TRENTON – Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced that the New Jersey Police Training Commission (PTC), which establishes statewide law enforcement standards, voted unanimously today in support of two significant policing reform measures: to create a statewide police licensing program, and to overhaul the statewide training programs for law enforcement officers. Attorney General Grewal, who serves as PTC Chair, spoke in favor of both proposals.

In the months ahead, the PTC will develop detailed plans for both reforms. New Jersey remains one of a handful of states that does not license law enforcement officers, and today’s vote is a first step to bring New Jersey’s practices in line with the rest of the country.

“We are committed to making New Jersey a national leader on policing reform, and today’s unanimous vote demonstrates that commitment,” said Attorney General Grewal. “Every day, we are taking another step to promote the culture of transparency, accountability, and professionalism that marks New Jersey’s best police departments.”

Under the licensure proposal, any individual seeking to become a law enforcement officer in New Jersey will need to meet certain uniform professional standards. Officers will be required to maintain these standards in order to maintain their license and continue working as a law enforcement officer in the state.

Similarly, individuals who fall short of these professional standards risk the suspension or revocation of their license, which could temporarily or permanently prevent them from working as officers in a New Jersey law enforcement agency. The suspension/revocation process would make it more difficult for officers with extensive disciplinary problems from moving from police department to police department without accountability.

The training proposal adopted by the PTC will serve as a framework to supplement and enhance the training law enforcement officers receive, in an effort to increase the delivery of safe and effective police services to the public.PTC Administrator John Cunningham recommended that basic police training courses be reviewed and enhanced, incorporating national best practices in areas such as de-escalation techniques; crisis intervention team training (CIT); interpersonal communication skills; cultural diversity; situational training scenarios; practical interactive exercises during both the academy and field training; defensive tactics training; and a
mandatory field training officer program.

The PTC’s membership is established by statute. The Commission includes representatives of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police (NJSACOP); the New Jersey State Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Inc. (PBA); the New Jersey State League of Municipalities (NJLM); the New Jersey State Lodge, Fraternal Order of Police (FOP); the County Prosecutors’ Association of New Jersey (CPANJ); the Sheriffs’ Association of New Jersey; the Police Academy Directors Association; the New Jersey County Jail Wardens Association; the New Jersey Juvenile Detention Association, and the State Chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

The Commission also includes the Attorney General, the Superintendent of State Police, the Commissioner of Education, the Executive Director of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, the Commissioner of Corrections, and the Chairman of the State Parole Board. The Attorney General serves as Chair.

More information on the PTC can be found here: https://www.state.nj.us/lps/dcj/njptc/commbr.htm.

Building Public Trust

Today’s announcement is the latest step in Attorney General Grewal’s ongoing effort to strengthen trust between law enforcement and community and builds on his December 2019 launch of the Excellence in Policing initiative. Among other recent announcements:

• On June 2, 2020, Governor Murphy and Attorney General Grewal announced a new phase of the Excellence in Policing initiative, which included five actions: expansion of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training; further development of the statewide “Use of Force Portal”; plans to update the statewide “Use of Force Policy” for the first time in two decades; the creation of a “Incident Response Team” in the Division on Civil Rights; and public support for the police licensure proposal adopted today.
• On June 5, 2020, Attorney General Grewal issued guidance prohibiting all New Jersey law enforcement officers from using “chokeholds, carotid artery neck restraints, or similar tactics on any individual, except in the very limited situations when deadly force is necessary to address an imminent threat to life.”  The guidance further noted that “because these tactics create a substantial risk of death or serious bodily harm,” officers who cause a subject’s death or injury while performing them “face potential criminal liability.”
• On June 12, 2020, Attorney General Grewal provided additional details about plans to revise New Jersey’s “Use of Force Policy,” including plans to host community listening sessions in all 21 counties. In addition, OAG launched a website (nj.gov/oag/force) to collect the public’s comments about proposed revisions to the policy.
• On June 15, 2020, Attorney General Grewal issued a statewide order requiring New Jersey law enforcement agencies to annually publish a list of officers who were fired, demoted, or suspended for more than five days due to a disciplinary violation, with the first list to be published no later than December 31, 2020. In addition, Attorney General Grewal announced that the law enforcement agencies within the Department of Law & Public Safety – the New Jersey State Police, the Division of Criminal Justice, and the Juvenile Justice Commission – will publish historical lists of officers subject to similar disciplinary penalties over the past twenty years.

EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ – via ABC7 – ABC 7 published dash cam video from a police cruiser in East Brunswick of officers stopping a man from jumping off a busy New Jersey Turnpike overpass.

https://www.facebook.com/ABC7NY/videos/264464331321451/

BEDMINSTER, NJ – President Donald J. Trump is returning to his Bedminister Golf Club after his visit to Arizona for a political rally.  There’s just one problem. Arizona is now a state on Governor Phil Murphy’s new 14-day mandatory self-quarantine list.  The President however will not be obeying Murphy’s latest experiment in weird science.

Governor Murphy on CNN that Trump is an essential government worker and is not mandated to self-quarantine.

