Making Black lives matter – nj.com – nj.com

After watching a white cop — sunglasses balanced on his head, hand in his pocket, glacial expression on his face — push a Black man’s head into the asphalt, ignore his pleas to live, dig his knee into his neck and press slowly until every bit of life drains from his body a nation finally called for change.

The images of George Floyd’s death, like those of water hoses and baton-wielding troopers of the 60s, pushed millions of people around the world into action. What resulted has become one of the largest movements in U.S. history, even before planned marches take place on Aug. 28.

Protesters demanded an end to the decades of suffering and killings of Black and brown people by police. Here, in New Jersey, Black people are at least three times more likely to face police force than someone who is white. New Jersey imprisons Black people at 12 times the rate of white residents. And New Jersey law enforcement officers kill about a dozen people each year, almost all of them men, most of them Black and brown.

We’ve asked more than 50 marchers, law enforcement officers, lawmakers, academics and others in New Jersey, “what’s next?” How should demands from these historic marches be crafted into policies? Almost all — from Gov. Phil Murphy to police union leader James Stewart — agree that a reckoning is in order, that change must happen. But there is wide disagreement about how much must change.

The conversation starts here and will continue with a livestream conversation Aug. 20 at 1 p.m. on Facebook.

Here’s what they said about how to make Black lives matter to police:

GURBIR GREWAL | New Jersey attorney general

I’m listening to the marchers, says Grewal, who even participated in several.

“I will not ever have the experience of what it’s like to be Black in America. I may think I have experienced discrimination, which I have, but I have not shared the experience that a Black man growing up in this country will have. But what I can do is to listen.”

There are impediments to change, and he knows it. Finances, resources and police unions, which he hoped would spend more time listening to the community, already threaten planned reforms. He also acknowledges that his own efforts at transparency are “modest” compared to current legislative proposals.

His plan is to reform policing by overhauling the definition of how police use force during confrontations with the public, by supporting the use of body cams and by calling for police departments to “create a culture of accountability.” “We must dispel the notion that cops protect each other,” he said.

But should we defund police departments? “I think that’s such a bad slogan to defund the police right now,” he says. “If you ask multiple people what that means, no one can define it and what I think what we ought to be doing is smartly funding law enforcement right now.”

“Everything is on the table right now because this is a once-in-a-lifetime reckoning when it comes to not just law enforcement but to all the institutions that are plagued by systemic biases that are now in the forefront of our conversation.”

RONALD L. RICE | head of the N.J. Legislative Black Caucus, state senator, former Newark police officer

“As a former cop and detective serving the City of Newark for eight years, I understand that to remove racism and bias in law enforcement police must police themselves. There must be oversight, enforcement of rules and laws, and swift action to punish and/or purge bad cops. Oversight and enforcement go hand-in-hand with comprehensive training that supports police activity with deep sensitivity to the needs, situations and concerns of those they serve.”

Rice supports legislation that would require New Jersey’s state, county and municipal law enforcement agencies to reflect the diversity of the population they serve, that would provide for diversity action plans and cultural diversity training for departments, that would record, analyze and report certain prosecutorial and criminal justice data in light of the race, ethnicity, gender, and age of every defendant.

“We can’t legislate healing or transformation in people’s hearts. But we can ensure just and compassionate behavior with the laws we pass. We must continue to educate each other to expand our knowledge, defeat ignorance and eliminate the fear that threatens our progress.”

“To paraphrase the wisdom of Baba Dioum, ‘In the end, we uphold only what we love, we love only what we understand, and we understand only what we are taught.‘”

PHILIP V. McHARRIS | race and police scholar, Yale University Ph.D. candidate

New Jersey has a long history of police violence and misconduct and the reforms proposed by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal won’t stop police violence, McHarris says.

Camden’s restructuring isn’t an answer, either. “They just replaced one local department for austerity measures with a better resourced, county-level department that has created an intense surveillance culture in the city,” he says. The new department “still rests on punishment, surveillance, and control when there are ways to actually foster safety and accountability that do not center policing and prisons.”

“There are many ways to reduce violence and intervene in conflict that do not rely on an incredibly expensive, archaic, and violent model of ‘justice’ that does not bring about the public safety it purports to, and actively harms and kills Black and other marginalized people. This is especially true given that fewer than 5% of incidents where 911 is called is not for anything involving violence.”

The path forward is clear for McHarris. Police departments should be defunded and the money should be spent on other solutions.

“There is real evidence that shows civic and community-based organizations and initiatives can build safe communities without the costs and violence that come along with police and prisons. These include conflict-resolution teams, summer jobs, engaging young people, addiction and mental-health treatment, well-resourced community-based violence interruption teams — including for gender-based violence, creating more green spaces within communities, adding after school programs and summer jobs, and making sure all residents have their basic needs met.”

