Feds to probe Trenton police for ‘problematic’ use of force and illegal stops

BY: Dana Difilippo 

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation into Trenton and its police department, citing concerns that officers use excessive force and routinely, illegally stop and search pedestrians and motorists without reason or warrants.

Investigators will probe “problematic” uses of force against people stopped for minor traffic offenses and those who were cooperating or already restrained, said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division.

They’ll also investigate allegations that officers have used force to punish people observing or questioning their actions and that officers have escalated tensions with residents, injuring people in mental health crises, Clarke said in announcing the probe Tuesday.

“These allegations are serious and credible, and our investigation will seek to establish whether these allegations are true,” Clarke said. “Effective policing requires public trust. When law enforcement officers violate the Constitution and federal law, it erodes trust and undermines public safety efforts.”

U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said investigators will try to determine if the department has an unconstitutional, systemic “pattern or practice” of police misbehavior. The investigation is expected to take up to a year. A similar probe against Newark police a decade ago resulted in a 2014 consent decree that required the department to adopt reforms.

Investigators haven’t gotten specific reports of racial profiling, but 49% of the 7-square-mile capital city’s 90,000 residents are Black, while 37% are Hispanic or Latino, census figures show.

“We do not allege racial discrimination here. We are going to follow the facts and the law. We are aware, of course, that there is a sizable population of people of color within Trenton,” Clarke said.

Investigators will review use-of-force reports, court records, news media reports of police brutality and misconduct, officers’ body camera footage, officer training materials, and policies on how the department investigates citizen complaints and disciplines officers, Clarke said. They’ll also meet with police staff, observe officers on duty, and meet with the public, she added.

“As we begin this investigation, we recognize the challenges that Trenton and the Trenton Police Department face in addressing violent crime,” Clarke said. “But meeting these challenges requires confidence by the public that the police are committed to protecting them. It requires the assurance that police do not hold themselves above the law.”

Sellinger said he attended a town hall five weeks ago in Trenton where residents “raised concerns about excessive force, concerns about stops and searches done for no good reason.” Still, he and Clarke said no single incident prompted the probe.

But Trenton police have a long history of brutality and alarming encounters that have resulted in lawsuits and indictments:

• An officer was criminally indicted last year for pepper-spraying an elderly man, Joseph Ahr, on his porch after officers went to the home to talk to his son in 2020. Ahr died three weeks later.
• Two officers were charged in 2019 for beating a man after a routine traffic stop.
• An officer’s 2022 shooting of an unarmed motorist, which left him paralyzed, drove the city council president to demand more transparency and ask for the police director’s resignation. The director, Steve Wilson, remains in charge, and a Mercer County grand jury deemed the shooting justified.
• Officers made headlines in 2020 after they restrained a man in mental crisis by kneeling on him as he lay face-down in the dirt until he fell limp. He was declared dead minutes later.

In the state’s most recent report on major discipline meted out to law enforcement officers statewide, just one Trenton officer faced major discipline — for using a police department wash ticket to wash his personal vehicle. The police department has about 250 officers, and Trenton is the state’s fifth largest city.

Wilson’s office referred questions to Mayor Reed Gusciora, a Democrat who was a longtime state Assemblyman until he became Trenton mayor in 2018.

In a statement, Gusciora said he learned of the investigation Tuesday morning and has instructed all levels of city government to fully cooperate.

“My administration knows all too well the difficulty and danger police officers face on a daily basis. We thank and support the overwhelming majority of officers at the city, county, and state level who do the right things every day to keep Trentonians safe,” Gusciora said.

He credited Trenton officers for seizing drugs, more than 200 guns, and $133,722 from gun and drug traffickers in recent months.

“But we also recognize that the community’s trust in our police force is critical,” Gusciora said. “If any members of law enforcement violate the public trust or act in contravention of our state and federal laws, they should and must be held accountable.”

Patrick Colligan and Michael Cipriano, who head the state and city Policemen’s Benevolent Association, respectively, put out a joint statement that they “understand and respect the purpose” of the investigation and “remain committed to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.”

“However, we hope that this inquiry will also shed light on the pressing need for additional resources and support for our officers,” the statement read.

Trenton police respond to more than 100,000 calls for service a year, including 41 shootings in just the past month alone, Colligan and Cipriano said.

“Our police headquarters is in dire need of repair, and resources have been limited. The loss of 105 officers in 2012 has had a lasting impact, and we have yet to recover to a safe staffing level,” they said. “Retention of officers remains a significant concern, with the Covid-19 pandemic adding unprecedented burdens to our staffing levels.”

Sellinger said investigators’ goal is to improve policing.

“The object of a pattern and practice investigation is not to assign blame,” Sellinger said. “It’s to help fix problems that may exist. Whatever our findings may be, our ultimate goal is to ensure that the people of Trenton are served by a police force that effectively fights crime while respecting the constitutional rights of every person.”

Photo credits: New Jersey Monitor, Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora (Edwin J. Torres Governor’s Office)

Originally published on October 24th, 2023, in the New Jersey Monitor.

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Group of FL Republicans want D.C. mayor to remove Black Lives Matter mural

BY: MiTCH PERRY 

Claiming that the Black Lives Matter movement has demonstrated support for Hamas following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel, six Florida Republicans, including U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, are calling on Washington, D.C., Mayor Miriam Bowser to rename Black Lives Matter Plaza in the nation’s capital and remove the street mural that bears the organization’s name.

As protests broke out against police brutality and racial inequality in the immediate aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in June 2020, a mural featuring the words “Black Lives Matter” in 50-foot-tall capital yellow letters was painted alongside two blocks of 16th Street NW, just outside of the White House. The area was renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza NW” by Bowser, according to Washington.org, the city’s official tourism website.

