New Jersey police issue courtesy cards or ties to drivers

The investigation found that at the end of 2022, more than 130 drivers broke the law but received preferential treatment in just 10 days

All citizens are equal before the law, right? Well, apparently the New Jersey State Police don’t care. The department often provided preferential treatment to some drivers, according to an investigation by the State Auditor General’s Office. These drivers provide officers with courtesy cards, claim to know the other officer well, or simply show their badge. Of the 501 non-forced interceptions conducted by NJSP, 139 showed evidence of this preferential treatment.

Body camera footage from law enforcement stops is rarely reviewed, the OSC said. “No tickets were issued, no arrests were made, no one was even ordered out of the vehicle” at these stops. The stops reviewed by OSC were all from a short 10-day period in late 2022. As mentioned above, drivers at 139 of the 501 stops received preferential treatment.

More: NYPD cop claims to offer ‘courtesy cards’ to friends and family of cops to avoid tickets

In one case, police stopped an Alfa Romeo Stelvio for speeding. It weaves between lanes without using turn signals and travels at speeds in excess of 94 mph (151 km/h). When police first contacted the driver, he immediately gave them a card indicating that he was related to another police officer. He then admitted to having two drinks at the place he had just been. The officer who pulled him over attempted to contact an officer who was reportedly known to the driver.

When they couldn’t reach the officer, one of the two said “I’ll do the right thing” and asked the driver to leave with just a verbal slap on the wrist. He even admitted to the driver, “If you didn’t have this (absent officer’s card), we would have gone a completely different route,” and then “Honestly, you crashed…there’s going to be a fXXking problem right?” Watch He publicly admitted that he would personally bear a degree of responsibility if the driver later crashed on the road.

In a second video, police pull over a woman driving a Kia at speeds in excess of 100 mph (162 km/h). She initially pulled over to the left side of the highway before the officer got out of his car, corrected her and told her to pull over to the right side of the road. In this simple action, it was clear that she was frustrating the police officer as she cut off traffic and attempted to cross directly across the moving highway. There, she told officers her father was a lieutenant. He returned to his car, confirmed this, and let her go.

The OSC said that in nearly half of the stops it reviewed, “drivers were speeding, sometimes in excess of 90 miles per hour, without receiving a ticket.” Ultimately, it found several important points. “Courtesy cards – issued by the Police Labor Association and sold online by private companies – appear to be widely used and function as accepted currency.” Furthermore, it asserts, “In short, this two-tier “It is unethical, discriminatory and fundamentally unfair for the justice system to provide different treatment to those with law enforcement connections and those without.”

Currently, it has made some recommendations to the NJSP. It wants leadership to review such videos more frequently. It also wants the NJSP to issue a new directive that “prohibits law enforcement officers from considering” a driver’s relationship with any law enforcement officer or their own personal standing in the field. Will these recommendations be adopted, or will it reduce the number of New Jersey courtesy cards? Use, remains to be seen.

Image Credit: New Jersey OSC