Fatal shooting: Paterson lags behind rest of state in equipping officers with body cameras

PATERSON — Amid conflicting accounts about a Paterson police detective’s fatal shooting of a 25-year-old gun suspect Wednesday night, community activists were planning to call for the public release of the video recordings from the officer’s body camera.

But the officer who fired the fatal shots, along with the other two cops at the scene, is among the 258 members of the Paterson Police Department — or 63% of the force — who currently do not have body cameras.

Right now, only 150 officers in the patrol division and emergency response teams wear the recording devices. The detectives at Wednesday’s shooting are members of the Street Crimes Unit.

Paterson is one of many cities scrambling to comply with a law the state adopted in 2020 that required all uniformed law enforcement officers in New Jersey to have body cameras by June 2021, a measure advocates said would improve transparency and accountability in local police departments.

The body camera mandate has been expanded to cover non-uniform officers, such as those on tactical teams, canine units and those whose duties involve regular interaction with the public.

City officials in October decided to spend $1.2 million to buy the recording devices for the remaining members of Paterson’s Police Department. That shipment of 269 cameras recently arrived at police headquarters, and the department plans to begin training and equipping the remaining officers in January, officials said.

Community activists said that will be too late to provide video evidence of what happened in Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Thelonious McKnight in a dark alleyway on East Main Street.

The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has said a 9mm handgun was found near McKnight’s body. Mayor Andre Sayegh said the man pointed his gun and fired at the officer before the cop returned fire and killed him.

But a man who was with McKnight on Wednesday night, when police officers confronted him about possible gun possession, said McKnight did not have a weapon. The man, Duke Snider, said McKnight had his hands in the air when the officer shot him.

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The leader of Paterson’s Black Lives Matter group, Zellie Thomas, said many Paterson residents mistrust police officers, claiming police don’t always tell the truth about their interactions with the public. He said a body camera video might have clarified the conflicting versions of what took place in McKnight’s death.

“These are all questions that could be answered if the police officers were wearing body cameras,” Thomas said.

The president of one of Paterson’s police unions also said he thinks body camera footage would have been useful in this case.

“I think it would have showed the officers did an outstanding job to protect the public and defend themselves in an extremely violent situation where they were being shot at,” said Mason Maher, president of the Paterson Superior Officers Association.

Activists said the lack of police body cameras reflects what they called the city’s lack of commitment to police accountability. They noted that a Police Department performance audit that started about 18 months ago has not yet been made public and that Paterson never took action on the mayor’s plan from three years ago to create a civilian police review board.

Thomas said he has argued for years that the city ought to provide body cameras to plainclothes officers, like members of the Street Crimes Unit involved in this week’s shooting. But city officials did not move to expand the use of body cameras in the Police Department until the state imposed a law requiring them to do so.

Paterson doesn't face any penalty at present for not complying with the body camera law.

"The Attorney General’s Office expects any law enforcement agency that is not currently in compliance with the statutory mandate and the AG directive to continue to work in good faith to achieve compliance," said state spokesman Peter Aseltine.

Activist Corey Teague, a school board member now running for City Council, said Paterson should have been equipping its cops with cameras long ago. When asked who was responsible for the delay, Teague said, “I have to look at the administration.”

Sayegh said he would deliver on his January 2019 promise to equip Paterson cops with body cameras. “But the process takes time, especially during a pandemic,” the mayor said.

Paterson Police Chief Ibrahim “Mike” Baycora, who officials said was on vacation last week, did not respond to a message seeking comment about the department’s body cameras.

Public Safety Director Jerry Speziale said the city’s deployment of the recently purchased 269 body cameras is moving along much more quickly than was seen with the first batch of 150.

The Paterson City Council approved the initial purchase of body cameras in January 2020, and the first group of about 20 officers did not start wearing them until the end of that year.

Paterson was last among New Jersey’s major cities to equip its cops with body cameras. Newark police, for example, had 1,123 body cameras and Camden 412 before Paterson’s program started, according to a survey by the Attorney General's Office.

Editor's note: This story has been changed to better reflect the 2020 law requiring body cameras for uniformed police officers. It also includes updated comments from the New Jersey Attorney General's Office.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ cops at fatal shooting among many without body cameras