JILES H. SHIP | commissioner, New Jersey Police Training Commission, former president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and current president of NOBLE New Jersey

We’re dealing with a culture that believes that policing must be a certain way, Ship says. “Until we change that culture, we won’t change the results.”

Ship says body-worn cameras should be mandatory. Their cost shouldn’t be an impediment. “In this country, when we have a need for something we find the money.” One solution, he says, is for the state to shell out the cash. That way it will be independently maintained, more tamper-proof, Ship says.

There should be statewide standards for officers, he says. We shouldn’t let individual towns set the standards. “We need people with good interpersonal skills and cultural competency.” We don’t need people with a warrior mentality, they should have a guardian mentality. “There should be mutual respect.”

We should get rid of arrest quotas, ticket-writing quotas, the 30-year law enforcement veteran says. Use of force must change. Just like an officer qualifies with his or her weapon, they should qualify regularly on how to use unarmed defensive tactics. “If you’re not fit every year, you can’t police.” Force, he says, should only be used as a last resort.

Community policing is not a basketball game with a cop, coffee with a cop or a community meeting with police. Community policing means the community is in a partnership with the police. “Community policing means everyone is at the table. It’s been perverted into other things.”

And he has faith that change will happen. “I have more hope now than I have had in my entire career,” he says. “I’ve never seen such a global response.”

KHADIJAH COSTLEY WHITE | assistant professor of journalism and media studies, Rutgers University

“The real question is – what does it cost a police officer who has no regard for Black lives?”

“What happens when, like in Bordentown, New Jersey, a police chief bashes a Black teen’s head for sneaking into a hotel pool? What happens when a man like Jerame Reid ends up dead after going through a stop sign? When Maurice Gordon, a Black man stranded and waiting for help, ends up killed by a state trooper? The answer is nothing.”

“There are no arrests, no firings, no jail time, almost no accountability whatsoever.”

“In New Jersey, cops forced to retire for this kind of brutality can easily go on to work with children as School Resource Officers or operate in other state and local positions. For example, Jude Tanella, a former law enforcement agent who killed an unarmed Black man in 2002, currently sits as an appointee on the state School Ethics Commission.”

“If you want to make Black lives matter to law enforcement officers, you have to make taking and brutalizing Black people cost them something. Our state leadership needs laws and policies that hold police accountable and convey that value.”

ANGELA McKNIGHT | Democratic assemblywoman

“Just protesting is not enough. And as a leader, it is my duty to write legislation to help with the protesting to assure that Black lives really, truly matter,” McNight says.

“I am proposing legislation to work with the AG’s office here in New Jersey to do an updated model on use of force. And also to require a civilian complaint board in each municipality, and also a resolution condemning police brutality.

“So we need to have, for example, a statewide database where we track from police use of force. We need to ensure that we have a whistleblower policy where a police officer when he or she sees something, they are protected when they come to tell. And we also need to have a civilian complaint review board in each municipality, where we have members of the community on that board that will help the police that will help the police intervene and interact with the community.

“And if we don’t have community members on that board, the police, you know, will continue the battle, will continue to do you know what, what they’ve been doing. So we need a whole reform, and I want New Jersey to be one of the leaders and making sure that reform is done.

ZELLIE THOMAS | math teacher, Paterson public schools and Black Lives Matter organizer

Thomas says the younger generation is calling for defunding the police the loudest because “they saw Zimmerman go free and see the consistent failure of justice for Black people.”

He embraces the ideas of 8toabolition and has begun a petition drive in Paterson to get the city to reallocate at least $10 million from the police department’s $48 million annual budget.

“We need to take away from the large police budget and spend the money on things that keep us safe,” including mental health services, better housing. He suggests removing School Resource Officers from schools.

There’s been a big pushback from police to the reforms pushed by Black Lives Matter. But, he says, “when you see a big shift in ideas from the public, it doesn’t matter what the police think.”

DERRICK DARBY | philosophy professor, Rutgers University

“A Black man stopped by police, removed from his car and beaten. This was John Smith’s fate in Newark on July 12, 1967. After the word got out, all hell broke loose — there were riots, arrests, and more deaths.

“Residents, fed up with police brutality, said, ‘No more; we’ve had enough.‘

“Almost 50 years later, in 2016, a civilian review board was formed to address complaints.

“The Newark Communities for Accountable Policing is a model of what we must do to make Black lives matter to law enforcement: We must allow everyday citizens, especially young people disproportionately affected by police violence, to police the police.”

