Prosecutors should have to face the people at the polls

By John Bellocchio

Bergen County – nor New Jersey – can go on like this.  The recent arrest of Lt. Kevin Matthew of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office for stealing drugs – cocaine and fentanyl – from an evidence room should be the last straw for the New Jersey AG. 

Mark Musella has to go. 

Under his watch, if one can call it that, Lt. Matthew was able to move kilos of drugs out of the custody of his office.  Under his watch, only 17% of the rape kits given to his office have been tested.  Under his watch, the officers who let Bob Menendez’s wife go after she ran someone over in Bogota are still on the job. 

The BCPO, once a fine law enforcement institution, hangs its head in shame as the laughingstock of New Jersey law enforcement. 

The cronyism of Bergen County is alive, well, and thriving under the current administration at BCPO, and it’s a total disgrace.  It’s time for the Governor’s Office and AG Platkin to remove Mark Musella from office, and install an overseer, even temporarily, who will be able to bring discipline, competence, and honor back to the Office. 

Since John Fay, the disgraced ex-prosecutor who took his own life while under the microscope for corruption, was the Prosecutor nearly two decades ago, Bergen County, with some of the state’s highest taxes, has watched scandal after scandal unfold and cronyism expand without recompense. 

It’s time for a change.  It’s time for leadership.  It’s time for Mark Musella to go, and go right now.

We know that trust in government institutions, a social contract between government and the governed, is vital to a living, thriving democracy. 

The cronyism and corruption of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office is a major problem for the Murphy administration; they can, and should solve it by firing the incumbent. 

Such cronyism and corruption erode public faith in the justice system, and without that, only anarchy can follow.  With the 2024 election on the horizon and democracy itself at stake, the Governor and Attorney General shouldn’t wait a moment longer to fire Mr. Musella. 

They need to do so for several reasons, among them, in the short term, the restoration of trust in the prosecutor’s office in the State’s most populous county.  In the longer term, this action is necessary to restore trust in State Government in general.  

However, it’s time for a more significant change:  it is time for a ballot question that would allow New Jersey residents to vote for our local prosecutor, as is done in the vast majority of states. 

Along with New Jersey, only Alaska and Connecticut have an appointed prosecutor.  These offices, which have the sacred responsibility to see justice done, and to apply the law without fear or favor, have become political patronage mills that obfuscate justice, protect those in the “in-crowd,” and exclude everyone else, where and when they feel like it, must be accountable to voters. 

The pages of the state’s major newspapers are filled with stories like the one involving Lt. Matthew going back decades.  This is because the state’s 21 prosecutors, one for each county, are accountable to no one but the Governor, and they usually get their jobs due to their connections to various State Senators. 

After all, should any one Senator apply “privilege,” the nominee is rejected.  It’s ridiculous, it’s outdated, and it’s a recipe for corruption.  

New Jersey has one of the most constitutionally powerful Governors in the United States, and even with this proposed change, that will still be true. 

Prosecutors should have to face the people whom they can prosecute, not a committee of cronies.  It is time for this change to pick up speed, and it is time for accountability that can only be properly taken up in an election. 

It’s time to call your State Senator and demand they take this step, and it’s incumbent on every New Jerseyan who believes in justice to fight for this change.

John Bellocchio is a fully accredited behaviorist with more than 20 years of experience in some of the most difficult environments possible. He has spent a lifetime helping sufferers of PTSD, anxiety, and depression find their voice, become advocates, and free themselves from the chains that these issues often unfairly, even cruelly, impose upon people.