New Jersey closed more gaps in police oversight, giving bad cops fewer places to hide after the attorney general issued a new policy last week, reports the Asbury Park Press. The policing reform follows a series of investigative reports by the newspaper and the USA Today Network New Jersey. New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal’s policy strengthens the way prosecutors examine witnesses before they testify in court and establishes a way to track damning information about cops. The news stories reported that a police officer prosecutors had tried to fire was still out making arrests and detailed how a man’s life was ruined by an allegation made by a cop found to have lied. The stories found gaps across the state in the way police departments and prosecutors keep track of information on troubled cops.
Grewal’s policy addresses some of those gaps for state law enforcement. He stopped short of issuing a command for every county prosecutor in the state, though he previously implemented changes on police accountability: random drug testing for all police officers and an internal affairs reform. “I think it’s an important first step,” Grewal said of the policy, which addresses a prosecutor’s duty to turn over information that would help the defense, a duty sometimes called their “Brady” or “Giglio” obligation, named after U.S. Supreme Court cases. “Brady and Giglio have been the law for over 40 years and we wanted to have a system by which we could track information related to individual officers and comply with our Brady and Giglio obligations in court,” Grewal said. “And like anything else, we want to make sure we get it right before we roll it out statewide.” The president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association was critical of the new rules.