Policing and Racial Profiling

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state Division on Civil Rights have filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the township of Clark, former longtime Mayor Sal Bonaccorso, suspended Police Chief Pedro Matos and current Police Director Patrick Grady, alleging they directed officers to target and keep Black and other non‑white motorists out of the community. The complaint cites an analysis of 2015–2020 traffic data showing Black drivers were stopped 3.7 times more often than white drivers and Hispanic drivers 2.2 times more often, and describes this as part of "systematic" discrimination and harassment carried out at Bonaccorso’s behest. Bonaccorso, who resigned in January 2025 after pleading guilty in a corruption case involving his landscaping business, had previously been recorded on secret tapes using racial slurs, a scandal the town settled in 2020 with a $400,000 payout to the whistleblower officer. Clark’s current mayor, Angel Albanese, and Matos’s attorney are denouncing the suit as political and frivolous, pointing to timing as Platkin’s term winds down, while the attorney general’s office notes some racial disparities narrowed after the Union County Prosecutor took control of the department in 2020. The case positions the state against a suburban New York–area town in a high‑stakes test of how far civil-rights enforcers can go in policing alleged racial profiling by local governments and police brass.