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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll begin this morning by quoting this from Politico New Jersey today. They write in their morning newsletter, "Remember the video of a Paterson cop brutally punching a hospitalized man in a wheelchair, then slapping him in the hospital bed?" The article then goes on to list other recent Paterson police actions that have been deadly or outraged the city's residents or both.

There was the so-called Robbery Squad, a years-long FBI investigation of a group of former Paterson police officers that actually called themselves the Robbery Squad, the article says, which ultimately led to guilty pleas and convictions last year and, in some cases, terms in federal prison. Politico also cites a Paterson cop criminally charged for shooting and paralyzing an unarmed man named Khalif Cooper in June of last year, leaving Mr. Cooper paralyzed.

The newsletter cites a stat that 11 Paterson cops have been charged with crimes just since 2018. That was all before the fatal shooting earlier this month of 31-year-old Najee Seabrooks, ironically and tragically, a member of a local anti-violence group called the Paterson Healing Collective, when Seabrooks was having an apparent mental health crisis. That was on March 3rd. Finally, New Jersey's attorney general, Matt Platkin, had enough. Yesterday, he announced a state takeover of the Paterson Police Department.

Attorney General Matt Platkin: There is a crisis of confidence in law enforcement in this city. Under these circumstances, I cannot deliver on my duty to protect the people of Paterson and to keep officers safe who are sworn to protect them. That cannot continue, so something has to change, and it will change starting now. Earlier this morning, I exercised my authority as attorney general and superseded the Paterson Police Department.

Brian Lehrer: New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin. What comes now and why do we keep seeing police officers shoot and/or kill people in mental health distress? It just happened again on Sunday in the Bronx, even though the victim's father had called 311, not 911, specifically hoping to avoid a police response. No wonder there is a movement to defund the police.

With us now, WNYC's Peabody Award-winning reporter Nancy Solomon, who covers New Jersey and hosts our monthly call-in show Ask Governor Murphy, and Yannick Wood, director of the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, which organized many New Jersey organizations plus a former state attorney general and former US attorney for New Jersey to sign a letter that they submitted to the US Justice Department calling for a federal investigation of the Paterson police. Now, they have won at least a state takeover. Hi, Nancy, and Yannick, thanks for joining us on an important day for your organization and for the state. I know you're really busy. Welcome to WNYC.

Yannick Wood: Thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Brian.

Nancy Solomon: Hi--

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, do we have you? Good. Yannick, we'll talk about the Najee Seabrooks case specifically in this conversation too. As I tried to lay out in the intro, this state takeover is for reasons bigger than that. Would you describe in your own words what your letter calls a pattern and practice of misconduct in the Paterson PD?

Yannick Wood: Yes, thank you. We, along with nearly 50 civil rights organizations in New Jersey, called for a US Department of Justice investigation into patterns and practices of a constitutional misconduct, which included the use of excessive force, which included illegal stops, searches, and arrests, the lack of oversight, and lastly, the racial disparities with which Paterson Police Department used force.

Just for example, Paterson is approximately 25% Black, but Black people account for 49% of arrests, 43% of officer-involved killings, and approximately 52% of the use of force against Black people in Paterson. This was what we were calling for, the Department of Justice investigation to look into the structures that make it possible for a police department to do this to the residents of Paterson.

Brian Lehrer: Your letter, from what I see, was aimed at the federal Justice Department. Now, the state attorney general has seized control. Were you surprised by that?

Yannick Wood: Well, we didn't receive a heads-up that the New Jersey attorney general was going to take over Paterson Police Department. It's not unprecedented. They have taken over Camden's police department in 1998 to varying degrees of success or challenges in that front. I think it was a positive development. I think it was a recognition of the deep-seated issues that are plaguing Paterson's police department. However, we can't just rest there with the attorney general takeover.

There needs to be a federal government investigation because I think the federal government has a distance and objectivity. They could also target the structures in the patterns and practices that allow for this racially-disparaged treatment. Also, we need to have mental health first responders in New Jersey. Not a co-responder model like what the attorney general is piloting right now but something where mental health first responders actually are the first people on the scene, who are trained to provide a treatment.

That way, we don't have any more tragedies like Najee Seabrooks and the tragedy that you alluded to in the opening, Brian. Then lastly, there needs to be independent oversight like a civilian review board across New Jersey but, specifically, in Paterson that has subpoena power that's able to provide accountability from the outside. I know New York has had one for decades. There are some challenges.

