With protests across the country marked by tension between police and demonstrators, New Jersey state officials say they are making progress on their efforts to bolster trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
On June 2, New Jersey State Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal provided an update on a series of reforms spurred by his “Excellence in Policing” initiative, a program approved in 2019 that intends to “promote the culture of professionalism, accountability and transparency” among law enforcement agencies in New Jersey.
“To the thousands of New Jerseyans that assembled peacefully this week let me be clear: we hear you, we see you, we respect you, we share your anger and we share your commitment to change,” Grewal said during a press conference alongside Gov. Phil Murphy.
New Measures
According to the attorney general, the state was committed to “making New Jersey a national leader in policing reform” long before this week’s protests over the death of George Floyd, which drew thousands to cities such as Newark and Camden. While demonstrations were mostly peaceful, looting and vandalism was reported in Atlantic City and Trenton and several arrests were made in Asbury Park.
“The tragic killing of George Floyd reminds us that our country has a long way to go, not only in healing our nation’s racial divides, but also in addressing the systemic and implicit biases that affect all Americans,” he said.
Forthcoming changes include the first revision to the state’s use-of-force policy in two decades, the creation of a statewide crisis intervention training program to help police better navigate incidents with individuals suffering from mental health issues and a move to require a licensing program for New Jersey’s 36,000 law enforcement officers.
Expanding “Crisis Intervention Team” Training to reduce police use-of-force and death-in-custody incidents
- Pilot programs, using outside vendors, will be launched at police departments in Atlantic City, Paterson, Trenton and Millville, as well as New Jersey State Police Troopers in Trenton. The attorney general’s office is exploring building a statewide training program, which aims to help officers respond to incidents involving individuals with mental health issues.
Endorsing Statewide Certification for Police Officers
- The attorney general’s office plans to propose a statewide professional licensure program, as well as a framework for enhancing all police training, by the end of June. There are currently 43 other states in the U.S. that have the program.
Creating a Statewide Use-of-Force Portal
- A new portal would allow for the gathering and analysis of uniform use-of-force data from all law enforcement agencies in New Jersey, will begin expanding in July. Earlier this year, the attorney general’s office launched a pilot program for the portal.
Updating New Jersey’s Use-of-Force Policy
- By the end of 2020, the attorney general’s office plans to issue an update to the two-decade-old use-of-force policy for New Jersey’s 36,000 law enforcement officers. As part of the evaluation process, Grewal said he’ll “consult widely with stakeholders” and “draw on data collected through the new use of force portal.”
Developing a Division on Civil Rights Incident Response Team
- Unlike the federal government, New Jersey currently lacks a team of community-relations specialists who can respond in the community following a major civil rights incident. The attorney general’s office intends to develop such a team within in the months ahead.
Building Trust
The measures build on other policies and programs implemented in recent years, as part of Grewal’s overall efforts to reform law enforcement policies in New Jersey.
Those changes include statewide bias training for all prosecutors and officers employed by the state Department of Law & Public Safety—including all 2,800 New Jersey State Troopers and training on de-escalation, use-of-force and cultural sensitivity training for officers across the state.
Since taking office in 2018, the attorney general has been working with law enforcement, community leaders, police unions, civil rights groups and victims’ advocates “to ensure the policing that policing reforms are developed with meaningful buy-in from all relevant stakeholders.”
Building Trust
“Fixing a system that is fundamentally broken requires us to acknowledge the erosion of trust between communities of color and law enforcement,” Murphy said.
“From day one, my administration has been committed to bringing transformational change to community policing and police culture in New Jersey. Under Attorney General Grewal’s leadership, we will take further steps to build upon our progress and deepen the well of trust in our communities.”
FYI Bloomfield does NOT have within its policies anything requiring an officer to warn before shooting — see the mayor’s own words here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bloomfieldnj/permalink/2637116559728230/?sfnsn=mo
Really? Cops don’t have to warn before SHOOTING? I STRONGLY disagree. Please see to it that ALL New-Jersey cops have to warn before shooting!
I strongly feel that current police in this country cannot be improved. There are other ways to deal with criminal matters which should be implemented
Completely wrong. I have personally experienced racism, targeting, bullying, harassment, petty revenge, lying and illegal tactics repeatedly by the police of New York City, a diverse place in many ways. They can’t be the only ones, they were once headed by then-Mayor Giuliani’s crooked henchman Bernard Kerik, and you say they’re as close to perfect as humans can get? Ridiculous, ludicrous, preposterous and heinous.
However you do make the correct point that there are other ways to deal with crime — I certainly hope you don’t mean arming yourself and your property to the teeth; I prefer security cameras like Nest or Ring and sending the cops links to them with which they can see through your camera at any time.
Technology and science in general can provide more ways to thwart crime; in fact they already have. For example we already have long-range metal detectors, which can see guns from up to 100 feet away, smart guns, which fire only when it detects the owner’s palm print and only on that person’s property, smart bullets, which contain small electronic chips with which to trace their origins, and, of course, body cameras, which bear court-admissible witness to both crime and police response.
But quoth Darwin: the short-term solution to our problems is technology; the long-term solution is character. So much crime arises because we are divided; to be more accurate we divide ourselves. We divide by race, religion, age, education, economic status, orientation, geography, even gender despite that it takes both to preserve our very species! And when we divide, which mat be into more than two parts (e.g., races) at least one side always feels and often is oppressed, thus underserved, thus slighted, thus angry and/or desperate, thus vengeful, this more likely to commit crimes either to exact that revenge or merely to survive.
To best deal with crime, we must heal and eliminate these divisions, so that far fewer people either need to or feel like committing crime at all, that far more people live in environments that provide not only their basic needs but desires as well: education, safety, health, prosperity, etc. — for everyone, not just rich, White, straight, suburban, well-connected men. Any sociologist will tell you, there will always be crime — even these men I’ve just described commit crimes against each other! Remember the likes of Madoff, Milken, Boesky, Fuld, Kozlowski, Lay, Skilling, etc.?
The foregoing of course should remind anyone of another way to deter crime: beef up and standardize sentences, so that men like those I’ve named do far more than pay what to them is a paltry fine they just figure into the cost of doing business! Black men spend years in jail for a nickel of pot and then for lack of money to afford anything close to fair representation, but White men who ruin thousands overnight get the trickiest of lawyers to plea financial deals such that they serve not one minute!
The above, then, is yet another division we must shun and shun immediately: it is guaranteed that people will act in their own interest, and if the above men knew of both a high likelihood of being caught and a high degree of punishment, both financial and physical, they would have thought far longer and harder about their crimes than they needed to in this society so highly permissive and forgiving of them. And as we punish these men with the severity with which we punish poor Blacks, we will start to heal those two divisions, race and economic status.
All of us must come to understand that the law is the law, and it applies equally to everyone. But right now, for centuries up to now, and without serious action for centuries to come, all these societal divisions render this equality a far-off pipe dream. Just ask anyone not White. OR not rich. OR not educated.
Best AG ever