The fight over a proposed data center in this rural Sussex County township turned violent Thursday night when an Andover Township police officer, who was identified as the mayor’s son, grabbed a resident, shoved him toward a doorway, and then slammed him to the floor, although the man offered no physical threat, video recorded at the community meeting shows.
The officer, identified by his nameplate as T. Walsh, then removed the nameplate from his uniform and waved it at cell phone cameras capturing the chaos.
Minutes earlier, Mayor Thomas D. Walsh Jr. had told the packed room that he was “almost embarrassed to say that I represent you.” A woman from the audience shouted back: “We’re embarrassed that you represent us, too, Tom.”
The confrontation came after weeks of rising anger over a proposal to build an artificial intelligence data center on the site of the former Newton airport, an 88-acre stretch along Route 206 and Stickles Pond Road that has remained largely undeveloped since the airport closed in 2013.
No formal application has been filed, but the Township Committee quietly amended its zoning codes last year to make data centers a permitted use on the property – a change that residents say happened without any master plan amendment, public debate, or environmental review.
On Thursday, about 300 people showed up at the municipal meeting. They filled the seats, lined the walls, and spilled toward the doors. They wanted answers about water use, noise, light pollution, property values, and the millions of dollars in potential tax breaks known as payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, that the township attorney later confirmed could reach $4 million to $5 million annually on a town budget of $12 million.
What they got instead was a physical takedown.
According to three video recordings posted online and reviewed by this news organization, the trouble began when a resident tried to share his allotted public comment time with another speaker who had already addressed the committee.
The governing body initially tried to shut down the exchange, then relented. As the man walked away from the podium, he muttered a profanity: “Was that so fucking hard?”
Mayor Walsh immediately said, “Get him out.”
Two police officers aggressively approached the man.
The man was not shouting. He was not raising his hands. He was walking toward the exit.
The video shows the man near an open door as the two officers close in.
A brief tussle begins. Then one of the officers – the one identified as T. Walsh – pushes the man backward and drives him hard to the floor.
A woman behind the camera screams: “Let him go! Shame, shame on you!”
Another resident asks, “Is he under arrest? Am I going to get slammed to the ground, too?”
The man was not charged. Neither the mayor nor the police department responded to requests for comment on Friday.
The township attorney, speaking at the meeting before the violence occurred, had told the audience that there was “no non-disclosure agreement” and “no PILOT agreement” in place, but that preliminary financial discussions had taken place behind closed doors.
The attorney also acknowledged that the governing body had not completed basic research before making data centers a permitted use.
Under questioning from residents, committee members admitted they had not studied water consumption, energy demand, or emergency response requirements before the zoning change.
The attorney promised to hire a hydrogeologist – after the fact – to look into concerns that should have been examined before the ordinance passed.
Climate Revolution Action Network is among the organizations fighting to stop data centers from being built in the state, and it is hosting events in the near future that invite people to join the fight.
The Sussex Visibility Brigade, a local accountability group, condemned the officer’s actions in a written statement.
“A resident was forcibly removed from the meeting and thrown to the ground by law enforcement for exercising his First Amendment rights,” said Birdie Green, a co-founder. “While the resident used coarse language directed at the mayor and committee, he was not a physical threat to anyone. The Sussex Visibility Brigade condemns this escalation of force and the committee’s role in silencing dissent.”
In a separate social media post, the group added: “Mayor Walsh, you said tonight you’re embarrassed of the people you represent. Well, I can’t think of anything more embarrassing for this township than to be so thin-skinned you have officers assault someone for practicing their First Amendment rights.”
The officer who executed the takedown is the mayor’s son. That fact was not hidden. After the incident, as residents chanted about the family relationship, officer T. Walsh deliberately removed his name tag and held it up to the cameras, as if to say: yes, this is who I am.
The underlying dispute is about more than one night of violence.
Across New Jersey, towns are wrestling with the sudden rush to build data centers – giant, windowless buildings packed with computer servers that power artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and cryptocurrency mining.
They demand enormous amounts of electricity and water for cooling. They run 24 hours a day. They generate noise, heat, and traffic.
And they often come with PILOT agreements that bypass the normal property tax system, trading long-term public revenue for short-term developer convenience.
In East Windsor, residents are fighting a second proposed data center. In Kenilworth, a $1.8 billion project is under construction with $250 million in state tax incentives.
In Andover, the property owner is a web of Delaware limited liability companies that trace back to a billion-dollar tech firm, according to research shared by community groups. The same individuals have recently formed entities with names like Bridge AIX LLC and Bridge AI Group LLC, registered to a UPS store address.
One resident, writing under the name Andover NJ Accountability & Transparency, posted detailed financial records showing that just 33 days after the township adopted the ordinance allowing data centers in September 2025, the property owner satisfied a $1.28 million mortgage on the Stickles Pond Road parcel.
The group has called for a full repeal of the zoning changes and an independent investigation into whether the township committee violated its own master plan – a legal claim that an attorney advising residents, Anand Dash, has labeled “illegal spot zoning.”
At Thursday’s meeting, after the resident was slammed to the floor and dragged outside, the committee voted to go into closed executive session to discuss “legal issues” related to the redevelopment ordinance.
The public was excluded. The township attorney said the discussion would remain secret “until this matter has been concluded or direction is given by the governing body.” No timeline was provided.
The committee then returned and adjourned without taking any vote to rescind the data center ordinances. A second reading of a new ordinance – 2026-10 – is scheduled to move to the Land Use Board on May 19. The group Andover Responsible Development, a fiscally sponsored member of the NJ Highlands Coalition, has set up a legal fund to challenge the approvals.
“This was your final chance, Andover Twp Committee,” the Sussex Visibility Brigade wrote after the meeting. “While towns across the country are fighting back against the massive impacts of data centers, you are choosing to shut the public out. If they refuse to rescind these ordinances, they are forcing this community into a costly legal battle.”
The mayor, speaking before the violent removal, had tried to defend the committee’s record. He listed his decades of residency, his memory of when the town hall sat on an old farm, his work on LED lighting to save money. He said nobody on the committee was lining their pockets. “Nothing is done here to try to hurt anybody,” he said.
Then a resident shouted from the audience. The mayor said he was embarrassed to represent some of the people in the room. And within minutes, his son had driven a man to the floor.
Under New Jersey law, residents can recall an elected official by forming a recall committee, circulating a petition signed by 25% of registered voters in the jurisdiction and winning a simple majority in a special election. No specific grounds – not even misconduct – are legally required. The process exists precisely for moments like this, when the public’s trust in its leadership has been physically broken on a meeting room floor.
The man who was thrown down has not been identified publicly. He did not file a complaint as of Friday afternoon. But the videos are circulating. The chants are still echoing. And in Andover, a rural town that once sent its children to school on farmland that has since been paved over for strip malls and commuter lots, the question is no longer about data centers or water tables or tax ratables.
All five members of the Andover Township Committee are Republicans, including Mayor Walsh, Deputy Mayor Eric Karr, Ellsworth E. Bensley Jr., Michael Lensak, and Janis L. McGovern. Meetings are scheduled to commence at 6:00 PM on the first and third Thursdays of each month.
The question is whether any public meeting in America is safe when the mayor’s son wears a badge, and the mayor himself calls for getting someone out.
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