01-04-2025
Was state takeover of Paterson police overreach or warranted intervention?
Paterson officials say no state law explicitly empowered Attorney General Matt Platkin to declare control of their 300-officer force in 2023. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
Almost two years after the state took over the troubled Paterson Police Department, attorneys argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court Monday over whether it had the authority to do so.
Paterson officials, who sued the state seven months after the March 2023 takeover, have asserted that no state law explicitly empowered Attorney General Matt Platkin to declare control of the 300-officer force. Instead, under home rule, only municipalities have direct operational oversight of local police departments, said attorney Christopher Gramiccioni, who represents Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh and other officials.
State officials, though, have cited several laws they say gave Platkin that authority. Deputy Solicitor General Michael Zuckerman insisted the takeover, which came after a controversial and deadly police encounter, lies squarely within Platkin's duties to ensure both public confidence in law enforcement and the uniform, efficient application of criminal laws statewide.
While a state appeals panel sided with Paterson in December, the rapid-fire questions the Supreme Court justices showered on Gramiccioni, Zuckerman, and other attorneys over two hours of arguments Monday suggests the appellate ruling might not stand.
Dominating the discussion were two state laws both sides cited to make their case — the 1970 Criminal Justice Act, which designated the attorney general as the state's chief law enforcement officer, and a 2023 law known as Chapter 94 that state legislators passed after the Paterson takeover to facilitate it.
Gramiccioni argued that state legislators never intended to empower the state attorney general to seize control of municipal police departments because neither law explicitly spells out such authority. The Criminal Justice Act allows county prosecutors to take over local agencies, but only with the agency's consent, he added.
Zuckerman countered that the attorney general's takeover power is 'strongly implied, if it's not expressly granted.'
'If the attorney general can supersede a county prosecutor, and the county prosecutor can supersede municipally, it follows that the attorney general can supersede municipal law enforcement directly,' he said.
Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis pushed back on any claim that consent is needed.
'Where in the statutes does it tell us that there has to be consent in order for such supersession to occur?' she said.
Gramiccioni conceded consent isn't expressly required by law.
The justices also zeroed in on Chapter 94, which authorized the attorney general, when superseding a law enforcement agency, to appoint an officer in charge who hasn't completed training through the state Police Training Commission as long as the officer completes the training within one year of appointment. That became an issue when Platkin appointed Isa Abbassi, a New York Police Department veteran, to replace Paterson's chief, Engelbert Ribeiro, after the takeover.
The law did not mention Paterson, but it might as well have, Justice Rachel Wainer Apter said. Under the law's verbiage, it specifically applies to 'a city of the first class having a population of less than 200,000 according to the federal 2020 decennial census,' she noted.
'It seems to say everything it could, aside from 'the City of Paterson.' How can you argue that this is actually not referring to this particular supersession, and is instead referring to some other possible supersession where it was consensual?' Wainer Apter said.
The justices noted as further proof of a Paterson link that while Gov. Phil Murphy signed the law in July 2023, legislators made it retroactive to March 1, 2023. Platkin announced his office's takeover of Paterson on March 27, 2023.
Chief Justice Stuart Rabner also pointed to state funding allocated to effectuate the Paterson takeover.
'So the Legislature authorized $18 million for the attorney general's takeover of the Paterson Police Department, but you view that as — how does one view that if not actual validation and support for what the attorney general has done?' Rabner said.
Zuckerman backed up that sentiment, saying: 'If the Legislature had felt our reading was the wrong one, they would have told us to knock it off, and instead, they partnered with us and helped support this particular supersession.'
Gramiccioni exhorted justices to weigh only the statutory language rather than inferring legislative intent through 'collective sources of law.'
'I would submit this: It's the law that holds the supreme power, not a monarch who is basically creating this out of thin air, on a whim, on when he can go in and supersede a municipal police department,' Gramiccioni said.
But Zuckerman urged justices to regard Chapter 94 and the state funding as proof of legislative intent that the attorney general has the power to take over police departments in rare, warranted cases, such as Paterson, where police have a long history of brutality and civil rights violations that local officials have failed to stop.
'Our Legislature has provided unusually striking evidence, not only that it understood and intended for supersessions like this one to be lawful, but also that it was working with the executive branch to help this very supersession succeed,' Zuckerman said. 'That is fatal to the challengers' position.'
Henal Patel, an attorney for the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice who argued Monday in favor of the takeover, told justices that supersession is an important tool legislators gave the attorney general to restore trust when police have broken it. She pointed to the deaths of several residents at the hands of Paterson police, including Najee Seabrooks, a community activist who officers gunned down after he called 911 for help during a mental crisis.
'The legislative intent here was to provide the AG with broad powers to rebuild public trust, including supersession powers, and New Jersey's AG properly exercised that power,' Patel said. 'I want to emphasize the stakes here. If this court were to affirm the appellate division's opinion, the people of Paterson, especially its Black and brown residents, will be left without justice, and public trust would remain broken.'
Attorney Vito A. Gagliardi Jr., representing the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police, urged justices to set standards for supersession, saying police and municipal leaders deserve clarity on why the state would take over their force and advance notice when that occurs.
Zuckerman told the justices that while county prosecutors have taken over municipal police forces at least 17 times in recent decades, state takeovers of local police departments are historically rare in New Jersey. Besides Paterson, the attorney general's office took over the embattled Camden police department in 1998, and that department disbanded altogether in 2013.
'This office has never done it other than those two times,' Zuckerman said. 'So I think that tells you everything you need to know about how we view it as a break-the-glass kind of tool, as opposed to a just-do-it-because-you-feel-like-it kind of tool.'
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