TRENTON – Attorney General Peter C. Harvey today released the tenth Independent Monitor’s report which commended the State Police leadership for making remarkable progress in reaching the highest levels of compliance to date in every phase of the Consent Decree.

In their report, filed Friday with the Federal Court, the Independent Monitors praised the leadership of the State Police for “making remarkable progress” toward compliance toward the Consent Decree. The Independent Monitors found that the State Police has made the substantial progress in the areas of training; supervision, development of MAPPs performance management system, inspections and field operations.

“The report by the Independent Monitors has clearly recognized the resolve and commitment taken by the State Police and the Office of State Police Affairs to reach full compliance with all phases of the Consent Decree. Their hard work and dedication must be commended,” Attorney General Harvey said.

Governor James E. McGreevey also praised the State Police for thier dedication in meeting the requirements of the Consent Decree. "The State Police have worked hard to regain the pubic trust, and I believe the Independent Monitors have clearly recognized that the State Police is moving toward full compliance with the Consent Decree.

Following their recent review of State Police operations, the Independent Monitors concluded that the new compliance levels appear to be “directly attributable to a focused and clear leadership mandate, emanating from the Office of the Superintendent, placing compliance efforts among the top goals of the agency.”

“I have always looked at the Consent Decree as an opportunity to improve the State Police. This extremely positive monitors’ report is one more piece of evidence that our hard work is fostering permanent change. As long as I am Superintendent, I will encourage every trooper to realize his or her full potential and raise the bar for State Police performance,” said the Superintendent.

The report follows the recent decision by the Federal Court to allow the State to be relieved from the Internal Affairs portion of the Consent Decree. On April 6, U.S. Magistrate Mary L. Cooper granted a joint motion by the Attorney General’s Office of State Police Affairs and the Department of Justice to dissolve that portion of the Consent Decree.

Assistant Attorney General Daniel Giaquinto, Director of the Office of State Police Affairs, said that since the Consent Decree was implemented in 1999, the State Police are in or near compliance:

“In areas critical to the Consent Decree, all consent searches and drug detection canine deployments were found to be professionally executed for legitimate cause, all use of force incidents were found to be appropriate and only one of 177 non-consensual searches was found to be problematic,” Giaquinto said.

With respect to training, the Independent Monitors found exceptional improvement in the training function implementation. Last year, staffing levels were increased at the training academy, and the training academy is in compliance in all but two categories. The monitors found that focus, attention to detail, commitment to resources and results achieved by the Academy this period to be exceptional, according the report.

The supervision of troopers also has seen marked progress. The monitors found that State Police supervisors are fully engaged in the consent decree compliance process, having reviewed 161 of the 207 (78 percent) of motor vehicle stops reviewed by the monitors. The reviews by the supervisors found violations of State Police SOPs and counseled, restrained or otherwise responded to those violations. The Monitors found the violations were not related to the consent decree, but noted that the command staff have committed to a supervisory review of all incidents involving law enforcement procedure of interest to the decree.

The MAPPs computer system, a state-of-the-art computer informational system, designed to review trooper ans supervisory, is now being used in performance evaluations. The monitor noted that MAPPs must be in compliance with only two standards to be in compliance: implementation of a bench-marking standard and implementation of long-term trend analysis.

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