Bill halts bad cops from hiding discipline issues from new jobs

By: Andrew Ford
Asbury Park Press
USA Today Network - New Jersey.

..... New Jersey cops won't be able to hide discipline taken against them from future employers under a measure backed Monday [06/29/2020] by the Legislature and sent to Governor Phil Murphy.
...... The key reform was inspired by Asbury Park Press reporting on persistent police accountability gaps allowing cops with disciplinary problems to cloak them in secrecy as they moved from one police department to another.
.... The sate Senate and Assembly, by unanimous votes, backs bills requiring the transfer of a police officer's ordinarily secret internal files to a prospective employer when the officer seeks work at another New Jersey police department.
..... The file, while accessible to the prospective hiring agency, would not be released to the public.
..... Murphy declined to comment on the bill specifically but said generally: "transparency, we're big believers in."
..... The bill was first filed in 2019 by Gordon Johnson, D-Bergen, the Assembly's speaker pro tempore, who attended a 2018 public forum on policing held at the Asbury Park Press office in Neptune. He credited that forum as the inspiration for the bill in a statement to the Assembly.
.... "That is the reason we are trying to ensure that the receiving departments get all the information on transfers form the sending police departments," Johnson said. "It also shows the importance of having a free press."
..... The bill's sponsors in the sate Senate including Declan O'Scalon, R-Monmouth, who also attended the Asbury Park Press forum.
.... "When there's hiring going on of these circuital front line personnel, who are going to directly interface with one's residents and carry guns, the previous record should be an open book for the hiring authority," O'Scanlon said.
.... The measure would preserve an internal affairs policy change made in December [2019] by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal that, otherwise, could have been undone by a successor.

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