need to have Eastside Park open as opposed to forcing people to stand on tight corners. What we’ve done is we’ve told people ‘you can walk on the sidewalk but you can’t walk in an open area park.’

“I’m going to ask the governor to rescind his executive order,” Best added. “We need additional guidelines, because right now it’s hurting more than helping people who need that outlet to prevent community spread.”

He has other concerns, including what he agonizingly refers to as a likley lost school year for Paterson’s students.

“I’m worried about the quality of instruction of an entire generation lost as a result of this,” said Best, who conceded that many children do not have computers at home to fulfill remote assignments.

“Even in households that do have a computer, you have multiple children, let’s say three kids and one computer and mommy’s got to work,” said the freeholder. “We need to explore more creative ways to deploy quality instruction digitally but we are seeing some pushback from the teacher’s union.”

Overall, Best recognizes the necessity of the shutdown and says in the beginning in particular Paterson benefited – or might have benefited – from a massive-scale retreat. But at this point, “We need more diection about what’s next. A year inside is not going to do it. It will be a powder keg. Of course, the president is not helping the situation. Talk about a lack of leadership. But we need a time limit. I’m not not seeing young men or middle aged men in the County of Passaic dying in large numbers. We have had over 9,000 positive tests in the county, 14 deaths of people under 50, and five between the ages of 30-39. Now those were five precious lives. But is the solution to stop for those five people; to shut down everything and just wait, wait, and wait? I feel for so many people. I’m on a governmental payroll, I work for the Department of Education. I have a safety net. But a majority of people don’t work for government.

“We need to open up the same way we shut down,” Best said. “And as part of that, people need an outlet like the parks.”

They need certain limits when they reopen them, he acknowledged.

Keep the rims off the hoops.

Keep the bathrooms closed.

But people need an outlet, he said.

People will start to push back, probably violently.

“We had five shootings over Easter – two people died,” he said.