Now 25 GOP members of Congress have written a letter to Bowser, urging her to “immediately” rename Black Lives Matter Plaza and erase the mural “due to that movement’s celebration of violent antisemitic terrorism.”

Along with Rubio and Scott, four Florida House Republicans — Scott Franklin from Polk County, John Rutherford from Jacksonville, Gus Bilirakis from Pasco County, and North Central Florida’s Michael Waltz — all signed the letter.

As proof of that sentiment, the Republicans cite a now deleted tweet sent out by the Chicago BLM chapter which showed an image of a Palestinian terrorist paragliding into Israel to kill Jews with the caption, “I stand with Palestine.”

They also say the D.C. chapter of BLM posted that Israel was guilty of apartheid, “while sharing posts that cast doubt on the atrocities that took place on Oct. 7, including the beheading of babies.” And they wrote that BLM Grassroots, which they claim is “the ideological leader of BLM right now, also threw its support behind these murderous attacks.”

“These posts are meant to delegitimize Israel and rationalize brutal attacks on the Jewish people,” the Republicans write in their letter.

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that these statements are motivated by an ugly animus against the Jewish people. BLM Grassroots said the Hamas attack ‘must not be condemned but understood’ as resistance to ’75 years of settler colonialism and apartheid.’ Those 75 years account for the entire existence of the Jewish state,” they wrote.

“You stated after the attacks that you ‘reject terrorism in all its forms’ and that ‘antisemitism has no place in our institutions, our country, our world, or our hearts,’” the letter to Bowser continues. “We wholeheartedly agree with this statement. We further believe that movements that celebrate violent antisemitism should not be honored by the government with a plaza, especially one located directly outside of our nation’s White House.”

The idea of removing the BLM mural rankles some in the Black community, however.“The mural was put up there at a moment when African-Americans and the nation were going through a lot of stress at the time,” says Yvette Lewis, the Hillsborough County chair of the NAACP. “It sounds like politicians are using this as an excuse to get rid of it and justify their means.”

Lewis says when she hears the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” she’s thinking about the sentiment behind it, not any organization.

“When I say Black Lives Matter, I’m referring to my life, not an organization. So when I say that, don’t equate me with antisemitism. My thing is that mural was put there for a reason, not for an organization, but for the lives that have been killed at the hands of police and law enforcement.”

Apology

The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter apologized on Oct. 11 on X for the post mentioned in the letter sent to Bowser.

“Yesterday we sent out msgs that we aren’t proud of,” the group wrote. “We stand with Palestine & the people who will do what they must to live free. Our hearts are with the grieving mothers, those rescuing babies from rubble, who are in danger of being wiped out completely.”

BLM Grassroots sent out a message on their Instagram page on Oct. 10 regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. “When a people have been subject to decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence, their resistance must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” the group wrote.

The Phoenix reached out to both Mayor Bowser and BLM Grassroots for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Israel has been at war with Hamas since the surprise attacks that killed 1,400 people, including at least 32 U.S. citizens. Hamas continues to hold around 200 hostages, including Americans.

Palestinian officials said Tuesday that 704 people were killed overnight and more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the fighting began, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday afternoon. The paper adds that those numbers couldn’t be independently verified.

Originally published on October 24th, 2023, in the Florida Phoenix.

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The private prison industry in FL is now changing; the state is taking more control

By: Mitch Perry 

When private prisons began operating nearly 30 years ago in Florida, they were one of the few systems in the nation to place oversight outside of the usual state corrections administration.

Now, after a damning audit released a year ago showing failures in oversight, the Department of Corrections has taken over the oversight of seven private prisons. The move began this month following legislation passed in the spring and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The transition means that the state’s Department of Management Services (DMS) will no longer be overseeing those seven private prisons.

Of the 85,145 inmates now in prisons in Florida, slightly more than 10,000 are housed in those seven private facilities, according to Department of Corrections Deputy Secretary Richard Comerford, who spoke before the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Wednesday.

The impetus for transferring the oversight to the FDC stems from a June 2022 Florida Auditor General audit of the DMS which found seven areas of deficiencies, including bureau monitoring of private correctional facility staffing. That means the facilities needed enhancements to ensure that appropriate and qualified staff were assigned to provide for and maintain the security, control, custody, and supervision of inmates.

There are three private prison providers that run the state’s seven private prisons: CoreCivic of Tennessee, LLC, GEO Group, Inc., and Management and Training Corporation (MTC).

The audit found that the GEO Group did not adequately maintain adequate levels of security personnel at the Graceville Correctional Facility for two three-month periods in 2019, and did not properly maintain the fire safety system for three months in 2018.

It also found that MTC did not follow up on maintenance issues noted at the Gadsden Correctional Facility for 17 months (from 2018 to 2020) and that MTC could not demonstrate that key security personnel had received appropriate training in accordance with Department of Corrections requirements for five months between 2019 and 2020.

Florida is one of 27 states use private corporations to run some of their correctional facilities, according to a 2023 report by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group that promotes reforms in sentencing policies. The first private facility in the state, Gadsen Correctional Facility, opened in 1995. The most recent private prison is Blackwater in Santa Rosa County, which opened in 2010.

State law requires private prisons to cost 7 percent less than comparable state facilities.

Orange County Democratic Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis asked Comerford to list the differences in policies and procedures between the state’s corrections department and the state’s private prisons – specifically that private prisons don’t transfer out inmates who commit violent infractions as quickly as FDC’s policies require.

Comerford did acknowledge that the state system had fallen behind the private facilities when it came to funding programming and education programs for inmates, but he said with recent funding from the Legislature, “I think we’re even going to be on a level playing field when it comes to programming and education.”

Originally published on October 18th, 2023, in the Florida Phoenix.

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