Police conduct is coming into focus once again after the police shooting of a Black woman in Illinois who called 911 for help during a mental health episode.

The officer who killed her had a checkered history both in the military and in previous jobs as an officer.

U.S.

Senator Cory Booker spoke on the Senate floor yesterday, urging his colleagues to take measures that will allow police departments to better screen the officers they hire.

How is it that we can't demand that every police department have to check a database to make sure that the person they're hiring or thinking of hiring doesn't have something in their background that puts the community they serve in danger.

This is not too much to ask.

This is common sense.

It's an issue that's moving forward here in New Jersey.

Police misconduct is now being shared with the public in greater detail.

Attorney General Matt Platkin is issuing more detailed annual reports that include specific allegations, investigations and consequences that police officers have faced, both while on the job and at home.

Senior writer Colleen O'Dea has more insight into what these reports show and what impact they could have.

Colleen, great to talk to you tonight.

There's a new process we know for the state police reporting incidents with their officers.

First, before we get to what they're reporting, let's talk about the process and what's changed about how it's how it's reported out.

So this year, they added or for last year they added some additional incidents that had to be reported for, for instance, bias of domestic violence committed by a police officer.

I mean, it's kind of hard to believe that that's something that was not reported in the past.

Lying, you know, being untruthful, be in a verbally to a not to a superior or on a report.

So those are some of the the the charges complaints that are now being reported.

You had a great article that you posted on our website, NJ Spotlight News dot org.

Some beautiful graphs there that really show some stark contrast in terms of what we understand now about behavior on our police force that we really didn't understand before.

Yeah.

You know, the major discipline report shows what they consider major discipline, which is a suspension of at least five days or of a termination or a demotion.

The other thing that was added this year was if an officer left in the midst of an investigation and that showed 80 officers in 2023 who had done so.

So in the past, really something that could happen is if you were an officer who got in trouble, in big trouble for something, you might have just decided to resign, retire, or try to take a job with another department.

And then you never really would have faced that discipline.

So this is capturing that.

And I think it shows that there are a lot more officers that certainly in 2023 than we were able to see in 2022.

Advocates have long called for this kind of transparency so that folks in the public can understand who the police are that are on the force, who they're interacting with.

I want to get a sense from you whether you think that this information, this data translates into different action.

Does it change hiring practices, firing practices?

I mean, it certainly should change both in terms of if you are and department that is considering an officer who has recently transferred from another department to look a little bit more deeply into maybe why that happened.

Is there some sort of incident that happened at the past department that made him look for a different job before he was disciplined?

And certainly in the case of firing, yes, you know, this this gives departments in some ways it gives them cover.

So, you know, I think there's a lot of discussion about the blue line and that officers certainly tried to look out for one another and people in many occupations do.

But, you know, it gives supervisors in a department the ability to say, you know, look, this is transparency, This is out there.

And so we certainly can't keep you on if you have committed these kinds of offenses.

And I do want to note one of the things that I found really surprising, shocking maybe even, is that 70.

There was 70 instances involving these 460 officers who faced major discipline in 2023, who had indictable defense offenses or criminal offenses.

Maybe that didn't rise to the level of indictment, but.

So these are very serious offenses that, you know, I think the public needs to know about.

All right.

Colleen O'Dea, senior writer, thanks for that insight.

Thank you very much, Joanna.