LATINO LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE OF NEW JERSEY

CIVIL RIGHTS PROTECTION PROJECT

100 Jersey Ave. | B104 - Box 15 | New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901
Telephone: 732.249.0400 - Fax: 888.880.4405
www.llanj.org
President-Martin Perez, Esq. (732)397-8700 | martinperez@llanj.net
Committee Chairperson-Richard Rivera (201)600-1769 | rrivera@llanj.net

Police Use of Force Analysis in Vineland, N.J. Following Third In-Custody Death
in Cumberland County within 100 Days

May 2015

The Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey is the state’s largest Latino-based advocacy
group. With a grant from the Open Society Foundation, our Civil Rights Protection Project has
established a database of public documents to track police officer activities in numerous
municipalities throughout the state. Documents include internal affairs complaints, use of
force and vehicle pursuits. Our monitoring system uses the same material available to police
agencies. However, the agencies are not required by county prosecutors to track their officers
for patterns of behavior in these high liability areas, particularly use of force.

Following three in-custody deaths of persons in Cumberland County within a 100-day

span earlier this year, we conducted a review of the Vineland Police Department after the
recent death of Phillip White. The majority of Cumberland County’s law enforcement
personnel consists of three municipal police agencies, two county agencies and State Police
patrol of rural areas. In January, Vineland Police adopted a policy that exceeds state minimum
standards whereby its internal affairs division shall conduct audits “to determine if an employee
has the emergence of a pattern, practices or trend of inappropriate behavior or misconduct”
and monthly meetings of its Use of Force Meaningful Review Committee shall take place to
identify policy, training and equipment needs. We are not suggesting that Vineland officers
submitting force reports engaged in misbehavior or misconduct but there exists distinct
patterns and trends involving force here that the Chief of Police should publicly account for as
should any chief law enforcement official in the state regarding their subordinates. Our
analysis is based on the very reports given to officers’ immediate supervisors and police
command staffs. With no additional costs to undertake comprehensive reviews, there are no
reasons why officials are not conducting similar examinations of officer conduct particularly in
view of current national discussions on police use of force.

We reviewed more than 800 use of force reports (UFRs) filed by Vineland officers from
January 2013 to March 2015 as highlighted below. These reports are required to be submitted
by police officers in accordance with the statewide Attorney General Use of Force Policy where
officers use compliance holds and/or higher levels of force, up to and including deadly force.
Incidents recording physical, mechanical or deadly force involving local and county officers
“shall report annually to the county prosecutor in a manner established by the prosecutor.”
(Use of Force Policy, Section IV.B.2) Those reporting requirements remain ambiguous and
unfulfilled in several counties.
1|Page
 The Criminal Justice Act of 1970 authorizes county prosecutors in the state to have
general supervision and oversight of local policing within their jurisdiction and as such, the
ability to mandate reporting requirements and issue directives. However, many of the 21
county prosecutors in New Jersey fail to supervise their subordinate agencies in areas such as
citizen complaint intake/investigation and use of force. These same county agencies are then
tasked with secretly investigating and critiquing subordinate actions in deadly force encounters-
essentially reviewing their own failures if deficiencies found are traceable to the county
prosecutor’s office.

Because of a 1991 Attorney General Memorandum, only matters where “the possible
use of unjustified force” by police be routinely presented to a Grand Jury. We disagree with
this practice and advocate that all law enforcement in-custody deaths be brought before Grand
Jury and an independent post-incident report be made public so society understands policing
better and in order to prevent injury or death of police officers and public alike. Our
observations and findings in reviewing use of force incidents statewide demonstrate the
following trends:

• A handful of officers account for the most frequent use of force

• Officers with less experience, use force the most in comparison to their peers
• Many agencies use outdated/incorrect report forms
• Latinos are not properly recorded in report forms
• Complaints of excessive force are sustained less than four percent of the time
• Police agencies do not use baselines to compare use of force incidents or
officer conduct
• Use of force incidents should be a primary component of an early intervention
system to monitor officer activities
• Unless agencies are required to conduct force analyses, few will do so
• Police agencies, county prosecutors and the Office of Attorney General fail to
intervene upon patterns of force incidents
• Transparency and public reporting of use of force analyses are needed
• Injuries to the public and police officers may be reduced with proactive review
of force incidents

Statewide, from 2000 to 2009, complaints of excessive force (11,144) were sustained
3.5% of the time. In a 2006 Special Report, United States Bureau of Justice Statistics data
indicated that 8% of force complaints were sustained-more than double the rate in New Jersey.
According to its website, the Vineland Police Department conducted 137 internal investigations
involving allegations of excessive force and no cases were sustained (2011-2014).