It's not perfect, but we in New Jersey don't currently have one with subpoena power to subpoena witnesses and documents. That way, there is that independent oversight. Yes, it's positive that the attorney general has acted. Frankly, the proof is in the pudding. We have to see what type of steps he's going to take and there needs to be the three things I mentioned. That way, there could be structural change so that Paterson residents can actually be served and protected and not preyed upon.

Brian Lehrer: We'll come back later in this conversation to the idea of mental health first responses to people in mental health crises without a co-respondent from a police department. I know that gets complicated for people when the person in the mental health crisis is believed to be armed, so we'll talk through what you see as the best practices and what police departments say and what the attorney general is saying as we go. Nancy Solomon, let me bring you in. Would you tell listeners, who maybe haven't been following the Najee Seabrooks killing closely, who he was? Then we'll talk about how he died.

Nancy Solomon: Right, so Najee Seabrooks was employed by the Paterson Healing Collective. This is a community-based violence-interruption and anti-violence group. He was working with them. This really goes to the heart of the whole debate about who should be responding to these calls and what should happen and, of course, the fact that here was a person who was actually involved in that work who was having a mental health crisis of his own, which you hear on the body-worn camera footage.

You hear members of his family talking about the fact that the stress of being involved in anti-violence work in the city was wearing on him. They thought that that's what had triggered his mental health crisis. The police were called to the family's apartment. He was barricaded in the bathroom, locked in the bathroom. They believed that he had a knife and possibly a gun. It was not clear. Then there was a standoff by police officers that went on for about five hours.

There were members of the Paterson Healing Collective who wanted to be led into the building and provide their help and services to defuse the situation. The police did not allow them in. There was a mental health team at the local hospital on standby waiting to be called in. They weren't called in. The whole thing really, it could not be any more central to the debates that we're having all over the country about what to do to decrease police use of force.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely, and in those cases in particular. Before it went bad, Nancy, did the police see it largely as a suicide prevention call and were trying to get Mr. Seabrooks to come out of the bathroom that he had locked himself in, in his brother's apartment, rather than a threat to others?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I think it seems that way. It's hard to know exactly what they were thinking. You can hear them negotiating and saying, "Just come out. We're going to take you to the hospital," but they have full battle gear on. They have a shield and they've got their guns drawn. They're offering to take him to the hospital, but it just isn't working. He's getting more and more agitated about the fact that they're going to kill him.

He says to them, "No. If I come out, you're going to kill me." It's a heartbreaking video to watch and it really does just go to the inability. These cops are not trained for this situation. You could put aside all the problems with the Paterson police, which we're not going to do in this conversation. Even if you put aside that, day-to-day street cops are not trained to deal with these situations.

Brian Lehrer: How did it end with a cop shooting him?

Nancy Solomon: He came out of the bathroom. He had a knife in his hand. He lunged at them. He was kind of screaming and they shot him.

Brian Lehrer: Yannick, a defender of the police might say they tried for hours to get Mr. Seabrooks to leave the bathroom and not hurt himself. Ultimately, he claimed to have a gun and then left the bathroom and lunged at the police with a knife. At that point, it was shooter get stabbed. What would you say to somebody who laid out that narrative as the central way to look at what happened here?

Yannick Wood: That's something that we've been hearing, but we have to take a step back and look at the police decision to even show up to provide a militarized response to someone who was in a mental health crisis. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I believe that what we are doing is that definition of insanity.

We're sending police into situations where they are not trained on responses in mental health. We're expecting them to use a militarized solution to de-pacify a situation. The result, time and time again, is this, that a Black man is being killed. At the end of the day, the police can't just say, "Oh, well, we did everything that we could do and this was the right result." This is absolutely the wrong result.

What does it say about us as a society that we tolerate this? This can't be the right result. There are examples across the country. There's a CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon that has been operating for nearly 30 years that sends people who are trained in mental health and substance use into these scenes without police going in there with them. In one year, they respond to 24,000 calls.

They only had to call police for backup in 150 of those calls, so that's less than 1% of those calls. It is possible. It is working in Eugene, Oregon, in a city that's a little bit larger, just a little bit larger than Paterson. We think that could be piloted in Paterson. That could be piloted in New Jersey. Indeed, there were mental health first responders or mental health responders who were actually on the scene who get this.