DELORES JONES-BROWN | professor emeritus, CUNY Graduate Center, former assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County

The nation has been trying to fix how Black people are policed for more than 60 years, says Jones-Brown, who founded the Center on Race, Crime at Justice John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She also served on the consent decree monitoring teams in Newark and in Ferguson, Missouri.

“Since the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice issued its 342-page report in 1967, considerable government-funded time and attention have been dedicated to the provision of technical assistance and specialized training to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. But much of that money has contributed to policing strategies that criminalize Black people and Black spaces.

“In the name of ‘public safety,’ Black youth and adults, both male and female, have been subjected to surveillance, stops, questions, frisks, searches, arrest and death, whether or not they were engaged in illegal conduct. More often than not, the officers who illegally subject Black people to such treatment, escape punishment. And so, the practices continue, sometimes legitimized by academic research that suggests the practices amount to ‘effective policing.’

“Policing cannot move forward without being made to recognize that every individual Black life matters; and, that they must think about Black people as individuals who have constitutional, civil and human rights equal to those of whites. The officers and departments who demonstrate a pattern and practice of violating these important individual entitlements and protections must suffer meaningful consequences. Individual officers must be fired and prosecuted. Departments must be defunded, dismantled and rebuilt with personnel and leaders who are required to consistently demonstrate that they value all Black lives.”

TAAJ WILLIAMS | sister of Earl Faison who was murdered by police in 1999

JASON WILLIAMS | assistant professor of Justice Studies, Montclair State University

“Maybe we can reimagine what crime is,” Williams says. “Should we really have an officer respond to traffic violations?”

“Where we have over-policing is with these so-called quality-of-life issues,” he says. Loud music, loitering, swearing at police and other minor infractions should be ignored. “Their time would be better spent investigating murders.”

Driving While Black or pretextual stops happen as a matter of geography, he says. “If you are Black in Upper Montclair after 11 p.m. they want to know what are you out there doing?“ Geography becomes a proxy for race, or class or sexual preference. “Geography becomes the main modality through which most of these injustices are carried out today.”

“Laws and policies need to change, that needs to come with the revitalization of whole communities,” he says. “But also with the revitalization of policing as a practice that doesn’t go out and hunt for a crime. These officers need to be peace officers. They should be keeping the peace, not out hunting for crime and quotas.”

CHRISTOPHER PORRINO | attorney, former New Jersey attorney general

“Though the overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers are well-intentioned, some are racist. And the horrific acts of a few like we saw in the senseless killing of George Floyd, breed mistrust among those who may already live in fear of the police, including many persons of color.”

“At the same time, I know that police anxiously recall tragedies like the July 2016 execution of five law enforcement officers at a protest in Dallas, Texas following the police-involved killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. It is undeniable that events like these play in the backs of the minds of both police officers and civilians.”

“Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand why building relationships will take hard work and commitment. Trust will not be built on the notion that cities should (or practically could) defund police, nor is trust built through legislative initiatives, many of which will never become laws.”

“Trust is built through the devotion of community and law enforcement leaders, who must work together to set an example for their constituents. Cops in churches on Sunday, on athletic fields with students, in the pre-schools, on ice cream trucks and at pizza parties. Police who are incentivized to live in the communities where they work and who are trained to smile at civilians and to deescalate heated encounters by taking a step back when they can. Trust is built on rooting out bad cops and continuing to provide education about the rights and obligations of civilians when interacting with law enforcement.”

CJ GRIFFIN | director, Justice Gary S. Stein Public Interest Center at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden

“Protecting Black lives requires new ways of thinking. Instead of focusing on procedural police reforms, such as training and policies, which have never meaningfully changed outcomes, we must instead change the role police play in our society.”

“First, we must acknowledge that the history of American policing is rooted in racism and oppression. In “The End of Policing,” Alex S. Vitale explains how early police forces were used to enforce slavery in the South and to control the “underclass” elsewhere – immigrants, free Blacks, Native Americans and the poor. After slavery ended, police enforced Jim Crow laws to keep newly freed Blacks subservient.

“History is important. The fact that police arrest, incarcerate, and use force against people of color at disproportionately higher rates today is not accidental; it is the result of the system’s original design. To fix this, the system must be redesigned into something different than what it has been for centuries.

“Among other things, this means shrinking police departments and investing in community services. It means changing the laws that police enforce, either because they were enacted to oppress people of color or are used by police to justify pretextual stops.

“Another important step is ending the culture of police secrecy. In New Jersey, police investigate themselves when a person files an allegation of misconduct, and the public has no access to police disciplinary records. Only through public access to these records can we expose misconduct and corruption and change police culture.”