New Jersey State Police Uniform Crime Report list 139 police officers employed by the
Vineland Police Department during the review period.

2|Page
 TABLE 1.

YEAR VINELAND OFFICERS NUMBER OF

SUBMITTING REPORTS REPORTS
2013 94 401
2014 79 338
Q1 2015 41 69

To put the numbers in TABLE 1. into context, we compared them to the Jersey City
Police Department which is nearly six times larger than Vineland, yet Vineland officers averaged
4.2 force incident reports in a single year compared to Jersey City’s 1.8 — more than double.
Sixty four Vineland Police officers filed two or more reports compared to seventy two in Jersey
City (798 person agency). Jersey City police officers filed 258 reports compared to Vineland’s
submissions in TABLE 1.

As illustrated in TABLE 2., there were 23 police officers in Vineland who filed six or more
reports compared to Jersey City’s 6; nearly four times the number of officers. There were four
Vineland officers who submitted 13 reports or more in 2014. No Jersey City officer filed more
than eight reports. We compared recent peak reporting years for the Vinland, Atlantic City and
Jersey City Police Departments as highlighted below.

TABLE 2.

AGENCY TOTAL OFFICERS OFFICERS FILING 13 OR MORE 18 OR MORE

6 OR MORE REPORTS REPORTS
REPORTS
VINELAND 139 23 4 3 (2013)
(2014)
ATLANTIC CITY 283 38 5 0
(2010)
JERSEY CITY 798 6 0 0
(2012)

The City of Atlantic City Police Department currently has the highest number of
outstanding federal lawsuits against it for allegations of excessive force. At the agency’s peak
of use of force incident reports in 2010 (660 reports), no officer exceeded 17 reports. In 2013,
there were three Vineland officers that exceeded that number, filing 18 or more reports. Those
three officers comprised 2% of the agency’s sworn personnel and accounted for 14.4% of its
use of force. The average years of experience among the officers was five years. Similarly, we
found that a small number of officers, ten in 2013; eleven in 2014; and seven for the first
quarter of 2015 accounted for the highest volume of force incidents in Vineland.

There are several categories by which officers describe the force they use ranging from
compliance hold, use of hands/fists, feet/kicks, strikes, use of chemical spray, canine, and
deadly force with each escalating level of force being less frequent. Kicks by officers are rarely
used as a force option statewide and Vineland officers used kicks in less than five percent of all

3|Page
reports filed the same year, consistent with statewide trends. The “top 11” Vineland officers
using force in 2014 represented 7.9% of the police agency but 34% of all force reports
submitted. One of these officers filed 21% of agency reports recording the use of “feet” or
kicks. The top 11 also accounted for 85.7% of agency use of chemical spray in 2014. For Q1
2015, two officers accounted for 100% of feet/kicks used agency-wide.

The latest United States Census data indicates that Caucasians (non-Latinos) make up
46.3% of Vineland’s population, African-Americans 14.1% and Latinos 38%. In 2014, 195 people
were subjected to force by Vineland police officers. 37.4% of them were African-Americans, or
2.6 times their population in the city. For the first quarter of 2015, that ratio rose to 2.8 of their
community representation. Thirty-one subjects were injured in incidents involving Vineland
officers resorting to the use of force in 2014. Two-thirds of them were injured in incidents
where the top 11 officers using the most frequent force were involved. The same top 11
officers wrote 115 reports whereby Black and Latinos were subjected to force between 62.5
percent and 100 percent of the time. Latino subjects were determined by the use of surnames
due to the fact that Vineland Police do not record Hispanics/Latinos and only use “B” (Black)
and “W” (Caucasian) identifiers on reports.

After looking at thousands of reports over the past five years we found it to be
beneficial to identify Latinos, other high concentrations of ethnicities and special populations
within a police jurisdiction to recognize potential training and policy needs within an agency.
For example, our data shows the highest number of officers resorting to force upon a single
subject mostly centers on persons listed as mentally ill or “emotionally disturbed persons”.
Police can use data analysis to develop policies for different circumstances and adopt less-lethal
force options to prevent injuries to themselves and others.

The Civil Rights Protection Project at the Latino Leadership Alliance was created to
bridge the communication gap between communities and police throughout the state. In the
course of collecting and analyzing police data, we regularly meet with stakeholders to discuss
our observations and provide recommendations for harmonious relations. We commend the
efforts of police officials that recognize the fact that policing is consensual in our democracy
where societal members inherently need to understand police practices. We remain vigilant in
our commitment to monitor law enforcement activities and share our findings with police
officials and the public with transparency. We urge officials to take the same approach and
initiate their own analyses to share with communities they serve and promote constitutional
policing practices.

Funding for this research was provided by the Open Society Foundation

###

4|Page