“There is a carve-out for essential workers and I think by any definition the president of the United States is an essential worker,” Murphy said in a cable news interview.  “And I know the folks get tested around him all the time. I’ve been tested a couple of times when I’ve been with him over the past couple of months.”

MORRIS TOWNSHIP, NJ – A mail carrier delivering 2020 primary election vote by mail ballots caught fire, destroying an unknown amount of ballots ahead of next week’s primary election.  The Morris County Election Board is now trying to determine which ballots were lost and how to replace those lost ballots before the election.

TOMS RIVER, NJ – Toms River Democrat Laurie Huryk on Tuesday said the township is too white and that it needs to do a better job at enticing black people into wanting to live within the community.  Huryk, a staunch ally of Governor Phil Murphy noted that Toms River’s white resident population is far higher than that of the State of New Jersey and even of the United States.

“According to census.gov, Toms River is 82% white, 3% black.  As compared to the United States on whole which is 60% white and 13% black. New Jersey is 55% white and 15% black,” Huryk said. “We need to take a look at ourselves to examine what we can do as a community to make Toms River more inviting to a greater diversity of individuals and that of our state and the United States.”

Huryk did not provide any plan or preview of how she intends to raise the population of African Americans within her community.   During her election, Huryk ran on a ticket that included only white-middle aged candidates, showing no racial diversity.

This is the first time since taking a seat on the council nearly three years ago that Huryk has noted that her community is lacking African-American residents.

We’re not sure when Huryk moved to Toms River, but maybe she doesn’t know one of the underlying reasons perhaps that African Americans chose not to come to Toms River in the middle part of the twentieth century…it was a hub of KKK activity.

Toms River has an ugly history of racism from the turn of the twentieth century. A building that stands in one of the town’s parks once served as the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan.  The meeting hall in Pleasant Plains is now part of the township park system, but once hosted regional meetings for the Klan.   According to journalist Don Bennett, it was built in 1926 and served openly as a klan meeting hall until 1968.  The Toms River branch of the Ku Klux Klan even participated in burning down a black church in Lakewood in 1923.

According to Bennett, the Klan was a regular fixture in Toms River, meeting at local churches and in the field near the Klan’s headquarters.  Back then, politicians on both sides of the aisle lobbied for the KKK’s block vote during elections.

After opening its Toms River branch, nearly 1 in 10 Ocean County residents were members of the Klan, according to Bennett in the early twentieth century.  He said the Klan had 2,000 members while Ocean County had 22,000 residents.

That is all ancient history now and Toms River is actually a very racially diverse town.  The town has a large Hispanic and Asian population and sure, while the African-American population is down a bit, Huryk seems to be the only one concerned about it.

TRENTON, NJ – Today, Governor Phil Murphy, along with “assistant” Governor Andrew Cuomo just announced a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all travelers coming into New Jersey from states with spiking COVID-19 numbers.  We don’t want to be the first ones to say it, but this smells like retaliation by Murphy and Cuomo for earlier travel bans by those states against New Jersey residents…or it could just be science…we’re not sure anymore.

In a joint press conference with Governor Murphy and the governor of some state called Connecticut, Andrew Cuomo announced the travel restrictions.

***UDPATE***

“The infection rate formula will be 10 per 100,000 on a seven-day rolling average or 10 percent of the total population positive on a seven-day rolling average. So any state that has an infection rate above that would require a 14-day quarantine.”

“As of today, the states that are above that level are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah, Texas. That’s as of today. The states themselves can change as the infection rate changes and we will update daily what states are above that infection rate.”

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“We’re announcing today, a joint travel advisory, people coming into New Jersey from a state with a high infection rate must quarantine for 14 days and we have a calibration for that infection rate and any state that goes over that infection rate, that state will be to the quarantine.”

“It’s only for the simple reason that we worked so hard to get the viral transmission rate go down, we don’t want to see it go up because a lot of people come into this region, and they bring the virus in with them,” Cuomo added.

“What happens in New York, happens in New Jersey and Connecticut,” Cuomo said.

“We live in the densest place in America,” Murphy said.  “We have taken our people through hell and back and the last thing we need to do is subject our folks to another round. Doing something common sense as this is.”

Neither Cuomo nor Murphy mentioned anything about incoming visitors being given COVID-19 tests to see if they were infected or not, but we’re also not privy to the science they have at their disposal.

Each state will be responsible for the enforcement of the new policy.

The advisory goes into effect at midnight tonight, but the governors issued no further guidance on that policy or which states they were talking about.

While Murphy and Cuomo gave no indication of which states will be identified, here’s the current trends across America.

The red flag list of states with steadily increasing numbers include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Oregon, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.  Those states would most likely be included in the Governor’s initial travel ban.

States to keep an eye on include Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah and Washington.  Those states have maintained a steady rate of infection with no increase or decrease.

Wait…Connecticut?  OK, let’s just wait and see on that one.

The good news for New Jersey really is that we’ve already lost so many people and had so many infections, odds are the numbers here can only go down, especially with the new anti-virus wall going up at midnight.  New Jersey is one of 21 states experiencing steady downward trends in virus infections and deaths.

In New York City making an announcement. Watch Live: https://t.co/eAZlzJNgTB

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 24, 2020