They actually knew Najee Seabrooks. They worked with him. They were uniquely able to provide the treatment for Najee and they were prevented. They were treated like second-class partners with police. Instead, the police call them the SWAT team. Instead of responding to this mental health crisis with compassion, they responded with ballistic shields, with 9-millimeter pistols. They eventually ended up doing what they're trained to do, shooting to kill, and that was the result.

Brian Lehrer: That's obviously a key component of this story as you were just describing it, as Nancy described it a couple of minutes ago. Do you know why? It seems incomprehensible to me. Mr. Seabrooks was asking for members of the healing collective, to which he belonged, that does this for a living, to be involved in the communication to him, but the police refused to let them participate, even alongside the police, not to have the police leave. Alongside the police, they didn't even allow it from all the reporting I've seen. Why would they do that?

Yannick Wood: I can't get into the heads of the police. I think that we know the history of Paterson Police Department. It's a department that's plagued by police violence and a demonstrated inability to respond properly to mental health crises. That's the reason why we were calling for this Department of Justice investigation to actually look at the structures that make this possible. One thing I'll note is that Department of Justice just recently wrapped up an investigation into Louisville Police Department.

One of the recommendations that they published in the report was for Louisville to use mental health first responders to empower them and not just have the traditional police response. Yes, definitely, this is an issue in Paterson Police Department. This is also an issue in other metropolitan areas throughout the country. Department of Justice uncovered that and that was a recommendation. We think the Department of Justice came in here and did a probe and looked into the structures. We can see why this is allowed to continue.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, do you have any idea why the police wouldn't allow people from the healing collective or other mental health professionals to even participate in that standoff?

Nancy Solomon: No, [chuckles] I cannot. I also cannot get inside their heads. I think it's reasonable to suggest that the police officers really have no idea. They have no idea what they're dealing with. They are trained to deal with situations with force. That is their training. They don't understand that their mere appearance on the scene can cause mental health issues for people.

I spoke with Zellie Imani, who's the lead organizer for Black Lives Matter Paterson, last night. He said, when the police approach a person of color, many people panic. It's a triggering event just for the police to be there. This really goes to the heart of the debate about mental health workers being involved in the response. For sure, what Attorney General Matt Platkin is proposing is better to have mental health workers on the scene paired up with a police officer who's not in uniform.

We could talk more about that. It's called the ARRIVE Together program. What activists and people involved in social justice organizations across New Jersey are saying is, "No," and this goes to the Eugene program called CAHOOTS, "Police should not even be on the site. They shouldn't be there. We should have a completely different response when a person is in a mental health crisis."

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, I want to invite you in on this, especially if you're from Paterson. Then when we come back after a break, we're going to explore that a little more. I'm going to play another clip of the attorney general on the model that he has that you heard. Our guest from the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice says, "Doesn't go far enough to have mental health counselors participate with police in crisis situations like this." We'll hear, I guess, both sides of that.

Listeners, anyone from Paterson, you get first priority on the phones. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Describe your feelings about the Paterson police and say what you would like the state takeover to produce. Police officers or former officers welcome to call too if you accept that this is a department gone bad. How does this happen and how do you turn it around or anyone else with a question or a comment relevant to what's happening in Paterson right now or the underlying issues for police departments everywhere and communities everywhere? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, and we'll pick it up on the other side of this break.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we talk about the New Jersey state takeover of the Paterson Police Department and issues in and beyond Paterson, New Jersey with WNYC's Nancy Solomon, who covers the state and does our monthly Ask Governor Murphy call-in on the station, and Yannick Wood, director of the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, which has been a major player here.

As I said at the top of the show, they organized many New Jersey organizations, plus a former state attorney general and former US attorney for New Jersey to sign a letter they submitted to the US Justice Department calling for a federal investigation of the Paterson Police Department. Now, they have at least the state takeover from State Attorney General Matt Platkin. All right, here's a clip of Platkin in which he describes a program that he's overseeing that has mental health professionals respond along with police to people in mental health crisis.

Attorney General Matt Platkin: We've had a program operational as I said in three counties, where we respond to calls of mental health and emotional distress with a unmarked car, plainclothes officer, and a mental health screener. We take a clinical approach. We've helped hundreds of people through those calls. We've had no injuries. We've had no uses of force other than a few cases where we've had to use force to transport someone to mental health treatment at the direction of a clinician. Those are the types of programs that we're looking to bring here.

Brian Lehrer: All right. New Jersey's attorney general, Matt Platkin. Yannick, you were indicating earlier that that doesn't go far enough for you. How come?

