New Jersey Public Safety Officers Law Blog : New Jersey Public Safety Employee Lawyer & Attorney : Pellettieri, Rabstein & Altman Law Firm : Workers Compensation, Discipline Representation for Police & Firefighters : New Jersey

As reported by nj.com, after rolling out tougher rules in May for police departments’ internal affairs units, State Attorney General Paula Dow has released new reporting forms that omit a crucial question: How many complaints about police officers are being investigated at the end of each year? The new forms published Tuesday don’t require police departments to list the number of open investigations at year’s end, raising concerns among rights’ advocates that cases will continue to fall off the books, as they have for years.

“The intention with these forms is to provide a snapshot of accountability,” Peter Aseltine, a spokesman for Dow, said yesterday. “That reporting was never intended as a means to track individual cases.” But Deborah Jacobs, executive director of ACLU-NJ, who initially supported Dow’s proposals until she saw the finished product on Tuesday, called it a “huge step backward.” She added, “It’s the more serious internal affairs complaints that take longer to investigate.”

Critics said it was the second time this month that Dow limited access to public data. Earlier this month, she restricted information on overtime compensation for state law enforcement officers. Her office said today she was only codifying a set of legal precedents dating to 2002. Jacobs said there was another problem as well. “We need an attorney general who will stick around for more than a year or two and dig in to fix the serious ongoing police practices issues that the ACLU has been raising for years,” she said.

State and local officials said that despite the omission on the new forms, police departments will have no problems policing their own. Critics said it leaves members of the public out of the loop if they want to track important data that has been consistently spotty for the last decade.

The Attorney General’s Office said that under Dow’s new system, county prosecutors have a more prominent role monitoring internal affairs complaints, analyzing all the numbers and squaring away any discrepancies. Previously, counties have not carried out those duties. The forms in question allow the public to review police departments’ data.

Jacobs did praise other parts of Dow’s new policies. Police departments must now track complaints by officer to watch for patterns; they must devote more resources to training; and they must publicize summaries of the most serious complaints, though they don’t have to name officers. “It is absolutely critical that law enforcement agencies investigate allegations against officers thoroughly and fairly, and that we provide the public with meaningful data about the complaints,” Dow said in May.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As reported by nj.com, in what some advocates of open government call an unprecedented overreach, Attorney General Paula Dow has blocked the public from knowing how much overtime State Police troopers and other state law enforcement officials earn. Dow’s rule, which took effect this month, is part of a larger effort by the Attorney General to make confidential any records that “may reveal or lead to information that may reveal” an officer’s assignment.

The measure applies to the State Police and any other law enforcement officers that work under the Department of Law and Public Safety, but not local police departments, said Leland Moore, a spokesman for Dow. But open government advocates said the move by Dow restricts basic financial information, and that the taxpayers of New Jersey have a right to track public spending, including overtime. “Public employees, including law enforcement, have never liked the public knowing how much they make,” said Ron Miskoff of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government. “But the public is paying the freight and I don’t see how knowing someone’s overtime is going to put anyone in danger.”

State records show that troopers earned $25.5 million in overtime last year, and as of September they made $15.7 million. Topping the list was Sergeant Robert Galik, assigned to Turnpike duty, who earned $63,221 in overtime last year. He had made $50,685 through the first nine months of this year, the second highest amount among troopers.

The State Treasury currently makes payroll information available for all state employees, including police, through a website created under Governor Chris Christie’s open government initiative. The website, yourmoney.nj.gov, billed as Christie’s “Transparency Center,” is updated every three months and is intended to help “taxpayers better understand public finances” and to “make government more accountable.” Moore said the Trasury will comply with Dow’s new rule and no longer post overtime information for police under the Department of Law and Public Safety.

Under the rules, total overtime figures for the department and its divisions will still be available. Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for Dow, said the rule reflected the long-standing position of the Attorney General’s Office. The Department of Corrections said there is no rule like the one imposed by the Attorney General to block overtime data for correctional officers.

