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As reported by nj.com, amid a rising tide of violence in Trenton, including a murder in the shadow of the Statehouse on Route 29, the State Attorney General sent officials yesterday to discuss helping Trenton’s layoff-depleted police department, Mercer County Prosecutor Joe Bocchini said today. The meeting between Bocchini, Trenton acting Police Director Dave Armitage, and officials from Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa’s office was hosted at Bocchini’s office and included the discussion of State Police help.   

Trenton Mayor Tony Mack laid off roughly one-third of the 300 member police department in September amid sweeping city budget cuts. Some police officers were rehired through grants, but the department ended the year with at least 80 less officers. “Unfortunately it goes back once again to manpower, the department is severely understaffed,” Bocchini said.

Bocchini said he believes Trenton needs at least 50 more police officers to make a dent in the violence. Armitage wrote a letter to the State Police Superintendent seeking assistance on Monday and State Senator Shirley Turner has previously offered to broker a meeting regarding State Police intervention. Turner and Attorney General Chiesa had a lengthy meeting on the topic last week, Bocchini said. 

The State Police fall under the Office of the Attorney General. Bocchini said no guarantees have been made and he cautioned that any plans were still in the discussion stage.

Trenton had three reported murders in January, following a December that saw six slayings in the city. The city’s homicide rate spiked to a four-year high for 2011. The Mercer Prosecutor’s office and Mercer County Sheriff Jack Kemler have already sent additional manpower to augment the Trenton police anti-crime unit.

Bocchini said yesterday’s meeting with Director of the Division of Criminal Justice Stephen Taylor was set up last week, prior to a drive-by shooting on Route 29 that left a 23-year old city man dead a few hundred yards from the Statehouse.

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As reported by nj.com, Attorney General Paula Dow, flanked by county prosecutors and state officials, formally unveiled a group of reforms designed to eliminate the abuse of anabolic steroids in New Jersey’s law enforcement ranks.

The measures, recommended by a panel Dow formed in December, pave the way for police departments to randomly test officers for steroids, increase safeguards in taxpayer-funded prescription drug plans, and heighten scrutiny of physicans who improperly prescribe steroids and human growth hormone. The reforms follow a series of Star-ledger reports about the use of steroids in law enforcement. The newspaper found at least 248 officers and firefighters obtained the substances from an unscrupulous Jersey City physician, Joseph Colao. In most cases, they used their government benefits to pay for drugs that ran as much as $1,100 a month. Taxpayers picked up the bill, which amounted to millions of dollars. 

“The investigative series done by The Newark Star-Ledger highlighted the damage that can be done when a doctor’s actions go unchecked and individuals become aware of the opportunity to obtain medications they may not be entitled to,” Dow said at a press conference in Hamilton. “The cost is borne not just by taxpayers, but in the erosion of faith people have in those who protect and serve. This is unacceptable.”

Among the initiatives, state guidelines on drug-testing will be rewritten to explicitly authorize departments to randomly test their officers for steroids. The guidelines will also allow chiefs or prosecutors to test officers if they have a “reasonable suspicion” of steroid use or as a condition of fitness-for-duty evaluations.

Other measures include:

·         Any officer who tests positive will be required to provide a note from a physician confirming that the use of steroids or human growth hormone is for a legitimate medical condition and that the officer is fit for duty.

·         Departments are encouraged to require officers to self-report prescriptions for anabolic steroids and human growth hormone based on the authority to determine fitness for duty.

.     Dow will recommend prescriptions for steroids or growth hormone be filled largely by mail order through Medco, the state’s pharmacy benefits manager. The provision is meant to help Medco spot potential abuses.

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As reported by nj.com, New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow, standing beside law enforcement leaders from across the state, announced the Department of Justice awarded New Jersey $5.7 million in grants that will be divided among 17 police departments to purchase various technologies ranging from gun shot detectors to closed-circuit cameras. 

“While surveillance equipment and other technologies can never be a substitute for the police officers out on the street, our experience confirms that this equipment can certainly help them, in really critical ways, in fighting crime and apprehending criminals,” she said.

Cities will receive either $250,000 or $500,000 in funding, depending on their population and violent crime statistics. Newark, Camden, Jersey City, Trenton, Paterson, and Elizabeth, which all have a population of at least 75,000 and high violent crime rates, will receive $500,000. Eleven smaller cities that also struggle with violence, including Plainfield and Atlantic City, will receive $250,000.

Police officials said advanced law enforcement technology has helped identify high-crime areas and can play critical roles in investigations. Newark Police began using a surveillance network in 2007, according to Police Director Garry McCarthy, and the cameras helped lead to the arrest and conviction of a murder suspect that same year. Evidence obtained from cameras and other surveillance methods have also developed “a record” of helping prosecutors earn convictions, said Carolyn Murray, Essex County’s acting prosecutor.

Departments can also use the grant funding to hire civilian personnel to monitor surveillance cameras and upgrade their dispatch centers to operate on a county wide or regional level. Regionalization of police forces became a hot topic in New Jersey after a slew of police layoffs in 2010. Earlier this year, Governor Chris Christie met with mayors from Newark, Trenton, and Camden to explore the idea, and Somerset County may merge its 19 municipal police departments by the end of 2013, a move Dow said she supports.

“Certainly I think we should take this further in law enforcement, and I do support studying it and examining it,” she said. “Frankly, I think we’re behind the times.”

Dow said she decided not to use the funding to rehire laid off police officers because the grant could not sustain jobs over time and could result in a second round of layoffs.

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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.

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U.S District Court Judge Frieda L. Wolfson dismissed a lawsuit by a group of New Jersey State Troopers seeking to overturn the ban on allowing them to practice law while being employed by the State Police. The decision was filed on July 9, 2009.

“If the troopers were to prevail on this argument, state agencies would be precluded from holding their public employees, specifically attorneys, to a higher ethical standard than those imposed on private attorneys,” Judge Wolfson wrote in her decision. 

Two trooper unions, and twenty one (21) troopers working as lawyers, had argued the State was preventing troopers from pursuing another profession. The State said representing clients and enforcing the law presents an inherent conflict of interest, prohibited under a 2007 revision of the State’s ethics code.

Frederick J. Gordon, president of the Non-Commissioned Officers Association, said they hoped troopers already practicing law could be exempted. “We’re disappointed in the outcome,” he said. “I don’t know what our next step is.”

The unions argued that troopers’ legal work, such as drafting wills or helping with real estate closings, does not conflict with their criminal justice work. However, the State argued that even basic legal tasks could cause problems.”

“By way of example, if a trooper is retained to draft a will for a client, and happens to come across nefarious, possibly illegal, activity during his review of his client’s confidential personal records, the trooper would find himself in an unenviable position, obligated by his duties as an officer of the law to report the crime while simultaneously constrained by his oath as an attorney to protect his client’s confidences,” Judge Wolfson’s decision explained.

The debate centered on a 2007 change to the State’s ethics code. The previous version prohibited almost all attorneys in the department from practicing law outside their job. The revision extended that prohibition to state troopers.

David Wald, spokesman for Attorney General Anne Milgram, praised Judge Wolfson’s decision. “In rejecting the state troopers’ challenge to that rule, Judge Wolfson recognized the potential for conflicts between a private attorneys’ responsibilities to their clients and the department’s law enforcement responsibilities,” he said. “She concluded that the prohibition on the private practice of law by state troopers was an appropriate means to preserve the public trust.”

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