By David Cruz
Correspondent
“Once I pulled over, popped open my door, I had my hands out the window just like that, so they come they snatch me out my car.”
Laquan Thomas was one of several Newarkers who shared their stories of police encounters at a community forum sponsored by a coalition calling itself Newark Communities for Accountable Policing. His story is not uncommon. The Department of Justice has detailed decades of systematic police abuse on citizens of Newark.
Black residents three times more likely to be stopped and frisked, two and a half times more likely to get pulled over, with 75 percent of stops couldn’t be justified.
Among the many recommendations made by the Department of Justice, including installing a federal monitor, is the creation of a civilian complaint review board. The purpose of this forum was to make Newarkers aware that a CCRB is on the way and what it could mean to them.
“We have to get more community people involved,” said Rick Robinson, who works with the Newark NAACP and was one of several CCRB members in attendance. “That will make a significant change. It’s all hands on deck for everybody, not just the mayor’s office or the police director and the community, it’s everybody that comes into this city.”
Community Activist Laurence Adams says he’s been working for a CCRB for decades. And now that it’s close, he wants to make sure it has the power to do a thorough and effective job.
“If the CCRB doesn’t have subpoena power, it’ll be like so many other community oversight boards that have been established across the country but that are ineffective because they can’t get records, they can’t get into the background of offending officers,” he said.
“If the board has all the powers that it needs, which is what we’re fighting for, then whether you have a supportive police director or a reluctant police director the review board will work,” added ACLU-NJ executive director Udi Ofer. “And that’s exactly why we wanna make sure this board has the right authority.”
There is some question as to whether the board will get that authority. Police unions say their contract prohibits a CCRB from having it. That is something that will likely be decided in the courts. But, while there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that police and community relations have improved here of late, many at this forum expressed anger at comments like that of New Jersey governor and presidential candidate Chris Christie, suggesting that the Black Lives Matter movement is doing more harm than good to police and community relations.
“I don’t believe that that movement should be justified when they’re calling for the murder of police officers, he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “They’re chanting in the streets. That’s what the movement is creating.”
Newark Resident Robin Goods shook her head. “That just solidifies the fact that he has no common sense and that he’s a racist himself because we are being killed, not the cops. We’re the ones being killed like we were back in slavery time, without any repercussions.”
It’s taken 50 years for a mayor of Newark to create a CCRB and it’s still not a done deal but the mayor says he’s committed to a board with teeth and members of the coalition say they still have confidence that he will stick to his guns. In the meantime, the work of getting the community ready for a new day is just beginning.