In early March, a team of Paterson police officers dressed in riot gear and standing behind antiballistic shields shot and killed a mentally ill Black man who had barricaded himself inside a bathroom.
The shooting of Najee Seabrooks convulsed a community already worn raw by years of well-documented police misconduct and violence aimed at Black people. As people took to the streets in protest, New Jersey attorney general Matthew J. Platkin stepped in, took over the 400-member police department, replaced top brass, and began the gnarly work of reforming one of the state’s most notorious police departments.
“There is a crisis of confidence in law enforcement in this city,’’ Platkin said at the time, citing a “sworn duty” to protect the people of Paterson.
New Jersey attorney general Matthew J. Platkin has spearheaded the reform of the Paterson Police Department. Photo: Courtesy of the Office of the Attorney General
Platkin’s bold move has drawn national attention from groups who say it could become a model for intervention in troubled police departments that have lost the support of residents. State intervention in local police matters, they say, usually stems from a need to inject money and beef up enforcement. This time, it’s about civil rights.
James E. Tierney, an official with the National Association of Attorneys General, points out that New Jersey is currently the only state that gives its top law enforcer the authority to move so decisively. “It’s a very dramatic thing to do,” Tierney said in June.
Six months after Seabrooks’s shooting, the takeover remains a work in progress for longtime residents and activists who have witnessed years of police thuggery and race-based bias. Much work, they say, needs to be done. But there are signs of change and hope in the city of 156,000, where last year 101 people were shot—27 murdered—a homicide rate higher than the city of Los Angeles.
“The state has come in here, engaged the community, and started to move things in the right direction,’’ Reverend Kenneth Clayton, pastor of St. Luke Baptist Church, tells New Jersey Monthly. “We’ve gotten through the summer without a major incident. We’ve got to be hopeful we can keep going forward.’’
While many categories of crime remain stubbornly high in Paterson, recent statistics show violent crimes are heading downward.
Cops who once manned desks at the police station are now walking beats. Police are now investing more time and resources into meeting with community groups. Officers have also been equipped with new technology and “less than lethal” options to help them defuse emergency situations, Clayton says, and are working on a program to introduce mental health experts to policing.
But Paterson Police brass disagree that the takeover has improved the force; two leaders announced this week that they are suing Platkin, saying he overstepped his authority by taking over the department.
Chief Englebert Ribeiro and acting Police Director Mirza “Mark” Bulur say the state takeover “exceeds the bounds of their statutory and constitutional authority.”
But in a written statement to New Jersey Monthly in late August, Platkin noted new statistics showing “significant reductions” in crime, including an almost 55 percent reduction in the number of shooting incidents. The rate of robbery and aggravated assault also fell. He said his office and the new leaders of the department are building a new culture based on best practices that will have a lasting impact.
“From building relationships with residents, organizations and young people to improving technology and enhanced training for the members of the department, the Paterson Police Department is listening, responding, building trust, and making a difference in the lives of Paterson residents,’’ Platkin said.
Platkin himself went on an extended listening tour, meeting with community groups around Paterson. His office began to retrain beat cops on the use of force and groomed more civilians to help with police duties in some cases. He supported more funding for violence-intervention programs and furthered plans to employ mental health officers empowered to respond in emergencies. To head the police force, Platkin installed Isa Abbassi, a 26-year veteran of the New York City Police Department who oversaw strategic policy initiatives for the NYPD.
DEDICATED TO ENDING VIOLENCE
As a young Black man on the streets of Paterson who had survived a drive-by shooting, Najee Seabrooks dedicated himself to ending the violence that had taken the lives of so many friends and neighbors.
Seabrooks, who worked for a group called the Paterson Healing Collective, had a simple method, but it seemed to work: When somebody was shot, he made a friend of them and tried to convince them not to take up arms.
But Seabrooks also suffered from recurring bouts of paranoia and mental illness. On March 3, he had locked himself in a bathroom during an episode. Police refused to let Seabrooks’s work colleagues intervene in the standoff, even though they had shepherded many others through similar crises. Seabrooks finally burst out of the bathroom, holding a knife, and police shot and killed him. He was 31.
Despite the reforms taking shape, there is still plenty of doubt that a new era is at hand for the Silk City. Residents there, as well as criminal justice experts who track the Paterson saga, worry that without federal intervention in the form of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, endemic racism will persist. They are all too aware that Platkin’s tenure as attorney general in a progressive administration that is sympathetic to urban voices, is finite.
They’re also concerned that, despite Platkin’s public advocacy, the state is still moving too slowly and failing to keep the community fully informed about ongoing investigations into police misconduct and its efforts to transform the force. While they salute Platkin’s commitment, they say they’re still waiting for substantial results.
“We had a lot of meetings and there was a lot of talk that sounded good,’’ says Zellie Thomas, lead organizer of Black Lives Matter Paterson. “But just because meetings happen, it doesn’t mean motion happens.’’
For example, Thomas says he hasn’t seen evidence that the police are committed to forming teams with mental health experts who are empowered to respond to calls involving troubled individuals. Such measures, he says, have been widely recommended.
In the killing of Najee Seabrooks, Thomas says, police prevented members of Seabrooks’s own intervention team from having contact with him during the four-hour standoff in March. “Police aren’t trained to defuse crises involving people having mental health breakdowns,’’ Thomas says. “Najee would have been alive today if we had approached him with the right people.’’
MORE COPS ON THE STREETS
Yannick Wood is a former prosecutor who directs the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group that tackles issues of structural racism.
“There’s been a lot of community engagement in Paterson, and you have to credit the attorney general for that,’’ Wood says. “We see more cops on the street. But what’s really going on beneath the surface? What’s happening inside the police department that will fundamentally change the way it operates?’’
Wood and other Paterson residents, however, say they remain in the dark about what efforts, if any, are being made to reform the department’s notorious internal affairs operation.
“Just what is the use of force policy now?’’ Wood asks. “Who knows? We take Platkin at his word, but the people of Paterson have a long history of being abused by their own police. They need to see concrete proof that reforms are happening.’’
Patersonians have ample reason for skepticism. In recent decades, dozens of African American men there have been killed or beaten by city police. A group of cops admitted in court to forming a violent squad that robbed and assaulted vulnerable people. One survey, by an authoritative police-policy research group, found that almost three-fifths of 600 uses of force by police in Paterson from 2018 to 2020 were against Black people.
Black people, however, make up just one-quarter of Paterson’s population.
“The city and its police have a deep-seated culture of racial bias,’’ says Jason Williams, a professor of justice studies at Montclair State University, arguing that a federal intervention may be the only lasting solution in Paterson.
“The state’s taken a step, and you have to commend it,’’ Williams says. “But it’s going to take the U.S. Justice Department to finish the job. They did it in Ferguson. They did it in other places. They can do it in Paterson.’’
Jeff Pillets is an award-winning investigative reporter.
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