SHAWN BREWINGTON | marketing and business consultant in Paterson

For many years, Shawn Brewington was the event coordinator for Paterson Teen Summit, an anti-violence initiative in collaboration with the Paterson Police Department and the Paterson Housing Authority

Brewington says, “community engagement and accountability from both sides is a start. I’ve seen first hand how those small steps lead to impact.”

“For more than 20 years I have been actively involved in the fight to improve relations between law enforcement and the communities sworn to protect and serve them…Once both sides see each others’ differences they often times find common ground, which usually leads to an effective solution, at the very least on a small level; which, in my mind, is big progress.”

LAWRENCE HAMM | founding chairman, People’s Organization for Progress

“Ninety-nine percent of police brutality cases never end in a conviction,” Hamm says.

“Lawmakers at every level must pass legislation that makes it clear that police brutality will no longer be tolerated and that police who do it will no longer have immunity from prosecution. The job of the police is to arrest and detain, not to be the judge, jury, and executioner.”

“Government policy at all levels must state in no uncertain terms that police who unjustly murder civilians, use excessive force, violate constitutional rights, employ racist and discriminatory police tactics will be fired, prosecuted and punished according to the law. And if convicted, they will receive sentences comparable to those given to citizens who have committed similar crimes.”

“There must be one system of justice for everyone.”

RAS J. BARAKA | mayor of Newark

“We have approached law enforcement reform through greater police transparency and accountability, police training geared toward more respectful and lawful resident interaction, and building trust through extensive partnerships between police and community. The results have been significant reductions in both crime and complaints against police.”

Moving forward, Baraka said he wants civilian complaint review boards to have subpoena power. “Our progressive plan is currently being challenged in the New Jersey Supreme Court. We need the state and attorney general to back muscular review boards and to ensure swift and just disciplinary action for police misconduct.”

Baraka says officers should undergo psychological evaluations every five years to ensure they remain fit for the demands of police work and there “should be state mandates for police departments to develop uniform early warning systems for problematic officers, leading to retraining or, if that fails, removal. We need to identify ‘use of force’ and abuse red flags quickly, intercede, and remediate the problem.”

De-escalation training should be mandated, legislation should require new officers to live in the communities they serve for at least five years and the demographics of the force must reflect the community.

Finally, he says, “police encounter many situations for which a social worker would be better suited. Every police department should have a team of social workers available to safely de-escalate situations and make necessary referrals.”

LAWRENCE S. LUSTBERG | attorney, chairman, Criminal Defense Department, Gibbons P.C

“Transparency into and accountability for police misconduct are critical. It is why so much time and effort has been spent over the past decade to create a citizens’ complaint review board in Newark. A CCRB would, by making the community a part of the police disciplinary process, both prevent mistreatment by law enforcement and build trust between police and those they serve.

“The entrenched police resistance to the development of CCRBs is both unfortunate and short-sighted,” says Lustberg, one of the attorneys in the legal battle to give Newark’s CCRB the ability to subpoena or investigate police.

“But it is a mistake to view police misconduct in a vacuum, decontextualized from larger issues of race in society. These include the school-to-prison pipeline that begins with inequality of educational opportunity and ends with mass incarceration and its consequences. In New Jersey, those problems are particularly profound: we have the sixth most segregated school system in America, one in which fully half of all Black students attend schools that are more than 90% Black.

“At the end of the pipeline, New Jersey’s prisons are the most disproportionally Black of any in the nation. Blacks make up 61% of our prisoners but only 12.9% of the population. And the consequences of this disparity are tragic, dividing Black families, saddling Black people with the extreme challenges of re-entering society following incarceration, and denying Blacks participation in our political system, disenfranchising them.

“Finding solutions to these problems is challenging, but we must demand that our leaders try.”

FREDRICK JAMES | minister, son of man who sued to integrate housing in Willingboro

Fredrick James has lived in Willingboro for most of his life. He moved to the area from the Jim Crow South and quickly learned that racism existed in the North, as well. His father, W.R. James, Sr. successfully sued to integrate housing in Willingboro in the late 1950s. Back then the town was still known as Levittown. The Levitts, who purchased all of the land for its housing development didn’t originally sell homes to Black people.

“People in MLK’s day got shot, dogs sicced on them, hoses, all of that stuff. You’ve got to be willing to go through that sort of thing….That’s the only thing that’s going to make the change. You got to get out there on the front line and you got to stay on the front line. And you got to go to the polls.”

TOM KEAN | state Senate minority leader

Updating the use of force policy will “further encourage and strengthen police-community trust,” Kean says.

