Justice Department finds pattern of misconduct by Trenton Police following a yearlong investigation

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The Justice Department said Trenton’s police department have made arrests without legal basis, officers have escalated situations with aggression and used pepper spray unnecessarily.

The results of the yearlong investigation were contained in a 45-page report released Thursday morning during a virtual press conference with U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip Sellinger and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“The people of Trenton deserve nothing less than fair and constitutional policing,” Sellinger said. “When police stop someone in Trenton, our investigation found that all too often they violated the constitutional rights of those they stopped, sometimes with tragic consequences.”

Maati Sekmet Ra, co-founder of the Trenton Anti-Violence Coalition, said she is not surprised about the Justice Department’s findings.

“You cannot talk about violence that happens and occurs in a place like Trenton without talking about police violence,” she said. “Police have historically brutalized, harassed and now it’s proven that they’re violating the civil rights of folks who live in Trenton.”

Officers violate the 4th Amendment in 2 areas

The two main findings of the report are that Trenton officers use excessive force and conduct warrantless traffic stops, searches and arrests. Both violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

According to the report, officers reported using force in 815 incidents between March 2020 and December 2023. The majority of them involved physical force; pepper spray was used by officers 120 times. A firearm was used once.

In one incident mentioned during the press conference, a 64-year-old man died from respiratory failure after he was sprayed in the face with pepper spray. Officers went to the man’s house to arrest his son who was involved in an earlier domestic incident.

The man, who was not involved in the incident, met with officers outside his front door informing them they would not be allowed in his house without a warrant. As they waited for a supervisor to come to the scene, one of the officers escalated the conversation, taunting the father and son, according to the federal report.

The officer said the son was “talking like he was ‘retarded’ and asking if the father was ‘crazy,’” according to the report. The language the officer used according to the report is considered outdated and a slur toward people with mental disabilities.

As the father was about to re-enter his house, an officer threw him across the porch, against the railing and slammed him face down on the porch steps. As officers were arresting the father, another officer sprayed him in the face.

“The officer who escalated the encounter inaccurately reported that the father physically presented a ‘threat/attack’ to the officer,” the report stated. “He also claimed that he grabbed the father because he feared that a dog inside would come out—a factor that no other officer mentioned and that video footage discredited.”

The father died 18 days after the incident.

The report also found that officers “frequently grab, tackle, and punch people who show little resistance to orders or pose no threat.”

One incident cited officers from the Violent Crimes Unite chased a 16-year-old boy because “he matched the description of a suspect reported to have a gun and ran when police pulled up next to him.”

“One officer grabbed the teen by his neck and slammed him into the hood of a car as he cried in pain. The boy was unarmed,” the report stated.

The boy’s teacher approached officers to explain that the boy ran because he was scared of the police. The officer who grabbed the boy’s neck told the teacher that the police “were out to help people, not hurt them,” according to the report.

“That’s not how a Black man sees it,” the teacher explained, the report states.

“I’m sorry that’s not how a Black man sees things…That’s how an intelligent man would see it,” the officer retorted, according to the report.

The boy’s mother told a Justice Department investigator that she had to transfer her son to a different school after the incident because he was too scared of officers returning to the neighborhood.

Trenton officials ‘fully’ cooperated with federal officials

The Justice Department said the city and Trenton police cooperated fully with their investigation.

Trenton Mayor W. Reed Gusciora said in a statement that they gave “extraordinary” access, saying the safety and rights of residents are “paramount,” while supporting police officers who do their best every day.

“These are not mutually exclusive ideas,” he said. “All residents of the City of Trenton, and the thousands of people who come here to work and visit on a daily basis, want and deserve a police department which keeps them safe while upholding the rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution.”

The two sides are expected to negotiate a consent decree that will lead to reforms in the department. Community meetings will be held at a date to be determined.

Residents can reach out with recommendations by calling 973-645-8201 or by emailing USANJ.Community.Trenton@usdoj.gov.

Once agreed upon, Trenton will be the second city behind Newark to enter into an agreement with the federal government to change its practices. New Jersey’s largest city reached its agreement in 2016. According to Sellinger, it remains in force.