Police reform has been a key issue for the ACLU of New Jersey since our founding in 1960 in Newark, the state’s largest city, which has a long and painful history of grappling with the harms of a police department operating with impunity.
It was July 12, 1967, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, when two white police officers pulled over John William Smith, a Black cab driver, after he parked his taxi near their squad car on the side of the road in Newark. The officers then dragged Smith out of his car, brutally beat him, and arrested him on charges of assault.
As word spread about the incident, Newark residents took to the streets in what would come to be known as the Newark Rebellion. The ensuing uprising and police violence lasted for six days, resulting in 26 deaths and thousands of injuries and arrests – overwhelmingly affecting Black community members.
While John Smith’s unjust assault and arrest were the catalysts that set the uprising in motion, the Newark Rebellion was fueled by years of racial disparities in policing and arrests, unequal access to resources and opportunities, and civic disenfranchisement – issues New Jersey still faces.
Following the Newark Rebellion, Newark community members continued to demand change and justice. And over the next decades, the ACLU-NJ’s efforts to hold the Newark Police Department (NPD) accountable continued to evolve.
ACLU-NJ staff strategized with community groups, met local and state leaders, filed lawsuits, and called for federal oversight of the NPD. We worked with People’s Organization for Progress, connected with impacted families, and heard cries for justice. We litigated, collaborated, and educated. But it would take years before this collective advocacy achieved transformative change.
By the early 2000s, Newark's police department had emerged as an unfortunate national example of dysfunction, incompetence, and, at times, even a dangerous disregard for the law.
Something had to be done to safeguard the civil rights and liberties of Newark communities.
Drafting the Petition: Uplifting Community Stories and Data-Driven Evidence
Inspired by the work of other ACLU state offices, specifically the ACLU of Washington, and under the leadership of the former ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs, the ACLU of New Jersey demanded federal oversight of the NPD, echoing the calls we had joined from communities across the city back in 1967.
This time our goal was more ambitious: a total paradigm shift within the Newark Police Department that prioritized the communities it is meant to serve. This wouldn’t be achievable through lawsuits alone.
Though there was no guarantee that requesting intervention from the Department of Justice (DOJ) would amount to any significant change, we knew we had to leverage every tool at our disposal.
In early 2010, Jacobs brought on former ACLU-NJ Senior Counsel Flavio Komuves to draft the petition. There were hundreds of public records alleging wrongdoing by the NPD documenting serious, racially motivated, and traumatic incidents that required expert investigation with intention, humanity, and urgency. After completing his service as a deputy public advocate, Komuves was uniquely positioned to lead the work.
Police officers are entrusted with the power to stop, arrest, and use force against the communities they serve – those are among the most dangerous powers any government can wield. Interactions between police officers and community members don’t have to be traumatic, but a long history of operating with impunity, coupled with deeply entrenched biases and a lack of modernized, human-centered training, can lead to life-endangering situations – especially for Black teenagers and children – even during interactions that should be safe and routine.
At the early stages of the project, the ACLU-NJ team had heard from countless Newarkers about how the NPD was failing residents, abusing its power, and inciting fear and harm across the city. But we knew that for the petition to be honored by the DOJ, it would need documented evidence.
Komuves researched and compiled that evidence over the course of nine months. He investigated public records and litigation filed against the Newark police around excessive force, false arrests, and brutality and reviewed hundreds of complaints from the ACLU-NJ’s internal database. He researched and reviewed criminal convictions that had been overturned on appeal. He looked for court records documenting how NPD officers abused their power, including executing searches without warrants. He reviewed civil lawsuit settlement agreements the city had entered, paying out millions of dollars in damages. He unearthed dozens of allegations from within the department where police officers themselves faced discrimination and retaliation – showing additional harms and dysfunction when there is no meaningful accountability for wrongdoing.
Jacobs and Komuves recalled some opposing rhetoric at the time favored a “tough on crime” approach, but when they compared the crime rates with the percentages of crime solved, the crime rate was overall higher, and the clearance rates were uniformly lower. The data showed that NPD’s “tough” approach was not effective: it was not doing anything to actually reduce crime, and, along the way, it was violating the rights of community members and creating distrust.
