TRENTON, NJ– New Jersey’s top law enforcement official overstepped his authority last year he took control of the police force In Paterson, the state’s third-largest city, police there fatally shot a man who was barricaded in an apartment bathroom, an appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The New Jersey Appellate Division said Attorney General Matt Platkin did not have the authority to “replace” or take over the Paterson Police Department in March 2023, after headline-grabbing death of Najee Seabrooks.
The court focused Platkin to return control of the police department to city officials and return Police Chief Engelbert Ribeiro to the city from a police training committee.
“Does the AG have the authority to immediately replace all activities of a municipal police department without the consent of the municipality?” the court asked. “We conclude that the answer is no.”
The ruling was stayed pending appeal, and Platkin vowed to take the case to the state Supreme Court.
“We are deeply disappointed by today’s ruling,” he said in a statement. “We are extremely proud of the extraordinary progress the Paterson Police Department has made and we remain deeply committed to Paterson and the critical work of making the city safer for all its residents.”
The case provides insight into several crosscurrents related to police actions, including how Platkin, a Democrat, settles issues surrounding police accountability that he wants to defend. The court’s decision also comes as the Biden administration takes a closer look at other departments, including Trenton. which was said to have a pattern and practice of misconduct.
Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh, a fellow Democrat, criticized Platkin’s takeover and was part of the lawsuit that prevailed Wednesday.
“This is a victory for democracy,” Sayegh said in a text message. “What Matt Platkin did was illegal and undemocratic. He deprived Paterson voters of the right to further his own electoral ambitions.”
The takeover came amid a “crisis of confidence” in the city’s police department, Platkin said last year. Platkin’s action came just weeks after Seabrooks’ death, although he said no case led to the takeover.
Police were called to Seabrooks’ brother’s apartment, where he had locked himself in the bathroom. Seabrooks, a crisis intervention worker and mentor at the nonprofit Paterson Healing Collective, had called 911 at least seven times and told dispatchers that people were threatening him and that he needed immediate help.
Police spoke to him through the door, offered him water and in one case called him “love.” But tensions increased when he told police he was armed with a pocket rocket gun and a knife. According to the attorney general’s office, police shot Seabrooks as he came out of the bathroom with a knife.
Since the takeover, Platkin has put Isa Abbassi, a 25-year veteran of the New York Police Department, in charge of the department.
Platkin’s office said crime in Paterson has decreased since the takeover.
Some activists praised the takeover, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which called it a “welcome step” because of what they said was the department’s history of violent policing. On Wednesday, the group said in a post on X that the court ruling “threatens to erode one of the most important tools for police accountability in our state.”
Democratic Assemblymember Benjie Wimberly, who represents the city, said he supported Platkin’s call.
“This setback is deeply troubling, especially after nearly two years of concerted efforts and significant investments aimed at strengthening our police department and protecting the people of Paterson,” Wimberly said in a statement.
Paterson has a population of about 160,000 and is located about 20 miles northwest of Manhattan. Demographics have changed since the middle of the last century, when most residents were white. Today, black residents make up nearly 24% and Hispanics just over 60% of the population.
As Paterson’s black population grew, it repeatedly clashed with the city’s white power structure, especially the police. Platkin said earlier this year that he would not blame the residents for distrusting the police.
In the mid-1960s, Paterson was the scene of civil unrest between police and black residents. Paterson was also the inspiration for the 1975 Bob Dylan song “Hurricane,” about boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a black man convicted by an all-white jury in 1967 of murdering three white people in a city bar. A federal judge later threw out the conviction, writing that it was “based on an appeal to racism rather than reason.”
Since the beginning of 2019, city police have shot and killed four people; two others, including Jameek Lowerydied after being restrained.
The appeals court ruling leaves in place Platkin’s takeover of the police department’s internal affairs division — the group charged with investigating the department itself in certain cases. City officials have not challenged the attorney general’s takeover of that part of the department.