He points out that the Legislature has passed several bills that will reform the state’s criminal justice system, including juvenile justice reforms, and that ensure that personnel files of law enforcement officers are shared when they apply for employment at other agencies. “I was proud to support these measures.”

He’s also a sponsor on a bill that clarifies that a law enforcement officer who knowingly chokes another person is engaged in the use of deadly force.

“It’s clear that we must unite to find solutions,” Kean says. “I look forward to listening to and working with all stakeholders on ways we can restore trust, hope, and equality in our communities.”

SALAAM ISMIAL | founder, National United Youth Council Inc.

JAMES STEWART, Jr. | president Newark Fraternal Order of Police

“First, the fact that a video of a man dying while being subdued at the hands of police officers resonated with so many people as a metaphor of their interactions with police is very troubling.

“People, especially in urban communities, are saying they feel as though the police always have their knee on their neck, and if that is the case, then there is not a supportive base for good police/community relationships. That needs to change.

“Departments can not be driven by numbers. Assignments and work schedules can not be based on a cop’s productivity as far as tickets and arrests are concerned. That form of policing leads to more negative interactions between police and citizens and more negative interactions leads to more animosity toward the police. Nobody wants that.

“We can get the bad guys off the streets, the true criminals bringing havoc to their respective communities, that is what we signed up for. We can also turn a motor vehicle stop with half a dozen violations into an encounter that results in one ticket, thus changing a potentially financially crushing moment into something where the driver leaves feeling respected and with their dignity intact.

“Citizens want to be treated fairly, and they want to be in a safe environment. The American police officer wants the same thing. Moving forward together we can all reach those goals.

AMOL SINHA | executive director of ACLU New Jersey

“For society to reflect the reality that Black lives matter, we have to unpack and address a system of policing that was created to ensure that they would not.

“That seismic shift requires that we shrink and scale back police forces, and it makes it necessary to challenge the police unions that enable the most destructive elements of policing. Instead, we have to direct resources to services that address a broad range of human needs without the implicit threat of arrest or violence that police carry with them.

“As we make progress toward the long-term transformation in law enforcement that justice demands, we need to work fiercely for policies now that can change the most unjust aspects of policing on the ground today: real transparency in police departments, ending the legal principle of qualified immunity that allows officers to escape consequences for misconduct, and empowering civilian complaint review boards with real powers that let communities hold officers accountable.”

RASHAD WRIGHT | poet laureate of Jersey City

“I don’t think you can prevent crime by, perhaps parking outside of a high crime area. I don’t think that’s giving the community the resources that they need, which is what I think may lead to violent actions or crimes,” Wright said.

“I personally went through mental health counseling in a group and one-on-one setting. I felt like family members of mine that are in jail, if they had those resources or those experiences, they might not have resorted to the thing that led them to being detained.”

“I don’t like the idea that a lot of our people, a lot of laborers, don’t have health insurance and wouldn’t have the opportunity to step into the mental health world even if they wanted to. If our police department decided to house therapy sessions, and the police department was funding it or were part of that whole process. I think that would really help our city.”

RYAN P. HAYGOOD | civil rights lawyer, CEO of New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

“The most important thing we can do to make Black lives matter in policing is to make Black lives matter. Period. Full stop.”

“Racist policing is one crack of structural racism in our foundation. There are many more, including unequal access to wealth, healthcare, justice and democracy itself. We are seeing all these cracks converge and erupt right now, forming earthquakes in communities of color. It is incumbent upon us not to squander this moment and to deal with these issues holistically.

“Regarding policing specifically, in addition to much-needed policy changes we are hearing about everywhere — accountability, transparency, and banning chokehold and other deadly practices — we must also reduce the emphasis on, and demilitarize, policing and make deep investments in community health, employment, education, and affordable housing.”

PHIL MURPHY | New Jersey governor

“To address racial inequities and reform our broken criminal justice system ‘Black lives matter’ must not only serve as words but as a call to action,” the governor says.

His administration, he says, “will continue to be unabated in our efforts to restore trust in Black and brown communities that have endured the sustained existence of systemic racism for far too long.”

“Our charge now is to build upon our progress to reform and improve policing to further increase accountability, transparency, and professionalism.”

ROHESIA HICKS | founder of Visions of Belle

“The community can ensure that Black lives matter by listening, educating and empowering our people, especially our youth,” Hicks says. “I know it sounds easier said than done but we have to teach the people how to treat us.”

“We cannot respond in our emotions because then our message gets buried under our behavior and the focus is moved from the real issue,” she says. “If we strengthen our offense then we are strategically approaching the matter from an offensive stance where we can get ahead of the narrative.”

