6 events in Passaic County with a date

NJ issues revisions on use of force

Actions follows Fort Lee shooting

By: Amanda Wallace
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... New Jersey will change how police officers deal with barricaded subjects, Attorney General Matthew Platkin said Thursday [08/22/2024] weeks after the high-profile death of Victoria Lee in Fort Lee.
..... A statement from the Attorney General's Office said the revisions are designed to "increase the likelihood of peaceful resolutions to encounter between police and barricaded individuals, who are frequently in a behavioral or mental health crisis.
..... Lee, 25, of Fort Lee was fatally shot by a borough police officer while she was experiencing a mental health crisis and refusing to open to the door.
..... "Encounters involving barricaded individuals are often difficult and high-risk, regularly involving individuals in the midst of crisis who are armed," Platkin said. "Our goal is to provide first responders with the tools to slow and stabilize these standoffs, empowering officers to navigate the dangerous first minutes of these encounters so proper resources can be deployed to intervene and resolve the situations safety without force, significant injury, or death."
..... This is the first statewide policy of its kind in the country, he said.
..... The Attorney General's Office's statement said the revisions were drafted with law enforcement, mental health professionals, community stakeholders and faith leaders.
..... With the implementation of the revisions, tactical and crisis negotiation teams will now be required to identify and enter into agreements with qualified mental health professionals who will be able to respond to incidents involving a hostage situation or a barricaded individual.
..... The aim is for a mental health provider to assist with negotiations by offering guidance and information to law enforcement or by communicating with the barricaded individual, the statement said.
..... Responding officers will now be advised to wait for appropriate resources in a barricade situation. They are not to try to force a resolution unless it would be "immediately necessary to prevent injury or death."
..... Another revisions will allow law enforcement officers, in certain situations, to consider tactical disengagement. This could include a decision to leave, delay contact, delay custody, or plan to make contact at a different time and under different circumstances, Platkin's statement said.
..... Law enforcement will now be directed to consider whether community-based groups such as crisis response teams or mental health providers through the ARRVE Together program can be components of a disengagement strategy.
..... Other mandates include an immediate repose by an on-duty supervisor in the case of a barricade situation.
..... Finally, tactical response teams must be a Tier 1 or Tier 2 SWAT team, among other requirements. They must also be equipped with less lethal weapons.

Expanding ARRIVE Together

..... In additions to the attorney general's announcement of the revisions, he said that using part of the recent budget allocation by the state Legislature and Governor Phil Murphy to expand the ARIVE Together program, funds will be made available to support the provisions of "critical incident tactical and negotiation teams with experienced mental health professionals."
..... The mental health professionals will train with law enforcement and will be available around the clock to assist and, when appropriate, respond in cases of barricaded individuals.
..... The grant funds will be available to agencies in all counties.
..... "Law enforcement officers are often expected to be mental and behavioral health experts at times when actual experts are what is needed, said Tiffany Wilson, director of the Office of Alternative and Community Responses. "With these updates and the funding of this newest ARIVE Together model, we are arming the officers tasked with addressing the most delicate and high-risk situations wit much-needed tools and resources, namely a blueprint and a mental health expert."

Addressing how police respond

..... The discussion of how police handle calls involving mental health crisis in New Jersey has gone on over the past couple of years.
..... In 2023, the deaths of Najee Seabrooks of Paterson and Andrew Washington of Jersey City led to a widespread conversation about whether police officers are the right people to respond to such calls.
..... Now, since the fatal shooting of Lee on July 28, [2024] the conversation has been reignited, with Lee's family and several advocacy groups echoing a call for change and criticizing the way the Fort Lee police officers handled the situation.
..... On Thursday, [08/22/2024] the Lee family released a statement, its first since the Attorney General's Office release the body camera footage on Friday. [08/16/2024]
..... "Last Friday, [08/16/2024] we went through the nightmare again watching multiple body-cam video recordings of our daughter being shot and killed by police," said the Lee family's statement. "Our entire family had been and remains in shock and grief following these events."
..... The statement refers to the officers' response to this mental health emergency as "hasty and brutal," and insists that if police awaited the arrival of medics, who are trained to handle patients experiencing mental health episodes, Lee would be alive today.
..... "Unfortunately, Victoria;s death is but the latest example of New Jersey police using deadly force when compassion and clinical treatment was necessary,' said Yannick Wood, director of the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, at a rally for justice for Lee on August 15. [2024] He compared Lee's death to those or Seabrooks, Washington and Major Gulia Dale in Newton, expressing the need for mental health responders who are not police.
..... With Thursday's [08/22/2024] release of revisions to the Use of Force Policy in New Jersey, it appears that the Attorney General's Office has heard the calls for change.
..... Brian Higgins, a retied officer who served with the Bergen County police for nearly three decades, said he is seeing much more change to use-of-force policies today than in the past.
......"Use-of-force guidelines for the AG when I was a young cop didn't change much. It was at least a decade, and very little changes," Higgins said. "Maybe there would be a change based on the additions of tasers, other less than lethal. but when offices can shoot, when they can use deadly force, stayed pretty much unchanged. now it seems like it's changing pretty regularly."
..... Higgins attributes the increase in changes to the level of attention that such incidents receive, particularly due to the presence of social media.
..... "I think we, at least the people I speak to, there has been so much conversation, so much focus on mental health, police use of force, I think people are surprised that these situations still occur at the rate they are occurring," Higgins said. :I don't know that they're happening faster, but their is definitely more attention on them with social media; the news allows these situations to be known across the country much more quickly."

When was policy last revised?

..... In December 202, the attorney general announced the first revisions to the statewide Use of Force Policy in two decades, the Attorney General's Office website says.
..... The 2020 revisions prohibited all forms of physical and deadly force against a civilian, except as an absolute last resort, and prohibited officers from firing weapons at a moving vehicle or engaging in a high-speed care chase, except under "narrowly limited circumstances."
..... The also provided new guidelines on the use of less-lethal force.
..... Additionally, the 2002 revisions established an affirmative "duty to intervene," requiring officers to intercede if the see anther officer engage in illegal or excessive force against a civilian, and an affirmative "duty to provide medical assistance," requiring officers to request and, where appropriate, personally provide medical assistance after any use of force against a civilian.

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