In March 2023, Mr. Platkin, New Jersey’s chief law enforcement officer, said he had decided to take over day-to-day police operations in Paterson because of a “crisis of confidence in law enforcement in this city.”
It was not the first time the state had intervened to try to fix a troubled force.
In 1998, the state seized control of the Camden Police Department after concluding that it was understaffed and inefficient and had ignored recommendations to improve. Then, 14 years later, the department was disbanded altogether, largely in an effort to break the police officers’ union, and rebuilt with an emphasis on less confrontational law enforcement.
Ryan Haygood, a lawyer who leads the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, called the court’s ruling “shameful.”