Hicks’ organization is a Newark-area non-profit that promotes career competency and life skills for young women.

JENNIFER SELLITTI | training and communications director, New Jersey Office of the Public Defender.

Dismantling our current system, which has consciously and subconsciously fueled racial inequity, is no easy task, she says.

“Tired measures like more education, funding and training for police will fail. ‘More’ for police always fails because giving more does nothing to change the culture or to stem the tide of mass incarceration. Valuing Black lives requires bold moves. Police accountability reform and sentencing reform are necessary starts.

“New Jersey is one of 19 states in which police internal affairs records are shrouded in secrecy, yet criminal prosecutions, particularly for non-violent offenses, often rise and fall on an officer’s word. The deck is stacked. In a system in which the accused has no meaningful access to an officer’s history of misconduct, the defense is limited in its ability to challenge an officer’s credibility.

“New Jersey must pass legislation that makes all internal affairs records public and that eliminates mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenses. Removing the minimum for drug offenses alone would reduce the Black prison population by 15%.

“Black Lives Matter is more than a slogan to public defenders. It is a rallying cry. Every time an attorney stands up in court and challenges this system, we say Black lives – our clients’ lives – matter. New Jersey, however, can no longer afford to fight one battle at a time. Systemic reform is necessary, and the moment is now.”

ALEXANDRA BERNARD-SIMMONS | entrepreneur, author and entertainer in Newark

“There is a school to prison pipeline that is getting swept under the rug in America. Security guards, retired cops, and active cops are hired in schools and are policing children of color in a place of learning.

“Administrators need to understand the physiological damage over-policing of Black children can have on their psyche. Following them, yelling at them, instilling fear. Parents must advocate for their children and administrators must be conscious of the culture they are creating in their school to ensure it doesn’t mirror the stereotypes and biases going on in the outside world.”

PETER G. VERNIERO | former N.J. Supreme Court justice and former New Jersey attorney general

“New Jersey’s current attorney general is correct in reviewing the use of force by police. Use-of-force guidelines need to be clear, comprehensive and reinforced by intensive training, including de-escalation training.

“And Congress needs to act. Racial injustice is a national issue. It cannot be reserved exclusively for individual state reforms. Nor can it be limited to case-by-case prosecutions of police misconduct, although such prosecutions should be pursued diligently when warranted.”

“We need national standards on police conduct and any reforms that are enacted need to include mechanisms for regular independent review to ensure that they are working as intended.

“The harder part of reform is altering human behavior to erase racial bias. It is the moral challenge of our time to alter deeply rooted cultural attitudes that allow racism to exist. To affect such cultural change, we should consider ways in which good behavior is reinforced, discriminatory behavior is rejected and any element of bias is removed from the system. And we should allocate resources to those entities or programs that can make a positive difference.”

JESSICA HENRY | author, legal commentator, social justice advocate and associate professor at Montclair State University

New Jersey is a national leader when it comes to voting rights, overturning convictions of people who’ve been convicted and dropping the death penalty. We also have a progressive Supreme Court. “But we don’t have that great a record when it comes to policing,” Henry says.

The biggest roadblock to change are police unions and the current police culture. “What officers learn is that their loyalty is to each other instead of to the community. Police culture is going to need to change and that could be a big obstacle.”

The role of prosecutors needs to change, as well. “They often take the police at their word rather than act as a public check on what happens. They rubber-stamp the actions of police.”

“There is a culture where prosecutors are rewarded for getting convictions. It’s a problem.”

When individuals are arrested for low-level offenses – drug possession, loitering, simple assault – prosecutors can determine whether to charge those people.

“If they decide not to bring charges, that’s a check against the police. If they decide not to charge, police won’t make those arrests.”

ENOBONG (ANNA) BRANCH | vice chancellor for diversity, inclusion and community engagement, Rutgers University

“We must shift the conversation and get serious about building accountability into our institutions proactively as opposed to reactively addressing symptoms of racism evident in police brutality.

“Stop reducing racism to an individual level and address the institutional factors that enable the targeting of and harm to Black communities.

“Stop pointing to the existence of bad apples when institutions simultaneously excuse their actions; whether through failure to discipline abusive behavior, delays in charges for a crime, acceptance of resignation instead of forced termination that would document the existence of a problem. Topped off by relatively seismic shows of force that belie the legitimacy of nonviolent protest as tool of resistance for Black communities.

“Stop insisting on public trust of institutions and systems for due process to address police brutality when institutional practices and patterns established the lack of trust.”

“The individualistic bad apples argument misses the point, some fields can’t have bad apples, yet our institutions (state law) actively shields them.”

