New allegations of police excessive force are under review in Paterson

PATERSON — The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday confirmed that it is reviewing a mid-February encounter between Paterson police officers and teenagers in which social justice activists say a cop used excessive force against one of the juveniles.

It was not clear whether state authorities had been investigating the incident before Monday, when Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced that his office was taking control of the day-to-day operations of the Paterson Police Department.

Black Lives Matter leader Zellie Thomas, who has posted a video recording of the incident on social media, said the footage from Feb. 15 shows one of the officers assaulting a juvenile, who already had been tackled to the ground, by striking the teen in the head three times with his knee.

Thomas said at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting that the officers involved in the incident should be charged with crimes, asserting that knee strikes constitute excessive force that “can cause serious injury or even death.”

Thomas provided the recordings to the ACLU of New Jersey last month. That group on Feb. 19 sent letters to the Attorney General’s Office and the United States attorney for New Jersey asking for an investigation of the incident.

“The videos appear to depict a serious incident of police violence that occurred this week in Paterson, New Jersey,” Alexander Shalom, ACLU-NJ’s supervising attorney, said in his letter.

“We are deeply disturbed by these videos, which show both retaliation against young people for recording police officers in violation of the First Amendment and brutal excessive force used against one of those young people, with an officer repeatedly kneeing one of the children in the head,” Shalom wrote.

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Investigation underway

The Attorney General’s Office told Paterson Press on Wednesday that it contacted the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office about the incident and that the state is reviewing what happened.

Thomas said he personally did not record the three videos but sent ACLU-NJ copies of the footage last month. Thomas said he does not know the name of the teen he says was assaulted. The officers involved were part of the Paterson Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit.

The videos show a group of young men standing in the street in the early-evening darkness and using their phones to record an apparent arrest near Paterson’s main library. A marked police SUV pulls up between the teens and the arrest scene, and officers approach the juveniles, including one cop who shoves an onlooker toward the sidewalk.

The teens then begin walking along the sidewalk and are trailed by the police, the video shows. Suddenly, four of the officers surround the last youth and one cop grabs the teen from behind, tackling him to the ground. The video does not give a clear depiction of what, if anything, happened between the juvenile and the officers to prompt his being taken to the ground.

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While the teen is on the ground, an officer in the group moves his knee several times toward the area of the youth’s head, the video shows.

Paterson Press on Wednesday asked ACLU-NJ if authorities contacted the group about its letter. An ACLU spokesperson would say only that the organization doesn’t have “any new information” to release.

Thomas made his comments during a raucous, 8½-hour City Council meeting that started Tuesday night and ended early Wednesday morning.

No-confidence vote fails

Early in the meeting, Councilman Alex Mendez tried to convince his colleagues to take a “no-confidence vote” on Mayor Andre Sayegh’s handling of the recent Police Department controversies.

But Mendez’s motion failed.

More than 40 people spoke during the public portion of the meeting. They included Casey Melvin, a member of the Paterson Healing Collective, the organization for which Najee Seabrooks was an outreach worker. Melvin said he was heartened by the attorney general’s takeover Monday of the Paterson Police Department.

"We had the officers' names revealed the first week, the second week the bodycam footage, and now the third week the takeover of the department — that's what I called a rapid response," Melvin said. "I'm upset we didn't get that from our immediate government.”

Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press.

Email: editor@patersonpress.com

Darren Tobia is a contributing writer for Paterson Press.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ: New police excessive force allegations under review