Police records related to the shooting of a black man who was killed by officers after he allegedly rammed them with an SUV must be released to the public immediately and without redaction, a New Jersey state trial judge has ruled, citing the heightened need for public access to information in the wake of the killings of African-American males by police in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y.
“The defendants’ refusals to disclose and utter lack of cooperation was undoubtedly intensified by the recent national debate fueled by a growing number of highly publicized incidents, including those in Ferguson and Staten Island, where police officers killed African American men, and also the apparent assassination of two New York City police officers by an African-American man,” said Bergen County Assignment Judge Peter Doyne in requiring the New Jersey State Police, the Bergen County Police and three local police departments—Lyndhurst, North Arlington and Rutherford—to release the records under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA).