JOHN FARMER, Jr. | director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and former New Jersey Attorney General

We should first acknowledge that real progress has been made over the past two decades. The New Jersey State Police and departments such as Newark and Camden have increased their community outreach efforts, dashcams and body cams in some departments, among other improvements.

“Much more, however, needs to be accomplished,” Farmer says.

“I endorse, as logical extensions of those prior measures, Attorney General Grewal’s proposals to license police officers and to increase the transparency of use of force personnel records. Efforts to diversify departments so they more closely mirror the communities they serve should also be encouraged.”

“But the overriding challenge — to translate the energy expressed in the Black Lives Matter protests into a sustained improvement in police-community relations – cannot be met unless police departments deepen the level of engagement with the communities they serve, and vice versa.”

“This requires the development and sustained funding of joint police-community training. Training conducted with police at every level of service jointly with community leaders, business owners, parents and children will help immensely in setting expectations, in lowering barriers of fear and mistrust, and in demystifying the relationship.”

“This will prove harder than it sounds,” he says. “But it must become a priority.”

“The relationship between police and community is fundamental to a government founded, as ours is, on the principle of popular consent.”

CHRISTIE WHITMAN | former New Jersey governor

“It is more than understandable that these protests have occurred after so many years of Black Americans feeling unsafe and targeted when confronted by the police,” Whitman said.

“There need to be some changes made to police departments to address these real issues. We should start with incorporating a better system of initial screening for those applying to be police and more robust training. Of course, not all police are racist or overly aggressive, but more careful screening of those joining and better training will help ensure we have a police force that keeps everyone safe. These changes won’t happen easily, and they will require legislative work.

“We also need to spend the money on the police intelligently – they are not trained to do all the things we are asking them to do such as social work and family counseling. We need to give police the support they need so when they go into these situations where what is actually needed is a social worker or mental health expert, they have some backup from those professionals.

“The response to these protests should not be defunding the police, but rather figuring out how to better use the resources we are allocating to the police to ensure they have support in situations that they are not best equipped to handle.”

LINDA R. GREENSTEIN | chairwoman, Senate Law and Public Safety Committee

After convening a comprehensive hearing on police reform issues, several pieces of legislation were drafted.

“I am proud of our first bill package, which will require police to receive cultural diversity training, including how to recognize implicit bias. Other legislation includes bills that would require minority recruitment and selection, require the attorney general to report criminal justice data by race, and extend the bias statute to cover false police reports. These bills were universally supported by police and community groups.

“In the coming weeks, we will continue to look at issues such as training, use of force, the release of police disciplinary records, professional licensing, and community policing. I am hopeful that we will build enhanced trust and a better relationship between the police and the communities they serve.”

RAYMOND LESNIAK | state assemblyman and senator for 40 years

“Police protect us every day from criminals, often putting their lives on the line and deserve our appreciation but there is a problem in their ranks. They must be part of the solution.

“The key, in my opinion, to restoring trust in law enforcement and making Black lives matter is multi-fold — civilian review boards, transparency, integration of police departments and training of police with methods of de-escalation. And universal use of body cameras which are helpful to protect residents and police.

“Resolution of police brutality complaints by civilian review boards must be available for the public to see.

“Police departments should not be defunded. Indeed, they should receive increased funding to pay for the needed reforms, including enhanced recruitment of minority police officers.

“Social change comes infrequently in one’s lifetime. If the reforms I outlined are implemented I will be fortunate to see the change that came about from the Civil Rights and the Black Lives Matter Movements. I should be so fortunate.”

SHARIF AMENHOTEP | self-employed community activist

Amenhotep says police officers who have shot and killed people in the community remain on the force. “As long as these police officers are on the force, we can’t be safe,” he says.

Often, for an incident to happen, “all the cop has to say is ‘I was afraid.’”

He said he’s been stopped several times for “driving while Black.” During a stop in 2015, a police officer had asked him to step out of the car for a moving violation. He said he kept his arms in the air during the entire stop, although the officer repeatedly asked him to put his arms down.

“Then, he asked, ‘what’s that bulge in your jacket?’” told him it was my wallet. He asked me to hand it to me.

The stop ended with a ticket and a quick police departure. “I was really afraid I was going to die.”

QUOVELLA M. SPRUILL | public safety director, Franklin Township, Somerset County

A lot of people don’t understand what police do. “It’s the police (department’s) job to educate the public as to what we do,” she says.

“A lot of times, citizens will have complaints. They come in, we talk to them and if the officer was right in what he did, we explain it to them and they’re OK with it. It was that lack of understanding of why did the officer interact with me that way or what was going on at the time that the officer interacted with me that way.”