Yannick Wood: Well, that doesn't go far enough for a few reasons. First of all, in this pilot program, my understanding of how it works is, in certain situations, there is an officer and a mental health-trained professional who are going to the scene. In other situations, there is an officer responding with a tablet. The officer is going to hand that person in the mental health crisis a tablet. On that tablet, they're going to be able to speak to somebody in a local hospital about their mental health concerns.

That is not the same level of service as a mental health first responder showing up on the scene without the officer over the shoulder who's armed, who could be triggering to a lot of people in the mental health crisis. Also, there's another concern about who gets to control that scene. If there's an officer there that's armed, I could foresee a situation where they end up taking control of the situation and not allowing the mental health responder to actually provide the service.

Really, what it should be like is the CAHOOTS program where the mental health responder shows up to the scene is able to assess what's going on. Using their training and experience, they're able to treat the person. If, for some reason, it's in their opinion after all their years of training and after interacting with this individual, if they absolutely need police to respond, then they can call the police in. That's what was working in CAHOOTS such that less than 1% of calls that they actually need police to respond.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and I guess we can't know what would've happened with only mental health counselors on the scene in the Najee Seabrooks case. When a person is armed with a knife and claiming to have a gun, is it too risky to put only unarmed health professionals and not armed police officers on the scene?

Yannick Wood: You know what? Actually, I don't believe so. Because going back to the Najee Seabrooks situation, they had a unique relationship with him. They would've showed up and they would've been able to speak to him. Indeed, he called for them. I have to go back to the Eugene, Oregon CAHOOTS program that less than 1% of their calls, they were able to do that.

I think that we have to get over that fear or that knee-jerk reaction where we think that there has to be a militarized police response to someone who is armed. There needs to be a militarized police response just for somebody in the mental health crisis. We can't look at them as a threat. We have to look at them as our children, our brothers, our fathers because that's indeed who they are.

If we can look at them through that humane lens, then we could then arrive at what level of treatment do they deserve. If we go to a hospital because you have some sort of ailment, you're not expecting the doctor to be armed with a 9-millimeter. You're expecting to get treatment. That's the level of service as a society that we need to get to because, otherwise, we're just going to keep on seeing this time and time again.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, have you gotten to ask Governor Murphy by any chance or anybody else in your coverage of the state how far any police department would be willing to go toward the model that Yannick is just laying out?

Nancy Solomon: I haven't asked that question specifically. I know that both the governor and the attorney general are super excited about this program, ARRIVE Together, which does involve, as you described it, the plainclothes cop. I think I could speak to why they're so big on it because I actually had the opportunity to sit in a meeting about the ARRIVE Together program that the attorney general had with his two top deputies who are in charge of getting this program running.

I think one of the reasons they're so excited about it is because what they're seeing in the pilot program is that the plainclothes cop who is paired with a mental health worker, they're now partners driving around in an unmarked car, but a patrol car basically. What they're excited about is that the police officer is learning a lot from the mental health worker about how to deal with these situations, about the language of mental health, and getting a whole different view of how to do their jobs. Maybe for someone who's in a position of power like the attorney general or the governor, maybe it's a step a little too far to not have police officers on the scene.

They feel like there has been so little like, virtually, no violence and no injuries against people having a mental health crisis who have interacted with these pairs of mental health worker and officers. I think just to play devil's advocate, they would say this program is working. It's going to be pretty easy to get the buy-in of local police departments because it does involve them. It might not be everything the activists want. It might not be the best possible way to be handling this, but it's certainly a very big step in a much better direction than where we've been.

Brian Lehrer: Yannick, are you encouraged by the direction of what we heard in the clip from the attorney general that the police officers on these co-response teams are in plainclothes, which at least could communicate something very different to the person in crisis who might not even be able to realize that they're a police officer and they're just in the background in case the mental health professional calls for them to act in some backup way? Is that encouraging? The attorney general says there's been no violence so far when these teams have been deployed.

Yannick Wood: Well, it certainly is encouraging that they're looking towards alternative models for treating people with mental health crisis and behavioral health crises. Why not have the people with the proper expertise be the first responders? We've spoken about the CAHOOTS model. We've spoken about having mental health first responders for years. We're not just the only organization that's done that. A lot of advocates have been calling this for years. It's just a matter of law enforcement recognizing their limitations. That's something that I just think that they're reluctant to give up. One other thing I do want to mention about this program is--

Brian Lehrer: Before you do, I want to correct myself a little bit so I don't overstate the success of that program and the attorney general's words in the clip we played. He didn't say simply they had no uses of force in the program. He said, "We've had no use of force other than a few cases where we've had to use force to transport someone for mental health treatment at the direction of a clinician." That's not none, but that's little in the way he described there. Sorry, go ahead.