Despite the overwhelming data and hundreds of community testimonies, there were many people who still dismissed the need for federal intervention. Yet after other strategies did not improve Newark policing, and with persistent and increasing complaints about the lack of accountability, the ACLU-NJ remained committed to leveraging our voice, resources, and reach to achieve meaningful change.
Filing the Petition: The Resulting Consent Decree and Meaningful Reforms
On September 9, 2010, the ACLU-NJ formally petitioned the DOJ to investigate the NPD. The petition was 150 pages and detailed over 400 incidents of abuse and misconduct by the NPD.
As a result of the petition, the DOJ opened an investigation of the NPD in May 2011 and in July 2014, the DOJ placed the NPD under federal oversight.
A consent decree – a legally binding agreement where a judge oversees the implementation of court-mandated reforms – was signed on March 30, 2016, between the DOJ and the City of Newark in a historic moment for police reform. Shortly after, an independent monitoring team was established and former Attorney General Peter Harvey, who had been New Jersey’s first Black Attorney General, was appointed as lead monitor.
The consent decree required the NPD to develop strong policies and conduct regular trainings designed to protect Newarkers from unconstitutional stops, frisks, and arrests. These requirements, along with protections against racially biased-policing and bans on unlawful use of force such as chokeholds, were among the key reforms detailed by the agreement.
It was a major victory for civil rights and marked an important inflection point in the fight for meaningful accountability of law enforcement in New Jersey. But there was more work to do.
With our partners, we established Newark Communities for Accountable Policing (N-CAP), during the Department of Justice’s investigation, recognizing that a potential consent decree could only address parts of the epidemic of police abuse in Newark. At the top of N-CAP’s priorities was the creation of a permanent and independent civilian complaint review board (CCRB) of the NPD.
Without meaningful civilian oversight, even the strongest consent decree would fall short of what the people of Newark needed and deserved.
Newark’s CCRB was founded in 2015, setting a national example for its potential to provide comprehensive and meaningful checks on law enforcement. However, in a challenge brought by the police lobby, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that existing state laws limited the powers of Newark’s CCRB – including removing its ability to issue subpoenas and carry out simultaneous investigations.
Newark’s CCRB laid the foundation for implementing comprehensive community oversight of law enforcement in New Jersey. Fully realizing that potential remains a top priority for advocates and impact groups across the state today.
During the nine-year period of federal oversight into the NPD, Newark implemented over a dozen new reforms, including prohibiting police officers from treating people differently based on any actual or perceived characteristics; requiring uniformed Newark officers, detectives, and sergeants to wear body cameras while on duty; and requiring that Newark officers use the minimum amount of force necessary when incidents arise and de-escalate as the need for force dissipates.
These changes marked tangible, meaningful progress – but New Jersey can and must do more.
The Consent Decree is Over. What’s Next?
On November 19, 2025, the consent decree between the City of Newark and the DOJ concluded, as Judge Madeline Cox Arleo of United States District Court for the District of New Jersey determined that its purpose had been fulfilled. While the consent decree allowed substantial reforms to be made, the work is far from finished, both in Newark, and across New Jersey.
Newark residents deserve continuing commitment to reform by city and police leaders. The NPD needs to continue adopting modernized best practices, robust training, and internal monitoring.
Police abuse, and efforts to thwart transparency and accountability, will continue. It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure police departments respect the rights of their communities, and to demand meaningful accountability when they do not.
In the future, we envision a Newark that leads a statewide effort to protect and support community members with response systems that do not require armed officers. We hope New Jersey’s largest city will continue to embrace its ability to lead progress by prioritizing robust community oversight, advanced deescalation strategies, and inclusive cultural competency.
There is more work to be done, but the implementation of sweeping reforms within the NPD has shown us what is possible when communities, advocates, and impact groups join together to demand change. At the ACLU-NJ, we will always keep fighting for justice.