“At the end of the day we have to sit down with the community and find out what they want,” she says. We don’t want to over-police.”

“I get it both ways, ‘Oh, the cops are here, they’re harassing us because they see two or three cops on one block and then I get the other side, the citizen calling saying ‘they’re selling drugs on my street, I don’t see a cop. So we have to figure that out with the public, as well. What do they want? How do they want cops to interact with citizens?”

“I think we have to go back to the original purpose of why we’re here.”

CHARLES F. BOYER | pastor of Bethel A.M.E. Church in Woodbury, founder of Salvation and Social Justice

We must make police directly accountable to the community, Boyer says.

“Leaders selected by the community should determine what happens to officers who use force or take a life. Then, judges would have to enforce what is determined,” he says.

“The current system, from front to back, is made to protect police and has no accountability to anyone but themselves. Police culture will not substantively change until its boss does.”

His organization is advocating for public safety to be completely reimagined in a way that shifts public safety from policing and prisons to eliminating poverty and promoting healing. But in the short term, he supports legislation that eliminates some discretion about when officers can use deadly force; establishes county-level community accountability boards; provides more investment in public health responses to nonviolent, mental health and drug-related offenses and dismantles the power of police unions.

DeFOREST B. SOARIES, Jr. | senior pastor First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens and former New Jersey secretary of state

“Community leaders must understand that law enforcement agencies function in a context of relative double jeopardy. On the one hand, if law enforcement is not perceived to be as responsive to the needs and requests of the community, they will be accused of race-based neglect. If they are very responsive, they run the risk of being accused of being overly assertive or worse. If they aggressively seek to solve a violent crime committed in a Black neighborhood, they may encounter the “no snitch” culture of non-cooperation with police. If they are slow or lax in responding, they can be described as believing that Black lives don’t matter.”

How do we reform police departments? “We must increase penalties for abusive behavior by law enforcement officials and implement no tolerance practices for police misconduct. This includes lowering the threshold for charging law enforcement officials with violating the civil rights of citizens.”

“We must create independent commissions; recruit, train and promote law enforcement personnel that possess the psychological, emotional, and cultural capacity for law enforcement work and assess them every three years to ensure that they have maintained that capacity.”

He supports creating a national database of law enforcement officers who were terminated for misconduct and banning them from working in other law enforcement agencies and says we must elect political representatives who support this agenda and hold them accountable for follow-through.

PERRY BINDELGLASS | Bergen County photographer

JOHN VESPUCCI | author and adjunct assistant professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Cops should have a college degree, Vespucci says.

“A college education has often been shown as an asset to police officers who deal with racially diverse communities. Furthermore, many studies show a greater social acceptance of diverse lifestyles, not just limited to racial and gender diverse populations, by college-educated officers,” he says.

“A police officer can benefit from a foundational knowledge in psychology, sociology and criminology. This often leads towards an officer’s comprehension of the ‘why’ people behave a certain way; a concept often not concentrated on in police academy training. College is not just about learning, it is also about learning how to learn.”

But wouldn’t a requirement for a college degree raise expectations for higher police salaries? Vespucci says no. “Most police departments in the tri-state area have salaries comparable to entry-level positions for other professions requiring a bachelor’s degree.”

ANTHONY F. AMBROSE | public safety director, Newark

“The best forward-thinking philosophy to lessen tension between the police and the community is 191 years old and comes from Sir Robert Peel, who organized the London police in 1829.

“He believed effective law enforcement could only be possible if police earned the trust of the community through transparency, accountability and engagement.

“He also believed the effectiveness of a police department was not in the number of arrests but the suppression of crime through making the community a partner in public safety, which led to his most famous quote: ‘The police are the public and the public are the police.‘”

“His principles of policing are as relevant today, maybe more so, than when he formed London’s Metropolitan Police, as American police struggle with issues of militarization, race relations and use of force.”

Join the conversation during our livestream presentation, “How Can We Make Black Lives When it Comes to Policing?” at 1 p.m., Aug. 20 on NJ.com’s Facebook page. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal will give an introductory address followed by a panel discussion featuring seven speakers from today’s project who will talk about what consensus can be reached about police reform.

Tennyson Donyéa may be reached at tcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Learn about my new role as NJ Advance Media’s Culture, Identity and Diversity reporter here.

Robin Wilson-Glover is the opinion editor at NJ.com/The Star-Ledger. You can reach her at rglover@njadvancemedia.com and follow her on Twitter at @RobinGlover.

Photographs by: Amanda Brown, Aristide Economopolous, Steve Hockstein, Ed Murray, Patti Sapone and Joe Warner.

Copy editor: Brittney Davies

Social media: Libby Cardone.

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