A New Jersey appellate court ruled Wednesday that the state’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, had overstepped his authority when he seized control of the police department in Paterson, the state’s third-largest city.
The city’s mayor, Andre Sayegh, hailed the decision as a victory that rightfully restored his control of a fundamental function in the city he was elected to lead.
“I’m the mayor,” Mr. Sayegh said. “I’m on the front line. I have to face the heat.”
He added: “What Matt Platkin did was unlawful and undemocratic. He disenfranchised Paterson voters.”
Wednesday’s 39-page ruling grew out of a lawsuit filed by city leaders who had sought to reclaim control of the roughly 400-member force that since March 2023 had been under the control of the attorney general’s office.
Mr. Platkin said his office would immediately appeal the decision, which he said had undermined decades of established legal precedent in New Jersey.
“Our office stepped in following a fundamental breakdown of community trust,” Mr. Platkin said in a statement. “Since then, murders, shootings, sexual assaults, robberies and other violent crime in Paterson have all plummeted, while officer morale and community trust have dramatically improved.”
The court concluded that Mr. Platkin and Isa M. Abbassi, a former chief with the New York Police Department who was put in charge of the Paterson police after the takeover, had “exceeded their statutory authority.”
“We conclude defendants had no authority, either express or implied, to directly supersede the entire” Paterson Police Department, a three-judge appeals panel ruled.
The judges said that within three weeks the former chief of the department, who has been working outside of Paterson as a police trainer, must be reassigned back to the force. The court also ordered Mr. Platkin’s office to “produce a narrative written report to plaintiffs summarizing all actions and accounting for all expenditures” taken since the takeover.
Mr. Abbassi, who held leadership positions in New York in the aftermath of the 2014 police killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island, had recently moved to a new role in the attorney general’s office and had been replaced by Capt. Pat Murray.
It was unclear who will now lead the Paterson Police Department, although Mr. Sayegh noted that he had immense respect for Captain Murray, a 40-year veteran of the force.
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