Yannick Wood: They get to choose which cases that they send the ARRIVE Together team to manage. Whereas in the CAHOOTS program, it's a call to 911 and the dispatcher will dispatch the CAHOOTS team. I believe that they could selectively choose the cases which are the least amount of risk to have the ARRIVE Together team respond to those.

I wonder if that's how things are done. I think that we need to have a scalable program that is closer to CAHOOTS because I keep on going back to it like resending a militarized response. Even if it's a plainclothes officer, it's still someone who's armed, who is showing up on the scene, who can take control of that scene and could interfere with the mental health first responder.

Brian Lehrer: Robin in North Bergen, you're on WNYC. Hi, Robin. Thank you for calling in.

Robin: Yes, thanks. I wanted to talk about the militarization because they were in a small apartment. Why couldn't they just have tased him if they really thought that he was armed with a knife? Why is always the response, "Let's go to a gun"? That's just not for mental health problems but for other problems as well.

Brian Lehrer: Robin, thank you. I'll say, Nancy, that we're getting a number of calls asking versions of the same question. Why couldn't they use non-lethal force? Robin's version asked why couldn't they have tased him, in particular. Do you know the answer or what police would say in response to that question?

Nancy Solomon: [chuckles] No, I'm not going to be the defender here of the police. I don't know. I can't see a reason for using a gun in that situation. When you watch the video, you see to the point to which they are individually armored against attack in terms of wearing those Kevlar vests. They've got the shields up. They've got helmets on.

Brian Lehrer: Right, it's provocative, the way they're representing.

Nancy Solomon: Provocative, but also they're protected, right? They're wearing protective gear is my point. To our caller's point, I think these are slow-turning wheels. I know that they're not turning fast enough, but I think we really are at a moment where we must completely rethink what's going on in these police departments. I have talked to the attorney general about this at length. I do think that this is his top priority is the sense that I get and that's what he says.

It's not just to reduce use of force. It's to lower crime in neighborhoods without flooding the neighborhood with the police presence. He has a whole program that he's working on that involves reducing shootings, getting guns off the streets, and providing mental health first responders. All of this is part of his vision of what he wants to see is less police presence in New Jersey cities and neighborhoods that have high crime rates, lower shootings, and virtually if he could have it his way, no use of force. This is a passion of his.

He has worked on anti-violence and gun laws going back to when he first got out of college. I think we're seeing movement from the attorney general's office like we have not seen in 20 years. Yannick mentioned Camden being taken over. That was in the late '90s. We haven't seen a lot of action out of the attorney general's office like this. I think another really notable case was about a month ago or so. Matt Platkin announced the indictment of a police officer for shooting a suspect in the back. It paralyzed the suspect.

What was going on was the police were called to a shots-fired situation where gunfire was heard. They get there. This person is running away and they shot him. What Platkin said at that time when he indicted the police officer was, "That is not legal. You cannot shoot. You can't use that kind of use of force. Only if you're protecting the life of yourself or another can you use lethal force." This whole way that we watch cop shows on TV and we think of, "Oh, if the cops chase after suspects, guns blazing." That's not what they're supposed to do and that's not legal. It's a whole culture shift that needs to happen.

Brian Lehrer: Ramon in Paterson, you're on WNYC. We'll get back to you in a minute, Yannick. Let me get our Paterson caller in here. Ramon, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Ramon: Hey, how are you doing? Thanks for having me on. I grew up in Paterson. I, unfortunately, know a lot of bullies from my high school and elementary school. They are now the lead detectives or lead police officers in their department. What that essentially means is you have Paterson, which has very low socioeconomics. For the majority of it, that is both. You have these high school bullies that are now police officers. They also need mental health support. You're sending them out, like the last caller has said, in a militarized fashion.

