ACLU suit seeks N.J. State Police promotion policies
The Record
Read the complaintThe American Civil Liberties Union is asking a judge to order the State Police to turn over information on promotion policies within the force.
FILE PHOTO
The American Civil Liberties Union is asking a judge to order the State Police to turn over information on promotion policies within the force.
The rule exempts documents the Attorney General’s Office has argued could compromise investigations and put troopers’ safety at risk – including training manuals, standard operating procedures and employment records.
In the case filed Monday, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of the Latino Leadership Alliance, a New Brunswick-based advocacy organization that wants to analyze state police policies and their effect on promotion of minorities within the force.
Civil rights groups have long criticized the State Police for a lack of diversity among troopers. In response, the Attorney General’s Office has stepped up recruitment of minorities. It said last month that the applicant pool for its latest police class is its most diverse ever.
The alliance filed an open records request in July seeking the data but was denied. The state argued the request was “improper and overbroad” and violated the 2011 regulation against disclosure.
But the ACLU says in its complaint that the state has adopted an overly broad interpretation of the restriction and that information on the “promotions of uniformed officers do not, in any way, ‘provide insight into law enforcement techniques, legal strategy, and other confidential matters that may put lives at risk.’”
“The public really has a right to know what type of criteria goes into the promotion of police officers,” said Janie Byalik, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the ACLU.
The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Oral arguments before the Superior Court’s appellate division have yet to be scheduled on the ACLU’s wider challenge of State Police regulations on releasing documents, but Byalik said this suit demonstrates that the state is overstepping even those broad exemptions.
“While the attorney general didn’t really intend these documents to be covered by the regulation – because the language of the regulation is so broad it subsumes them anyway,” she said.
The fight over disclosure of State Police documents has its roots in a 2002 executive order signed by former Gov. Jim McGreevey, which ordered state departments to develop rules addressing controversial documents.
The Star-Ledger lost a 2005 legal challenge of a previous set of rules established under that executive order.
Email: campisi@northjersey.com
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