The youngest attorney general in New Jersey history just marked himself as one of the most courageous, with a decisive takeover of the police department in Paterson, effective now, from top to bottom, before more blood is spilled for no good reason.
Matt Platkin, one year into the job, gave at least some meaning to the death of Najee Seabrooks, the young man who was shot and killed during a psychotic breakdown in his home on March 3 by an aggressive SWAT team in body armor that wasn’t interested in talking him down.
“This won’t bring Najee back but please mention his name,” Liza Chowdhury, who runs the anti-violence network where Seabrooks worked, asked me. “We felt powerless that day, but this shows our voice matters, that someone is listening, and that the Paterson police can’t get away with the stuff they’ve been getting away with for years.”
The cases of police misbehavior in Paterson would fill a fat book, but here’s a sampling to give you the basic idea. Last month, Platkin charged a Paterson officer with shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. Five members of the infamous “robbery squad” are in prison today after beating and robbing civilians during police stops as a routine. A pending lawsuit charges police with beating a mentally disturbed man to death in an ambulance. And a year ago, police dropped off another mentally disturbed man in a park, and no one has seen him since. Civilian complaints over police beatings are routine, as are their dismissals.
Platkin says he made this move because the locals had failed, and the state Constitution puts responsibility over policing directly in his hands. When it comes to crime, at least, New Jersey is anything but a home-rule state.
And he’s right about this: The blame for this rogue department goes up and down the local chain of command.
Mayor Andre Sayegh insisted just a few days ago that he and his team had this under control, a delusional statement after five years of failing to do so. For him, this was all politics. He wants to run for Congress, and he doesn’t want to fight police unions or admit to his failure.
Passaic Prosecutor Camelia Valdes, with direct authority over the police, is plainly incompetent. She defended a bad murder prosecution that was later overturned despite her obstructionism. She was told about the “robbery squad” but could not find enough evidence to file charges, leaving it to the FBI to save the day. And in this case, she’s a hapless bystander, forcing Platkin to come in and clean up a mess that rightfully belongs to her. (She still has the support of Gov. Phil Murphy, for some reason, but is an “acting prosecutor” because she can’t win confirmation in the Legislature for another term.)
Since the shooting of Seabrooks most civil rights advocates in New Jersey have pressed for federal intervention by the Department of Justice, a view shared by this paper’s editorial board. That’s based on the success of DOJ interventions with the State Police and Newark Police.
But Platkin’s move is preferable, in some ways. The DOJ takes years to investigate a department before moving in; it is still investigating the police in Minneapolis three years after George Floyd’s murder. And after the investigation, the DOJ takes more time to negotiate a consent decree, or to ask a judge to force reforms.
Platkin, turbo-charged by our state Constitution, is already taking control in Paterson, putting his own people in charge and imposing several meaty policy changes.
And unlike the DOJ, Platkin says that the state will pay for these reforms and increase funding as needed.
“We can move quickly and stabilize the situation,” he said in an interview after the announcement.
Before making his announcement just after noon at City Hall in Paterson, Platkin met with police officers and told them the news. I asked how they reacted.
“I spoke to them from the heart, and I think the reaction was pretty positive,” he said. “There are a lot of good officers in Paterson who have not been given the support they need. They’ve had four chiefs in three years, without sufficient fiscal support, training, and leadership.
“A lot of officers want their department to be something they can be proud of. And you know, their jobs are not easy when the public doesn’t trust them. If people don’t trust you, they will never tell you what’s going on. And they’re working in a large and sometimes dangerous community.”
He announced policy changes that go directly to the mistakes police made in the Seabrooks standoff. The state will develop new protocols for dealing with people who have barricaded themselves. Police will team up with civilian mental health workers on this kind of call. And police will be trained to work constructively with violence intervention teams like the Paterson Healing Collective, run by Chowdhury, and several similar groups across the state.
This is a promising turn, not a piece of magic. We don’t know yet how effective Platkin’s new team will be. We don’t know if the local police and politicians will take this mission to heart. This decision was all Platkin’s and we don’t know if the governor will back him with needed money and political support, especially if the police unions decide to resist.
Chowdhury wants Platkin to fire officers in the chain of command who were responsible for mishandling the Seabrooks standoff, a demand joined by the statewide coalition of violence intervention groups like hers. Will Platkin be able to answer the rage that years of police misconduct have created? It won’t be easy, especially if the officers who shot Seabrooks are deemed justified.
But today, give it up for our 36-year-old attorney general. Confronting police misconduct takes guts. If you don’t believe that, look at how our allegedly progressive Legislature has backed away from one reform after another.
“We’re grateful for this,” Chowdhury says. “It’s a step in the right direction. We’re going to watch and see. But we’ll be working with him and making sure that Najee did not go down in vain.”
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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