News

Fed oversight of NJ State Police ends

Published September 22, 2009

A judge has ended federal monitoring of the New Jersey State Police more than 10 years after the shooting of unarmed minority men during a highway traffic stop prompted intervention over racial profiling.

U.S. District Court Judge Mary L. Cooper signed the order dissolving a consent decree Monday, following a joint motion filed in August by the state and U.S. Justice Department.

The move followed Gov. Jon Corzine’s bill signing in August that established an office within the state attorney general’s office to oversee the state police.

“The court-ordered lifting of the federal consent decree represents a watershed moment for all of the more than 4,000 members of the New Jersey State Police who have worked tirelessly to gain and maintain the public’s trust and confidence through transparency, sound managerial oversight and holding fast to the best practices of police professionalism and reform,’’ State Police Superintendent Colonel Rick Fuentes said after Cooper had signed the order.

State police agreed to federal oversight after troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike shot at a van containing four minority men during a 1998 traffic stop, wounding three of them.

The agency has implemented major changes since then, including training and new supervisory policies to monitor road stops. In addition, trooper vehicles now contain dashboard cameras to videotape traffic stops.

Attorney General Anne Milgram said the reforms have made the state police “a model for law enforcement throughout the country.’‘

Federal monitor Jim Ginger said in a 2007 semiannual report that the state police force is a different organization than when troopers fired on the van. Ginger and a second monitor tracked troopers’ stops of minority motorists for years, issuing reports every six months.

David Jones, president of the State Police Fraternal Association, commended the troopers but condemned the Attorney General’s Office for not having policies and systems in place that would have allowed the state police to identify and resolve isolated incidents of profiling.

“Former attorneys general for their own political expediency were willing to throw the state police under the bus,’’ Jones said. “A decade later, we can look back at who the true professionals are and at those people who would sacrifice public safety for their own careers.’‘

The monitors found the state police consistently in compliance for several years before the judge lifted the order. Corzine confirmed the finding with an independent review.

Source: Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.