Takeover of Local Police by NJ Attorney General Spiked by Court

The New Jersey Attorney General didn’t have the power to commandeer the Garden State’s third largest city’s police department despite allegations of rampant shoddy work and violence, a state court ruled Wednesday.

The decision halts a roughly year-long takeover of the Paterson Police Department, which Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin seized following the police shooting of an anti-violence activist last spring. The state didn’t have legal authority to supplant local leadership and run the office, Judge Morris Smith wrote for a unanimous New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division panel.

In a matter of first impression the court sided with shunted ...