The New Jersey attorney general has announced new disclosure laws for police officer discipline reports after a 2020 rule created public disclosures that were criticized for being too vague.
Departments must now reveal when officers get in trouble for discrimination, lying, use of excessive force, domestic violence, mishandling evidence, improper searches or arrests. "Morning Edition" host Michael Hill spoke with CJ Griffin, an attorney and advocate for open public records in New Jersey, about the changes.
The transcript of their discussion below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Michael Hill: The AG’s new directive says police must provide sufficient detail to enable a reader who is not familiar with the case to fully understand the factual scenario that resulted in the disciplinary action. I have to ask you, is this the beginning of a win for transparency?
CJ Griffin: Well, yes and no. Previously they had to describe some discipline to us and those disclosures were insufficient. So in this regard, the directive, hopefully if agencies comply, will be an improvement. But, in other ways, the directive is a step back. As a result of a court victory earlier this year, we were able to gain access to actual internal affairs reports, and those reports would be 15, 20 pages long and we were able to really see the meat and potatoes of the investigation and learn about the misconduct. And now, the new attorney general has ordered his agencies to instead create this separate report that's designed for public consumption. It's going to be very concise and not give us the level of detail, and we believe it will be sanitized.
The AG's office also says state police no longer have to make disclosures from the past 20 years. What's lost when we can't look back at the history of officers who've been on the force for years?
Yeah, that was a disappointment. That issue was in litigation and evidently the new attorney general decided they didn't want to fight for disclosure. What we lose is the ability to check an officer's record of discipline and to see whether there's repeat behavior, to see whether the new discipline that's imposed is justified based on prior conduct. And so that's a real loss to the public, I think.
How do other states handle this? Do other states have more transparent laws? And what could New Jersey do differently to help the public hold police more accountable?
Well, yes, there are other states that have much better laws. For example, New York in June 2020 opened up their internal affairs files to the public. The New York State Defenders Association publishes a website where you can look up the individual internal affairs files for officers, and you can pull up a case, you can review the entire file, there might be 300 pages of documents in that file. Whereas here we just don't have that level of access. And so what people can do, first, the attorney general has the full authority just to make this all public. And the reason it isn't is because of his policy. But there's also a bill pending in our legislature.
S371 is the new bill number, and it's been pending for two years and never gotten a hearing. We need lawmakers to act on it, and we need people to contact their lawmakers and tell them to pass that bill.
The office of the attorney general reached out to WNYC/Gothamist to respond to Griffin’s criticism. In a statement, the office said the summary reports that replace more detailed narratives is intended to avoid retracted legal battles and long redactions. Also, the attorney general rescinded making public the 20-year lookback for state police major discipline cases because the courts had blocked it, and it never went into effect.
