The former mayor of a New Jersey suburb is accused of instructing police to engage in discriminatory practices to “keep Black people” and other non-white drivers out of town, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The complaint from the New Jersey attorney general’s office alleges that Salvatore Bonaccorso, the longtime mayor of Clark, broke state law by instructing the local police department to “keep chasing the spooks out of town,” using a racial slur to refer to Black people.
The lawsuit comes five years after the Union County prosecutor’s office took control of the Clark Police Department following allegations of misconduct from community members. During that period of oversight, the attorney general’s office released a report in 2023 that found evidence of discriminatory policing practices and referred the matter for further civil rights investigation.
Bonaccorso previously reached a settlement with a police lieutenant after he was recorded using racial slurs against Black people and saying that he would never hire a female police officer in 2023.
Clark Township, which is predominantly white, remains under a state law enforcement monitorship after the supersession concluded in March.
According to the complaint, Clark police relied on false claims, including alleging “the odor of marijuana,” and focused on low-level administrative and equipment violations to disproportionately target Black and other non-white drivers over the past decade.
Police also concentrated traffic enforcement on roadways connecting Clark to the Garden State Parkway and to nearby Rahway and Linden, which have significantly larger Black and Hispanic populations, the lawsuit alleges.
An analysis of Clark Police Department vehicle stop data from 2015 to 2020 found that more than 37% of drivers stopped were Black or Hispanic, despite those groups making up less than 11% of the township’s population.
The lawsuit also alleges that more than 53% of drivers stopped by Clark police outside the township’s boundaries were Black or Hispanic.
State investigators said their findings were based not only on policing data, but also on audio recordings, witness testimony, and documentary evidence showing what they described as systemic harassment of Black drivers and other motorists perceived as non-white.
The complaint cites recordings and testimony in which Bonaccorso and police leadership used multiple racial slurs when referring to Black and Hispanic people.
The state said this evidence supports Clark’s long-standing reputation as a “sundown town,” defined in the complaint as a place where local leadership engaged in intimidation and aggressive policing to ensure that “Black people and other people they perceive to be non-white stay out of town when possible and leave town before dark.”
According to the lawsuit, those practices caused many Black drivers, including residents of surrounding communities, to avoid driving through Clark altogether out of fear of being racially profiled and harassed.
In addition to Bonaccorso, the complaint names former Clark Police Chief Pedro Matos and Police Director Patrick Grady as defendants. None responded to repeated requests for comment from Gothamist.
