The Police Accountability Project is a committee of the NJ Libertarian Party. Its goal is to search out cases of police misconduct, file former Internal Affairs (IA) complaints when appropriate, and to publicize violations of rules and laws by the police. There may be other stories posted on the NJLP Police Internal Affairs Complaint Blog page.
If you would like to help or know of a case we should be looking at, contact the committee at
On March 3rd Najee Seabrooks was shot and killed by police responding to a 911 call from Seabrooks family. Numerous organizations are calling for federal investigation into the shooting.
On February 7, 2022, I filed the following Internal Affairs complaint against three New Jersey State Police Detectives.
New Jersey State Police
Office of Professional Standards
Intake and Adjudication Bureau
P.O. Box 7068
West Trenton, NJ 08628-0068
via e-mail only to
Dear Sir or Madam:
Please accept this e-mail as my complaint against Detective Carlos Estevez and, to a lesser degree, Detective Sergeant James Sansone and Detective Kartik Birudaraju. The facts related to the February 20, 2016 stop of Jeffrey Van Queen are set out in a February 7, 2022 Appellate Division decision, which is on-line here. The motor vehicle stop led to Van Queen’s arrest and ultimate plea to a weapons offense which caused him to be sentenced to seven years in prison with a three and one-half year parole disqualifier.
Internal Affairs complaints in New Jersey are often not disclosed to the public. In 2014, John Paff, the head of the NJ Libertarian Party’s Open Government Advocacy Project requested info on complaints against correction officers who work at the Bergen County Jail. The response provided redacted the names of all the correction officer employees. His lawsuit against County resulted in Bergen County being forced to identify the officers.
In 2017 the Libertarians for Transparent Government sued the NJ State Police seeking the name of an officer who was fired for racially offensive behavior. As a result of this case and the George Floyd murder and outrage, a Law Enforcement directive was given by Attorney General Gurbir Grewal that required agencies to disclose the identities of officers who commit serious disciplinary violations. This was a reversal of a decades long policy.
HAMILTON — Township cops historically removed bras and subjected female prisoners to improper strip searches until a woman filed an explosive lawsuit resulting in a large settlement payout, a Hamilton police source alleged.
Two Asbury Park police officers donned disguises to exact revenge on a citizen who filed a complaint against them by slashing the tires on two of his vehicles, authorities announced Wednesday.
I did not realize that the odor of marijuana, without more, justified a roadside, under-clothes search of a motorist's genitals and anus by a State Trooper clad in latex gloves. I received this video in response to an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request made to the New Jersey State Police.
I normally do not post settlements of cases that are this old, but the size of the settlement, the nature of the allegations and the fact that the alleged sexual harasser has since been promoted to Police Captain and still serves in that position cause me to make an exception.
Pennsauken Police Officer Susan D. Holtz filed her sexual harassment civil lawsuit on June 4, 2003. Holtz, who was hired as a patrol officer in 1990, said that she was "a very close friend of" Michael Probasco, who was then a patrolman, until she met her husband, Larry Holtz. According to Holtz, her decision to cut off all personal interaction with Probasco so that she could "devote her entire romantic attention" to Larry Holtz "enraged Probasco" and resulted in Probasco spreading lies about her in order to sabotage her relationship with Larry.
On October 4, 2017, the Borough of Lindenwold (Camden County) quietly paid $9,300 to a woman who said that police roughed her up, false arrested her and humiliated her by groping and exposing her genitals and breasts in a public parking lot.
In her lawsuit, Ramona Berry, who at the time was 50, said that on September 12, 2014 she rode with her daughter Aisha to the location where Lindenwold police had detained her other daughter for a traffic stop. She said that she identified herself as the detainee's mother and asked police what was going on. Berry claimed that Patrolman Sean Williams screamed that if she didn't get back into Aisha's car she would be arrested. Berry said that Williams was screaming in her ear as she was trying to open the car door at the same time that Aisha was trying to unlock it. She said that after she gave up trying to open the car door, Williams "slammed her fifty-year-old body and head into a parked car, bent her over the car, handcuffed her violently, dragged and pushed her to a police car, tossed her roughly into the back of a police car, and violently shoved [her] legs into the car."