Consent Decree

A U.S. Justice Department investigation has found enough evidence to bring a civil-rights suit against the New Jersey State Police, but the state is hoping to negotiate a settlement, state Attorney General Peter Verniero said yesterday. Verniero's announcement came about three years after federal authorities began investigating allegations of racial discrimination against the state police and days after a state review acknowledged that troopers single out minority motorists. "We look forward to working with the Justice Department as a partner to ensure that New Jersey becomes a model for addressing this important civil-rights issue," Verniero said yesterday in a statement.

A federal judge approved an agreement between New Jersey and the U.S. Justice Department yesterday on what steps the state will take to prevent racial profiling by state troopers. The two sides announced the agreement and a long list of reforms last week, and the judge's approval had been expected. Technically called a consent decree, the agreement came eight months after the Justice Department threatened the state with a lawsuit. The decree was signed by U.S. District Judge Mary L. Cooper, who was formally assigned to the case yesterday.

The New Eastern Food Co. Inc., the Tioga-based Chinese-restaurant supplier that was closed in January because of unsanitary conditions, has signed a consent decree permitting it to salvage some of the food items that were padlocked. The warehouse, at 1901-13 W. Westmoreland Street, was seized and padlocked Jan. 13 by federal officials who alleged that some food stored there had been contaminated by rodents and insects. Under the consent decree, New Eastern may proceed to "recondition" any "salvageable articles of food," according to a statement released yesterday by the U.S. attorney's office.

It's not as difficult to remove abandoned cars from city streets as Mayor Street claims, and a 1981 court agreement that spells out procedures for notifying owners before towing should remain in place, according to Community Legal Services. Poppycock, answers Mayor Street's chief of staff, Stephanie Franklin-Suber. She says no other municipality in the state has such legal difficulty in removing junk cars and the 19-year-old agreement must be scrapped. "We'd like to come to an amicable agreement and if not we are prepared to challenge this in court," said Franklin-Suber . "From Day One they have been dealing with the consent decree like it's part of the problem, I assume to distract from solving the problem," said Irv Ackelsberg, Community Legal Services managing attorney.

Seven years and $41 million later, Camden County officials may soon be back where they started in 1982: having to tell a federal court judge why their jail is overcrowded. The New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate said yesterday that it would ask U.S. District Judge Harold A. Ackerman to reduce the number of inmates at the jail, where the population has nearly tripled since its opening last year. Audrey Bomse, an attorney in the office of inmate advocacy, said she planned to file a motion this week asking Ackerman to impose an inmate cap and to hold county and state officials in contempt for violating a 1986 consent decree.

Philadelphia's prisons are overcrowded. Roughly three-fourths of those incarcerated are legally innocent, awaiting trial. The only reason they are held is that they are too poor to post bail. No one should suffer the inhumanity of overcrowded prisons, but it is especially cruel and unjust to subject innocents to it solely because they are the poorest of the poor. Recognizing that, last year the Goode administration agreed in a consent decree to reduce the prison population, then averaging 4,200, in phases to 3,750 by July 13. U.S. District Court Judge Norma L. Shapiro approved the consent decree last Dec. 31, but so far it has been blocked by a challenge from District Attorney Ronald D. Castille.

DOESN'T EVERYONE take a civil-service test to get hired by the city for the Fire Department? Why do they need a consent decree? You take the test, get ranked by your score numerically and get hired in order. Veterans get an extra 10 points for their service to our country (white, black, Asian, etc.). Sounds pretty straightforward to me. Why do the Club Valiants feel African-Americans need special preferences to get hired? Do they think they can't measure up? Sounds like they're stereotyping their own race.

Police Commissioner Willie L. Williams and the head of the Guardian Civic League endorsed a proposed consent decree yesterday that would resolve a lawsuit alleging that the department's entrance examination discriminates against blacks. Williams and Ronald D. Oliver, president of the Guardian Civic League, were among the witnesses called to testify during a hearing about the settlement before Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Broderick, who has postponed a decision on whether to approve the proposal.

State Corrections Commissioner David S. Owens Jr. has been found in contempt of a federal court consent decree and will face fines of $500 a day unless he changes the way the department alerts inmates of changes in prison regulations. U.S. District Judge Joseph S. Lord 3d, in an order filed Wednesday, ruled that the department must begin notifying inmates individually of changes in the inmate code of conduct, rather than merely posting rule changes on prison bulletin boards. Lord gave Owens 30 days to amend the policy or be subject to fines.