You're not getting any productivity out of it. I grew up in the city for decades. I've seen them ignore actual crimes, smoking pot on the side of the road, bullying kids, pushing them around. It's awful. My son had an allergic reaction about three weeks ago and nobody even picked up. I had to speed to the city to get him to the hospital. It's aggravating, the fact that they keep this vicious cycle going. I'm fully in support of mental health, support being provided primarily, and the attorney general hopefully stepping in and fixing things on the foundational level, which is really difficult to do.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for your call. Jennifer has a story about something that happened five years ago in Tenafly, I think. Jennifer, you're on WNYC, hello.

Jennifer: Yes. Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Five years ago, I was suffering from, essentially, a psychosis. It was the only time in my life I've had a mental health emergency of any type and this was in Tenafly. Again, one of the most educated, upscale community certainly in the country and in, certainly, New Jersey. Police were called to our home. My late husband was a physician. He was standing there saying there has never been an issue.

We both have been dealing with terrible criminal invasion of our privacy. Police showed some restraints. They threatened me with tasers. They put me in handcuffs. They dragged me across the lawn. I found it to be outrageous. My background is in psychology and mental health. I found the police had no idea how to address this. I was brought to the emergency room at Bergen New Bridge, there too.

My husband was corroborating everything I was sharing and saying again, he knew me for decades. Given his training, he recognized what was going on. Nobody was listening. Nobody was addressing what was-- and this, again, was a community like Tenafly. Again, very educated, very wealthy, very professional, and noted to have one of the best police departments certainly in New Jersey. We have a very long way to go.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like from your story, you were not armed, but you were still not treated well by the police as you experienced it.

Jennifer: I posed no threat. I was in a nightgown. I was holding a cell phone and they've absolutely-- just the aggression was overwhelming.

Brian Lehrer: Jennifer, thank you for sharing your story. I'm sure that was not easy. Yannick, we've got a few minutes left. The person who the attorney general has now tapped to run the Paterson Police Department for now starting in May is Isa Abbassi, currently the chief of Strategic Initiatives for the NYPD. I see, he is said to have a good reputation for improving police-community relations after the police killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014.

In his current position, he was developing Mayor Adams' so-called Neighborhood Safety Teams, which, the very existence of, is controversial because they're structurally like the special police units like the one Mayor de Blasio had disbanded over repeated uses of excessive force, these so-called anti-crime units. All of which is by way of background to ask, do you think Isa Abbassi is a good pick to run and reform the Paterson police?

Yannick Wood: Well, the answer is I don't think that that has been run by residents of Paterson. It definitely has not been run by the advocacy organizations. Nobody consulted us to see whether he would be the correct fit. I think that is part of the problem with how Paterson Police Department has been operating. Frankly, the heart of the matter of what we're trying to get is that there needs to be a level of community oversight, community involvement, community engagement.

I just want to thank the last two callers who were talking about their personal-- One talked about their personal mental health crisis and their terrible treatment. The other person talking about growing up in Paterson and how they feel like they're being treated. The reason why we do the work that we do is because in the absence of police accountability, people are seriously injured.

People are being killed. That's what we're trying to target. We need to get people involved. We need to engage the community to figure out who should be the next person to take over Paterson Police Department. That's very foundational. That's a very easy first step. I don't see that that happened in this situation. I can't really speak to him because I don't know him.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, any other reaction you're hearing to Abbassi as the person named to take over the Paterson Police?

Nancy Solomon: Well, I think between the calls and what we know about what's been going on in Paterson, it's a thankless task that one person isn't going to be able to fix. Just to back up what the caller said about growing up in Paterson, excuse the dogs. Since 2018, there have been 12 cops in Paterson who have been criminally charged for misconduct of some kind.

They had a robbery squad of cops who went out and robbed citizens. There are problems with police across the state, but Paterson is a particularly problematic department. I don't think one person is going to be able to fix this very quickly. Obviously, community involvement and getting citizens involved is got to be one of the steps taken as part of the repair process.

Brian Lehrer: I know we're over time, but I want to get in Mercedes in Paterson who just called in with, I think, a different kind of story that has a different kind of ending. Mercedes, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Mercedes: Good morning. How are you doing? I'm just calling as a Paterson resident. The main complaint is I have family members who have mental health crisis. They fear to call the police department or for any type of help only because they're afraid to get shot or killed. What they do is they call me to de-escalate my uncle who's having the mental health crisis instead of calling the police department or other resources just because we are afraid that he's going to get shot and killed. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. We're going to let that be the last word in this segment. We thank Yannick Wood, director of the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and WNYC's Nancy Solomon. Thank you for spending so much time today with us on this, obviously, very important issue.

Yannick Wood: Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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