Many thanks to NJ Monitor for running this piece but I had to cut the length a bit so this is the full text as sent to Platkin. This letter grew out of my speech at the People’s Organization for Progress Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. March this year where someone had brought up how the AG has referenced Letter from a Birmingham Jail while also continuing to prop up the systems of oppression that King fought, and would still be fighting today.

Attorney General Platkin,

You have mentioned that you regularly re-read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail.1 You have even gone so far as to say that his words help guide you in your work as Attorney General for the State of New Jersey. But if you had heard, not just read, Letter from Birmingham Jail, your policies and actions would reflect those words. We do not see those reflections.

As you must know well, King characterized a “white moderate” as someone who:

• is more devoted to "order" than to justice; 

• prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; 

• constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"

• paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; 

• lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season.

But despite your reading list, your actions, and those of your office, indicate you are more devoted to order than to justice. Police departments throughout our state are enforcing a brutal and too often fatal negative peace. You are part of a devastating absence of justice. You claim to support our goals, but ignore our community driven methods, even when evidence is on our side.

Your office has failed to indict a single officer on even a single charge in the recent police murders of Hasani Best, Amir Johnson, Gulia Dale III, and Carl Dorsey. Their communities, our neighbors, deserve to see the records of how those cases were presented, to understand how your office failed their friends, brothers, husbands, fathers and upheld a racist system of white supremacy.

As a result, we have very low expectations for the job your office will do presenting the police murders of Bernard Placide, Jr and Najee Seabrooks to the Grand Jury. But make no mistake, the police have heard your office loud and clear, it is open season on Black men. And those officers are largely white, but certainly not moderates. Too many police officers represent the latest in a long line of those who knowingly choose to join a racist system. To exercise power over those they see as lesser, in some cases, fatally.

If you had heard, not just read, King’s Letters you would be meeting with those who took up the burdens of King's dream, so that you could listen, not speak. If you had heard, not just read, you would be putting forth actual evidence-based solutions, not reinforcing the status quo. You would propose solutions after asking communities for their input and ultimately their support in implementing them. But instead, if he were alive today, King would be appalled by your use of his words to justify your woefully insufficient actions and harmful policies. He would be in the streets, with us, protesting you and your lack of vision, action, and leadership. He would be with us, in the streets, and in writing, calling for you to intervene in the promotion of the Englewood officer who murdered Bernard Placide, Jr. The officer currently under investigation by your office for fatally shooting Bernard while he was incapacitated by other officers' tasers.

A state takeover of Paterson Police was a small first step for that city. But Paterson has been calling for a state takeover for years due to police violence, harassment, and outright corruption that has been successfully prosecuted at the Federal level for a decade. It has been reported you have been considering this takeover since the Fall of 2022. Yet you came in and announced a new Chief on day one, without ever listening to the community. That search likely took time, which further supports the reporting that this takeover has been in motion for months. Paterson Police had just sworn in a new Chief the day Najee Seabrooks was murdered. Were they good? Bad? Who did you talk to trying to find out before replacing them?

Who was on the search committee? Anyone from Paterson? Anyone doing the work of making the community safer? Families that have experienced police violence or abuse? Anyone who has spent years asking for help from your office and the Legislature in holding the police accountable? You started your review of training, procedures, and officers, again without talking to the community. Yet you keep referencing that your powers and resources are limited. It would have made sense to coordinate with the community to maximize your limited impact, right? Now, two months in, you have held a community listening session and the new Chief has announced several more, but how many decisions have already been made? Paterson doesn't want ARRIVE Together, they have proven, more successful models built by Paterson Healing Collective and St. Joseph's. Will you force ARRIVE on them? Do you really believe a cop with an iPad represents any kind of meaningful change, any kind of safety for a Black man suffering from a mental health crisis?2

To your credit, your office did indict Paterson Police Officer Moravek, for shooting an unarmed man in the back, while he presented absolutely no threat. Another small but important step. But Mayor Sayegh’s indignant response to that indictment, supporting the officer firing his weapon, highlights just how overdue state and federal intervention in the Paterson Police Department really was. Now Mayor Sayegh’s administration is trying to turn his inept leadership and refusal to address the police brutality into a payday for the corrupt and violent police force they have refused to address.3

But no amount of money, technology, or training can fix decades of corruption, violence, incompetence, and racism that are built into our systems of policing. If anything we should be cutting funding for the Paterson Police and redirecting that funding to evidence-based public safety solutions like Paterson Healing Collective, BLM Paterson's Harm Reduction work, and investment in education, jobs, healthcare (including mental health), and social services. Many of these solutions already exist in Paterson, but they struggle with inadequate funding, particularly from the state level. 

Because what has decades of increasing police funding bought us in Paterson? More police violence against residents. Countless cases citing abuse of residents while hiding behind a badge and a gun. All of which causes more distrust of the police, making investigations less effective. That ineffectiveness is then used to call for more police funding. A self-justifying cycle that never yields an answer except more funding for the police. Much of that police funding goes to superiors who have failed to address the actions and culture of the officers under their command, if they have even bothered to try. Honestly, I am not sure which is the worse explanation for this behavior: that they simply do not care or that this represents their best efforts.

So I ask you to truly hear the words of Dr. King.

“the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Hearing Dr. King would mean:

• Listening to communities, especially those historically marginalized, including but not limited to: Paterson, Newark, Trenton, Camden, Elizabeth, and Jersey City.

• Incorporating community ideas to shape state policy, not forcing state initiated programs.

• Following the data and evidence.

• Committing to actual change, particularly the ones staunchly opposed by the Police Lobby.

• Refusing to just pour more money into the failed policing policies and mediocre leadership of the last 60 years.

These are not my ideas. I am not an expert in this space. But I am a human being and I can see, hear, and feel the anguish of my neighbors. Maybe you will hear me because I look like you, white and male. I can put on the formal trappings of a suit and tie and look like you, not out of place in your spaces. I look like the white men that sit behind the dais at State of the State Addresses, year, after year, after year. I look like the white male trifecta that has ruled our state since its founding, with only rare deviation, no matter how out of touch with our state that wall to wall whiteness may be.

Maybe these words will reach you in a way that Dr. King's have not after all this time. Will you listen to Dr. King and the communities of our state that have been overpoliced for generations? Will you call for the codification of the current use of force directives, which the next Attorney General could overturn with the stroke of a pen? Will you support the police accountability and reform bills that have been stalled for far too long?

• A1515 to establish strong Civilian Complaint Review Boards, with subpoena and concurrent investigatory powers, following the blueprint provided by the 2020 NJ State Supreme Court decision?

• A5326 to expand the community based violence, substance, and mental health responses that we see working in Paterson, Newark, and Trenton? 

• A1006 to end Qualified Immunity?

• A996 to end the practice of police discipline records being hidden from the public?

Will you demonstrate that support publicly or at least privately in conversations with Legislators?

What will be your legacy?

Matt Dragon