The city asked a federal judge yesterday for a 60-day extension of a consent decree that requires the city's overcrowded jails to close their doors tomorrow to all but the most dangerous inmates. The City Solicitor's Office made the request yesterday in a motion filed before U.S. District Judge Norma L. Shapiro, who earlier this year approved the consent decree. No action was taken on the motion yesterday. The city admits in the motion that, despite the measures it has taken, it is unlikely to reduce the prison population below the required level by 12:01 a.m. tomorrow and needs more time to do it safely.

Pennsylvania State University trustees voiced overwhelming support Sunday night for the decision by university President Rodney Erickson to sign an NCAA consent decree that imposes harsh sanctions on the university after the Jerry Sandusky child-abuse scandal. Though a majority of board members were sharply critical of the severity of the penalties, nearly all endorsed Erickson's actions and said it was important to look toward the future. "It is my belief that we must move forward," board member Keith W. Eckel said.

Pennsylvania State University's board of trustees will hold a special meeting Sunday to ratify the sanctions imposed by the NCAA because of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, a university spokesman said. The planned meeting follows attempts to appeal the sanctions by a trustee and by former Penn State football players and a past assistant coach. University spokesman David La Torre said the board would hold a conference-call meeting at 5 p.m. solely to consider ratification of the NCAA consent decree on the sanctions that the university accepted.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Joe Paterno's family said it planned to appeal the sanctions the NCAA imposed against Pennsylvania State University over the Jerry Sandusky child-sex-abuse scandal. The college sports governing body's response: Don't bother. Family lawyer Wick Sollers wrote Friday to the NCAA that the Paternos would like to appeal the "enormous damage" done to Penn State, the community, athletes, and the late Hall of Fame coach. Paterno died in January at 85. But the NCAA quickly rejected the proposal.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Joe Paterno's family said it planned to appeal the sanctions the NCAA imposed against Pennsylvania State University over the Jerry Sandusky child-sex-abuse scandal. The college sports governing body's response: Don't bother. Family lawyer Wick Sollers wrote Friday to the NCAA that the Paternos would like to appeal the "enormous damage" done to Penn State, the community, athletes, and the late Hall of Fame coach. Paterno died in January at 85. But the NCAA quickly rejected the proposal.

Is New York safer than Philadelphia because the police there stop and frisk pedestrians more often? Mayor Michael Bloomberg, defending the New York Police Department's aggressive stop-and-frisk approach, told reporters Thursday that it was a no-brainer. "Why would any rational person want to trade what we have here for the situation in Philadelphia? More murders? Higher crime?" Bloomberg asked rhetorically. He was responding to an editorial in the New York Times calling that city's stop-and-frisk program "abusive" and suggesting that "New York should learn from Philadelphia," which is operating under a consent decree after the settlement last year of a class-action suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.

Shadows from the New Jersey State Police's past crept over the agency again last month as it graduated its first class of recruits in two years. First came a book by Justin Hopson, a retired trooper who received a $400,000 settlement in 2006 after he alleged that a group of fellow troopers assaulted and harassed him for questioning an improper arrest by a supervisor. The book, Breaking the Blue Wall: One Man's War Against Police Corruption, tells of his ordeal. The settlement was one of three payouts, totaling $1 million, to troopers who alleged harassment by the so-called Lords of Discipline - a group that a state probe eventually concluded did not exist.

NEWARK, N.J. - According to a report Wednesday from the state attorney general, the state police is a model agency now that it has emerged from the shadow of a racial-profiling scandal. But the NAACP has raised questions about the agency's recruiting efforts among African Americans. NAACP officials plan to send another letter this week to the Attorney General's Office, which oversees the state police, questioning why recruitment among blacks has plummeted to the point where the current class had only five black officers out of 123 recruits.

Johnson & Johnson said its second-quarter profit dropped 20 percent compared with a year ago because of recalls, restructuring, and research investments, among myriad factors affecting the global health-care giant. J&J, which has its headquarters in New Brunswick, N.J., and has operations in several Philadelphia suburbs, exceeded reported estimates by Wall Street analysts, but the stock finished down 37 cents at $66.72 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. J&J's McNeil Consumer Healthcare division is still a problem for the company because the Fort Washington plant has been closed since April 2010 after an FDA investigation.