Strengthening penalties and sentences for drug-related crimes will not make anyone safer, but it would increase the number of Black men behind bars, and that is the route that Senator “Lock ’em up Joe” Cryan said he would pursue when he first ran for the legislature, and he has made good on that promise.
Cryan has championed two sets of rules —one for politicians and police, and the other for everyone else—but he has also continued to advocate failed criminal justice methods that eviscerated human rights and packed prisons full of Black and Hispanic men whose biggest crime was being poor.
Although the approach has been spectacularly unsuccessful, Cryan remains dedicated to the ‘tough talk’ policing that has failed to solve crimes and resulted in mass incarceration, violence against citizens, and frequent civil rights violations. This has gained the incumbent support among police unions in his 2021 campaign against former Assemblyman Jamel Holley and his current challenge from Angela Alvey-Wimbush, a 3-term Roselle school board commissioner.
Cryan sponsored legislation to roll back the bail reform laws enacted in New Jersey and he is opposed to measures that would erase the ‘qualified immunity’ for officers who kill, beat or otherwise violate the civil rights of citizens.
Qualified immunity is the tangled legal doctrine that effectively places government workers above the law by making it nearly impossible for people to hold them accountable when they violate our constitutional rights.
“Thanks to the modern Supreme Court, there are now multiple doctrines that shield government workers from accountability. Chief among them are qualified immunity, de facto federal immunity, municipal immunity, and prosecutorial immunity.
If any of these immunity doctrines apply, victims of government abuse are prevented from holding their abusers accountable in American courts.
Cryan voted to allow police to view body camera footage before filing written incident reports, which civil rights advocates criticized because it would let officers sanitize their accounts in cases of excessive force or police brutality.
District Attorneys and other prosecutors often decline to bring charges against police officers involved in the fatal shooting of unarmed Black men, ruling that such killing was justified.
The deadly shootings of unarmed Black men and women by police officers in the U.S. have increasingly garnered worldwide attention over the last few years.
The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., sparked a week of protests that catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement into the national spotlight. Since then, tens of thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets to protest police brutality against Blacks by mostly white officers.
The 2014 death of Eric Garner, who uttered the words “I can’t breathe” while in an officer’s chokehold in New York also inspired interest in the Black Lives Matter movement.
In 2020, the murder of George Floyd sparked widespread protests and rekindled the Black Lives Matter movement as it elevated a national conversation about race, police brutality, and social injustice. But prosecuting some of the police who murder unarmed Americans, while putting long-powerful police unions on the defensive, did not result in sufficient changes.
On January 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man was murdered by a violent mob of Memphis police officers which shocked the U.S. conscience. Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn J. Davis said that the department review of camera footage could not find any evidence of probable cause for the traffic stop that resulted in the beating.
In New Jersey, Najee Seabrooks, 31, a violence intervention specialist with the Paterson Healing Collective, was fatally shot by police officers that he called to assist while he experienced a mental health crisis on March 3. Seabrooks made the call to police himself, according to 911 recordings, but if he was afraid that he was in danger the officers made things much worse.
Family members told officers Seabrooks was hallucinating and behaving erratically, but police are seen in body cam video negotiating with their guns drawn and pointed at Seabrooks.
“Individuals and families of individuals who call 911 for help in their most vulnerable hour should receive support, not violence,” said a statement from Black Lives Matter Paterson.
“What outcome should we expect when someone in crisis is met with police armed for war with their guns drawn?” said Nicole Rodriguez, president of the New Jersey Policy Perspective. “Our system failed Najee, just as it continues to fail our Black and brown neighbors who put their lives in jeopardy when they call 911 for help. State and local lawmakers must act with urgency so mental health crises are met with trained professionals, not armed police, and that people are connected to the care they need.”
Seabrooks’ death is not an isolated incident. It’s an example of widespread, systemic, and unmistakable mismanagement and violence. Only 25% of Paterson’s residents are Black, yet they account for 49% of arrests and 43% of people killed by police. Between 2015 and 2019, Paterson had more excessive force complaints than Jersey City and Newark, cities that are twice its size.
Police unions and the officers they represent are often on the opposite side of the political fence from the majority of American citizens they serve, at a time when authorities need to build better relationships with civilian communities.
Police officers must be held accountable. Too often, we see racist policing go unpunished as a result of a criminal legal system built upon white supremacy and unconstitutional behavior persists, according to the state American Civil Liberties Union chapter, which joined 48 other New Jersey groups to demand the U.S. Department of Justice conduct a federal investigation of a pattern of misconduct that continues to deprive the Paterson community of their civil rights.
That has not stopped police and politicians from having two sets of rules, one for them and one for everyone else.
Cryan sponsored legislation to make it a crime to disclose the home address of a primary or secondary residence, of any active, formerly active, or retired judicial officer, prosecutor or law enforcement officer, essentially creating a wall of protection for these elite individuals.
Cryan reportedly made close to $1 million profit on the sale of a chateau in Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania, that he bought shortly after being elected to the New Jersey Senate.
He sold the lakefront house last year, after NJTODAY reported the location of the property and published a copy of the Carbon County deed showing Cryan bought the out-of-state home.