Earlier this spring, the police chief of a New Jersey township came under fire when word got out that he’d sent an email to his officers condoning racial profiling. Well, last week, township officials punished him by busting him all the way down to foot patrolman. Rather than have the decency to apologize, the now-former chief is whining that he was the victim of a politically-motivated witch hunt.
Benjamin Fox is the police chief of Wyckoff, located in western Bergen County, about 31 miles from Manhattan and 16 miles from the Meadowlands. In March, the ACLU of New Jersey got wind of an email Fox had sent to his 25-man force in 2014, in which he suggested racial profiling could be acceptable under certain conditions.
Read the full email here. The first paragraph leaves no bones about it–in Fox’s view, there are times when profiling is just good police work.
“I think that most police officers are finding the national rhetoric about police abuse and racial profiling quite upsetting. Profiling, racial or otherwise, has it’s place in law enforcement when used correctly and applied fairly. Unfortunately we have never heard that from our President, top political leaders or our US Attorney General. Don’t ask the police to ignore what we know. Black gang members from Teaneck commit burglaries in Wyckoff. That’s why we check out suspicious black people in white neighborhoods. White kids buy heroin in black NYC neighborhoods. That’s why the NYPD stops those white kids. The police know they are there to buy drugs. It’s insane to think that the police should just ‘dumb down’ just to be politically correct.”
When this email became public, Fox was deservedly condemned. Watch coverage from NJTV, New Jersey’s public television network, here.
The New Jersey ACLU’s senior staff attorney, Alexander Shalom, said that by telling his officers not to “ignore what we know,” Fox was giving succor to “an incredibly racist” approach to policing. His sentiment was echoed by Bergen County NAACP president Anthony Cureton, himself a former detective. He said that while officers have to have some leeway to solve crimes, targeting someone based on their race is “unacceptable.”
In response, acting state attorney general Robert Lougy and acting Bergen County prosecutor Gurbir Grewal launched an investigation into whether Fox’s email violated state policies that banned racial profiling. Fox placed himself on administrative leave for the duration of the probe. However, in May, the Wyckoff township committee, or council, suspended Fox with pay.
On August 2, Grewal announced that Fox’s email “explicitly violated” a 2005 directive from the state attorney general that banned racial profiling. While Grewal could find no evidence of profiling in almost seven years of records, he nonetheless found that the email promoted “racially charged policing,” and thus eroded the public’s trust in the police.
The township committee struck fast and hard. Within hours of receiving the report, it unanimously suspended Fox for 180 days. It also recommended that Fox be demoted to a mere patrolman when he returns. In a statement, Mayor Kevin Rooney said the investigation proved what township officials had long suspected–that Fox’s email was “an isolated incident.” The next day, Fox announced he would appeal both the suspension and demotion. His lawyer, Arthur Margotes, denounced the sanctions as a “politically motivated” attempt to “pander to the ultra-liberal.”
Looking at Wyckoff’s political geography, however, Margotes and Fox seem to be the ones engaging in grandstanding. Wyckoff is one of the reddest cities in New Jersey. In 2012, Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama here by a punishing 64-35 margin. By comparison, Obama coasted statewide, taking 58 percent of New Jersey’s vote. While municipal elections in New Jersey are officially nonpartisan, the mayor and township committee members are all known to be Republicans.
The conclusion is obvious. Wyckoff appears to be an outpost of sane Republicanism. You can be conservative and yet recognize racist knuckle-dragging for what it is–and declare that it must be dealt with severely. If Fox thinks that’s pandering, it says a lot about him–and it isn’t good. The Record, the state’s second-largest newspaper and the major newspaper in Bergen County, apparently came to the same conclusion; in an editorial, it called for Fox to go while he can still do so decently.
Frankly, Fox really doesn’t know how lucky he got. If I had any say in the matter, Fox would have been fired as soon as it was legally possible to do so. There is no place for racial profiling in our police forces at any level. Period, full stop. The New Jersey ACLU is of the same mind. Shalom said that in order for the people of Wyckoff to regain trust in their police, “Fox can’t be part of that department.”
Shalom said it better than I could. Fox needs to take his medicine like a man, apologize, and resign. Now.
(featured image: file photo courtesy The Star-Ledger/NJ.com)
