Bridget Haymon of South Amboy
was leaving a New Brunswick courtroom in August 2012 when Middlesex County
Sheriff's Officer Lawrence Madigan grabbed her arm. Surprised, she pulled away.
That’s when he reportedly grabbed her again, threw her to the ground and jumped
on top of her.
Madigan later filed a report
claiming Haymon had assaulted him. But the Prosecutor’s Office determined that
report was false and charged Madigan with lying and simple assault. He was
suspended without pay and returned to the job last year.
That incident — the subject of
a federal civil rights lawsuit that was dismissed in October pending an
out-of-court settlement — is notable for being an exception in cases where
citizens complain about police brutality.
While excessive force
complaints against police are not rare, cases in which police internal affairs
investigations side with citizen complaints are indeed rare. That’s a disparity
that raises a red flag for some lawmakers and police reform groups.
From 2008 to 2012, citizens
filed hundreds of complaints alleging brutality, bias and civil rights
violations by officers in more than seven dozen police departments in Central
Jersey. Just a fraction of those complaints were upheld by the internal units
tasked with investigating complaints against their colleagues, according to a
Courier News and Home News Tribune review of hundreds of police documents.
Just 1 percent of all excessive
force complaints were sustained by internal affairs units in Central Jersey,
the review found. That’s less than the national average of 8 percent, according
to a federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report released in 2007.
Law enforcement agencies in
Hunterdon, Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties were less likely to sustain
excessive force complaints — that is, find enough evidence to warrant
discipline against an officer — than to sustain complaints of rule infractions
filed internally by superior officers.
Most Central Jersey police
departments never sustain any of their large volume of complaints alleging
excessive force or brutality
A whopping 99 percent of all
complaints regarding police brutality are left uninvestigated in central New
Jersey, according to a Courier News and Home News Tribune report published this
week.
Between 2008 and 2012, citizens
"filed hundreds of complaints alleging brutality, bias and civil rights
violations by officers in more than seven dozen police departments in Central
Jersey," the report reads. However, it adds that only 1 percent of these
complaints -- seven percentage points below the national average of 8 percent
-- were "upheld by the internal units tasked with investigating complaints
against their colleagues."
In the majority of cases, the
police agencies reportedly "either 'exonerated' the officers, dismissed
the complaints as frivolous, determined that they did not have sufficient
evidence or simply never closed the investigation."
Although an attorney with the
American Civil Liberties Union called these numbers "serious," the
report quotes a South Brunswick police chief who insists that the agencies
"do a good job of self-policing." Representatives of the Union County
and Somerset Prosecutor’s Offices were also quoted as saying that
investigations are conducted when they are warranted.
(Read the full report here.)
Several high-profile cases
involving alleged police misconduct in New Jersey have made headlines in the
past year.
In June, for instance, a
20-year-old man named David Castellani was allegedly hit, clubbed and kicked by
a group of five police officers outside an Atlantic City nightclub, CNN
reports. Castellani, whose family has filed a lawsuit against Atlantic City
police, also alleges that a sixth police officer allowed his police dog to
attack him.
"It's definitely the worst
thing that's ever happened to me in my life," the college student told the
outlet of the incident, which was captured on surveillance video. (Watch it
below.)
According to Philly.com, K-9
officer Sterling Wheaten, one of the police officers allegedly involved in the
attack, has been the "subject of more than a dozen internal affairs
investigations and 21 civilian complaints of misconduct." He has also been
sued on several occasions for alleged assault or the use of "excessive
force," the report notes.
In December, Wheaten was found
guilty of assaulting a 39-year-old man in 2008. The court determined that
Wheaten should pay him $250,000 in compensatory damages, Philly.com writes.
Also last year, two New Jersey
men filed a suit against the Paterson Police Department, alleging police
brutality. Alexis Aponte and Miguel Rivera said that police officers used
excessive force during a 2011 arrest, in which Aponte was allegedly kicked and
dragged down the street.
The incident was apparently
captured on video. The officers were eventually found not guilty of any crime
by the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office, according to NorthJersey.com.