New Jersey Attorney General releases names of officers who shot Naji Seabrooks

PATERSON — The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office released the names of the Paterson police officers involved in the murder of violence expert Nadja Seabrooks late Wednesday night.

Two Paterson police officers, Anzore Tsai and Jose Hernandez, who were assigned to the department’s emergency response team, fired their weapons and hit Seabrooks, ending hours of negotiations on Friday, the Attorney General’s office said. Tsai and Hernandez unloaded their weapons at approximately 12:35 p.m. Friday at the 20 Mill Street apartment where Seabrooks had barricaded himself.

Seabrooks was later taken to St. Joseph’s University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 12:51 p.m. Friday.

Three other officers, Hector Mendez, Kiad Lin and Mario Wdowiak, used “less lethal force” during the clash, the attorney general’s office said.

Referring to the obvious threats against the officers, the prosecutor’s office had not previously named them. The authorities did not provide further information about these alleged threats, but activists expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the AG’s explanation.

“I don’t think that excuse is justified,” said Zelly Thomas, leader of Paterson’s Black Lives Matter group. “What is justified is anger at the death of a peacemaker, what is justified is anger at the lack of transparency, what is justified is anger because it continues.”

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“He called for help”

Meanwhile, Seabrooks colleagues from the Paterson Healing Collective told the city council on Tuesday night about phone calls and text messaging they had with their friend hours before he was fatally shot by police.

Additionally, Seabrooks’ cousin, Nicole Anthony, told the council that Seabrooks called 911 himself, causing the police to arrive at his home the morning he was killed.

“He called you all for help,” Anthony told the council. “He was a threat to himself. He did not pose a threat to the police.

“He called for help, and when you came to his aid, you killed him,” Seabrooks’ cousin said.

Casey Melvin and Teddy Martinez of the Paterson Healing Collective told the council that Seabrooks contacted each of them and asked them to come to his home on Mill Street.

“He said, ‘They’re trying to kill me, bro, come here now,'” Melvin said.

Melvin said he arrived shortly after and sent a message to Seabrooks, letting him know he was there.

“He said, ‘Get up,'” Melvin said.

But Melvin said that Lieutenant Louis Spagnola, who was in charge of the scene, would not let him inside. During a council meeting and at a rally Tuesday night, Melvin and Martinez blamed Spagnola for Seabrooks’ death.

It remains unclear what triggered Seabrooks’ mental health crisis that day. The Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating, has not released any details about why the police were sent to his home or what happened while they were there. Senior city officials said in private that Seabrooks was holding several knives and was moving towards the police at the moment he was shot.

But his friends and family said the officers weren’t supposed to fire their weapons because they were wearing riot gear and equipped with a shield.

Anthony said the police should have used “a different tactic”.

— Where was Mace? she asked. “Where were the stun bombs? Where is the taser?

During a council meeting on Tuesday, Seabrooks’ father spoke to the crowd on the phone from Northern State Prison, where he is serving a 45-year sentence.

“You have to stand up for my son,” said Willie Seabrooks II, the son of longtime police detective Paterson, who worked as a corrections officer before he was arrested in a 2006 hostage situation.

“Please don’t let them sweep this under the rug,” Seabrooks said of his son’s death, before claiming he himself was wrongly convicted of crimes he didn’t commit.

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Activists looking for footage from surveillance cameras

Meanwhile, activists are demanding the release of footage from the body cameras of the police officers involved in the death of Seabrooks.

Last Saturday, Paterson Press filed requests with the city of Paterson for public recordings of these videos, as well as recordings of all emergency calls and police broadcasts during the Seabrooks incident. The city has not yet responded to these requests.

Mayor Andre Sayeh issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon calling for body camera footage to be released.

“We want to know the truth, and therefore I ask that the body camera footage of this tragic incident be released immediately,” Sayeh said.

Asked why the city itself did not release the video in response to an inquiry from Paterson Press, the mayor’s staff said Paterson was complying with the Attorney General’s rules that prevent the city from releasing footage in cases of lethal police use.

Lawyer CJ Griffin, one of New Jersey’s leading advocates for government transparency and freedom of information, filed a request for public records in the Seabrooks case, prompting the attorney general’s office to allege alleged threats against Paterson’s police.

Griffin said the Attorney General’s Office very rarely withholds the names of police officers in response to requests for records. In one such rejection, Griffin sued the state and won, claiming that the courts had dismissed security concerns as a reason to withhold names. Griffin did not satisfy the information provided by the Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday.

“It’s been several days and there has been no official information — just what unnamed sources selectively wanted to tell the press,” Griffin said earlier in the day of the Seabrooks investigation. “The community mourns and protests, demanding an explanation. The delay is painful.”

Griffin said the state explained why the names of the officers were not being released.

“Disclosure of information identifying the officers involved would jeopardize their safety and could jeopardize ongoing investigations,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said. “Law enforcement officials received a specific real threat. Accordingly, disclosing their identifying information would not only be “harmful to the bona fide purposes of law enforcement”, but also to “public safety”.

Joe Malinconico is an editor at Paterson Press. Email: editor@patersonpress.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Najee Seabrooks: NJ AG will not release police numbers.