The New Jersey Attorney General has published a database of all of the major discipline reports that police departments have released this week in response to Law Enforcement Directive 2020-5. Although the AG is heralding the disclosures as “an important and necessary step to build greater public trust,” we are already identifying discrepancies. Here is another troublesome one from Lower Alloways Creek Police Department, in Salem County.
According to Lower Alloways Creek Police Department’s 2020 Annual Major Discipline Report, officer Jared Adkins “was terminated ...
Update as of 10/23/2020: As mentioned below, we filed OPRA requests on September 26, 2020 for videos that had not been released. On October 6, 2020, the State said it did not have body cam or dash cam footage of the shooting of Luan Agolli. On October 7, 2020, the State identified the man who died in Totowa on June 27th as Sergio Rodgiguez. As of today, it has not released any videos and said such videos might be produced by October 28, 2020 (which will be 123 days from the incident).
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In New Jersey, the Attorney General’s Office is required to ...
In mid-June 2020, the Attorney General of New Jersey issued two important police transparency directives, both of which have been challenged and were before the Appellate Division this week.
The first directive, Law Enforcement Directive 2020-5, requires future disclosure of the names of officers who have been subject to “major discipline,” which is described as a sanction of termination, demotion, or five or more days of suspension.
The second directive, Law Enforcement Directive 2020-6, orders the State Police and other state law enforcement agencies to make a ...
On July 15, 2020, the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee held its first public hearing on police reform in New Jersey. The hearing was intended to be a discussion on policing issues in general and no particular legislative bill was before the committee, but police transparency was a frequent topic.
The hearing opened with live testimony from Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who acknowledged that even after his recent decision to disclose the names of officers who receive major discipline, New Jersey still lags behind the rest of the nation when it comes to providing transparency ...
Readers may recall from numerous news articles that in April 2019, the Union County Prosecutor's Office (UCPO) concluded that former City of Elizabeth Police Director James Cosgrove used "racist and misogynistic" language in the workplace. The Attorney General issued a press release confirming the internal affairs investigation's findings, calling on Cosgrove to resign, and making leadership changes at UCPO.
After UCPO denied an OPRA request for Cosgrove's internal affairs reports, CJ Griffin filed a lawsuit on behalf of Plaintiff Richard Rivera seeking access to the reports ...
Transparency plays a critical role in building trust between the police and the community. When members of the public trust the police, they are more likely to follow their commands, cooperate with criminal investigations, and even advocate for more funding for police. When police resist transparency, community trust is seriously undermined. Secrecy also makes it harder to hold police departments accountable and assure that they are complying with the law and meeting the high standards that we set for them. This is why we have been involved in dozens of cases involving police ...
The following article was authored by Pashman Stein Partner Sam Samaro and appeared in the New Jersey Law Journal on October 29, 2015.
In March of 1991, a Los Angeles resident by the name of George Holliday noticed some commotion outside his apartment. He grabbed a camcorder, went out onto his balcony and shot the now iconic footage of Rodney King being beaten by the police. The resulting prosecution of the officers involved occurred because, and only because, the incident happened to take place within eyeshot of a citizen with a video camera. At the time, videotaped evidence of police ...