Dow’s rule regarding overtime was enacted as part of several measures to make more records confidential, including those that detail background investigations or evaluations for job applicants and those concerning employee discipline, discharges or promotions. Many of the rules, other than the overtime provision, are similar to restrictions on public records under the state open records act. But Miskoff said they went too far in curtailing public access.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As reported by nj.com, state officials will distribute nearly $3.6 million to more than 500 New Jersey law enforcement agencies to buy or replace body armor vests for their officers.

The awards announced by State Attorney General Paula Dow will be given to state, county, and local law enforcement and corrections agencies. Officials say grants were given to all 544 agencies that applied, and the minimum grant amount awarded is $500.

Funding for the grants comes from New Jersey’s Body Armor Replacement Fund, which was established by legislation in 1998. It has funded through a $1 surcharge on traffic tickets and forfeitures of bail.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

As reported by nj.com, despite a new round of public safety budget cuts, it could be a good year for the State Police. There will be new troopers, new cars and new civilian support staff in the upcoming budget year, Attorney General Paula Dow said.

Dow told the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee that the State Police is a “core funding priority” for Governor Chris Christie. “The class is expected to begin this August and provide us with approximately 100 new state troopers by graduation early next year,” she said. The class is expected to cost $3 million.

The State Police’s ranks are being depleted by a spike in retirements. Even with the new class, the total number of troopers is projected to drop from 2,819 this summer to 2,799 in June of next year. Another 50 civilians will be hired to handle administrative tasks, allowing higher-paid troopers to focus on police work, Dow said.

The State is also buying 325 new vehicles. Marked cars cost $51,000 while unmarked cars go for $30,000, according to Lee Moore, spokesman for the attorney general. About 850 State Police cars, 37 percent of the total fleet, have reached the 125,000 mile threshold and require replacement. Between the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year, 725 of those cars will be replaced.

Aging vehicles have been a concern for the Christie administration. The governor’s transition team reported that “certain elements of the State Police vehicle fleet have deteriorated to the point where safety is an issue.” 

The Department of Law and Public Safety, which oversees the State Police, is facing a $5 million budget cut. However, other areas of the organization will likely see new staff members. The state’s Division of Law, which has lost 100 lawyers because of a six-year hiring freeze, is expected to hire another 33 attorneys. The Office of Forensic Sciences, which operates the state crime lab, is slated to take on 29 new people, including scientists and evidence handlers.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

A previous entry to this blog focused upon the presence of illicit cell phones in prisons. In the entry, it was explained how illicit cell phones remain a major problem inside New Jersey’s prisons, as inmates use the devices to secretly communicate with each other, intimidate witnesses and direct drug deals and other illegal activity.

On September 16, 2009, the Trentonian reported that New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram is now utilizing sniffing dogs and orifice scanners to address the problem. Recently, twenty-five convicts from five different gangs and 10 other New Jersey prison inmates have been indicted for possession of cell phones.

Attorney General Milgram announced the indictments at a press conference in which police dogs demonstrated their ability to sniff out hidden phones and authorities unveiled a new cell detection device called the BOSS, for “Bodily Orifice Security Scanner.” The BOSS is a device for looking into a body like and x-ray machine or airport surveillance equipment that can see hidden items. The scanner is within a chair that inmates sit in to be checked for contraband.

Prison officers and others in New Jersey are concerned that the gangs which overpopulate state prisons are trying to run the prisons at the same time they try to call the shots for other gang members still on the outside. “Safety and security both inside and outside the prison walls are paramount to our mission,” said New Jersey Department of Corrections Commissioner George W. Hayman. “Illegal cell phones potentially provide the offender population with an opportunity to compromise public safety. This cannot and will not be allowed to happen, and we will continue to utilize aggressive, proactive measures in our efforts to protect law-abiding citizens.”

Attorney General Milgram stated that between August 2008 and July 2009, New Jersey Corrections Officers seized 391 cell phones from inmates. She also noted that the gang population in New Jersey prisons keeps escalating because of all the recent arrests of gang members, almost 2,000 in the last 13 months.

To read the article in its entirety, please click on the following link.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link