Paterson police fall further behind in handling internal affairs complaints

PATERSON — The Police Department’s backlog of unresolved internal affairs complaints against city cops jumped by 88% in 2022, a caseload logjam that social justice activists say undermines law enforcement’s trust-building efforts.

The department’s annual IA summary report showed that 136 new complaints were filed against Paterson police in 2022, including 120 by civilians. The Paterson IA division already had 83 complaints pending from 2021’s workload at the start of last year and was able to close 63 cases during 2022, the report said.

That left Paterson IA with 156 open cases at the end of 2022, the report said. The large number of open IA complaints predates the attorney general's taking control of the Paterson Police Department, and state officials haven't released data that shows whether things have gotten better or worse since the takeover.

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The backlog of IA cases represents a major problem, said Richard Rivera, a South Jersey police director who provides expert testimony in cases about IA operations. He said complaints are supposed to be addressed within 45 days.

“Paterson's inability to meet investigative deadlines has potential legal consequences, where it may not be able to hold officers accountable, even if they are guilty of the underlying allegations,” Rivera said. “Backlogs lead to a rushed process, where mistakes are made. Truly bad officers that do not deserve to wear a badge escape accountability when internal affairs doesn’t do its job.”

Jason Williams, a justice professor at Montclair State University and a Black Lives Matter member, said the IA backlog numbers indicate the Paterson Police Department needs an intervention that goes beyond the current attorney general takeover.

“It shows there’s still a need for a federal consent decree,” Williams said, saying the United States Justice Department ought to come into Paterson police headquarters.

“These numbers are just embarrassing,” Williams said of the backlog. “They exacerbate the concerns of the community. You can’t change the culture of the department if you’re not disciplining the rogue officers.”

What else did the report say?

Of the 63 complaints that were resolved in 2022, Paterson IA determined that 59 were not sustained, the report said. Complainants had to wait more than nine months for decisions in all but one of those 63 cases, the report said.

The longest delays were for the five excessive-force complaints resolved in 2022, the report said. Those took an average of 425 days to be completed. The next-longest were the 12 officer demeanor complaints resolved in 2022, which took an average of 327 days, followed by the eight criminal violation cases, which lasted an average of 311 days.

The years 2021 and 2022 were a tumultuous time for Paterson IA operations.

At the end of April 2021, the state directed the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office to begin running Paterson’s IA division after federal authorities filed criminal charges against two Paterson cops. Those same two officers had been the targets of previous IA complaints involving the same incident, but their actions did not result in any discipline.

The Prosecutor’s Office stuck around for about 17 months, returning control to city police in the fall of 2022, while issuing a press release saying its oversight had brought improvements to Paterson’s IA division.

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What did officials say?

Neither Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes nor Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh responded to messages seeking their input on the city’s IA complaint backlog.

The New Jersey Attorney General's Office took control of the city police last March 27, and retired NYPD chief Isa Abbassi began working as the state-appointed officer in charge of the department in May. Robert Rowan, a spokesman for the Paterson Police Department during state control, said the Attorney General's Office and its representatives have been doing an assessment of Paterson’s IA division since the takeover.

“As an initial measure, attorneys from the Office of the Attorney General, as well as from the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office, with expertise in the area of professional standards were brought in to review the large backlog of then-pending internal affairs matters and make recommendations to the interim officer in charge, as well as Officer in Charge Abbassi after he assumed the role,” Rowan said. “The vast majority of these cases have been presented to the OIC to confirm the findings and make recommendations as to discipline or retraining.”

But Rowan did not provide any data about the current state of the IA backlog or statistics on whether the number of unresolved cases has increased or decreased under state control.

Abbassi said during a speech last Tuesday that he planned to move the location where IA investigators interview people filing complaints against cops from inside police headquarters to an as-yet-undetermined outside location. City activists have been calling for such a move for a decade.

“This is intended to make it more likely that members of the public and officers alike will come forward regarding alleged misconduct if they know there is a safe and welcoming space to voice those concerns,” Rowan said.

Abbassi last Tuesday outlined about 50 initiatives he said were designed to build trust between the community and cops. But none of those plans specifically mentioned increasing the number of officers assigned to IA or talked about ways to resolve complaints more quickly.

“The Strategic Plan also outlines strategies and initiatives geared toward increasing accountability, supervision and transparency — all of which will drive down misconduct before it ever occurs,” Rowan said.

The Paterson Police Department has not revealed publicly exactly how many officers work in IA. Paterson Press asked Rowan about whether Abbassi plans to increase staffing in that important division. He said part of the ongoing assessment would evaluate whether there are enough officers working in IA.

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'Environment of distrust'

Activists and community members say something needs to be changed in the operation of Paterson’s IA division. Paterson resident Justin Rucker, who filed an IA complaint in 2020 about an officer who ended up being charged with crimes in an unrelated incident, said he was not surprised by the backlog of IA cases.

Rucker, who passed the civil service test to become a Paterson police officer more than four years ago, said he never has gotten any notification from IA about the outcome of his complaint.

“It creates an environment of distrust,” Rucker said. “That’s why we need community oversight. We can’t trust the police to police themselves.”

Rucker said officials need to create civilian complaint review boards. But the proposed bills that would give those review boards authority to subpoena witnesses and documents have languished in the state Legislature for more than three years, with little sign of progress.

Brian Higgins, a former Bergen County police chief who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said the growing backlog of IA cases in Paterson may be connected to the surge of crime the city endured during that time.

“Paterson had an uptick in shootings that makes the police become more active in their response,” Higgins said. “Sometimes police have to respond to violent crime with aggressive tactics,” which he said result in more IA complaints.

Higgins also said the social justice movement’s calls for defunding police departments may be boosting the complaint numbers.

“It’s almost as if people are complaining whether they’re justified or not,” the former chief said.

How did Paterson Press obtain the report?

Paterson Press learned about the increase in the backlog of IA cases last Tuesday, when the Attorney General's Office released a copy of the annual report to this reporter. Rivera, the IA expert, said the document is supposed to be made public by Feb. 1 every year.

Paterson Press filed a public records request with the city government for the report in mid-January. The city law department at that time said the report was still being reviewed by the Prosecutor’s Office and that it would be made public once that was done.

Three months later, Paterson Press filed a second records request for the document on Apr. 10. Sixteen days later, the city law department issued a denial.

“At this time, there are no records to produce in response to your request,” the city said of the IA summary request.

Paterson Press on July 10 filed a third records request for the IA report — a document that routinely had been made public year after year during the past decade. But the city did not respond.

Paterson Press sent city officials follow-up inquiries about the IA report request on Aug. 10 and Sept. 5, but still received no response. Paterson Press then sent the Attorney General's Office an inquiry about the IA report on Sept 18 but did not get any response.

On Sept. 25, Paterson Press notified officials of the city and the Attorney General's Office that the news organization would be writing a story about their failure to release the IA report. Within 10 hours of that email, the state sent Paterson Press a copy of the report that is the basis for this story.

Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press. Email: editor@patersonpress.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ police internal affairs case backlog continues