View full sizeJohn Bayliss says this photo shows injuries state troopers inflicted on his son, James, on May 16, 2009. The younger Bayliss was in a car stopped at a blockade as troopers tried to find a pair of burglary suspects in Warren County.Last June, The Star-Ledger published a leaked video of New Jersey State Police troopers beating a mentally disabled man after a traffic stop. Top brass in the State Police and Attorney General’s Office condemned the beating, calling it an "unreasonable" use of force.
Were they being decisive, or deceptive?
What we know now, as The Star-Ledger's Christopher Baxter reported Sunday, is that a deputy attorney general exonerated those troopers more than a year earlier, promising a "vigorous" defense against a lawsuit filed by the man on the receiving end, James Bayliss. The state changed course only after Bayliss sued and the newspaper started asking questions.
Bayliss’ attorney, Robert Woodruff, has called it a "whitewash." The evidence concurs.
The latest news reports paint a picture of a law enforcement machine in cover-up mode — working behind closed doors to decide the beating was justified, only to reverse itself once The Star-Ledger exposed the investigation to the light of day.
Michael Engallena, the deputy attorney general who evaluated the case in February 2011, wrote this: "I have reviewed the video and do not see anything shocking or unreasonable."
Engallena, who eventually was replaced on the case, might be in a class by himself. For many, the lingering question about the video was which part was most shocking and unreasonable.
Bayliss’ case raises questions about how troopers are trained to react when confronted by a person whose health affects their behavior. In this case, troopers were warned Bayliss might act strangely — the result of a brain injury — yet responded with force anyway. Think this is an isolated case? Ask Daniel Fried, who was wrestled to the ground two years ago by troopers who couldn’t tell the difference between diabetic shock — which slurred his speech — and drunken driving.
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It also confirms the need for more transparency in disciplinary cases. Bayliss has waited more than three years for answers. And who can forget last spring’s "Death Race 2012?" Troopers who led that high-speed convoy of luxury sports cars down the Garden State Parkway weren’t disciplined, again, until The Star-Ledger started asking questions.
It’s a failure of training that drivers with legitimate medical issues risk violence at the hands of quick-tempered state troopers. And it’s a failure of justice that has two sets of rules, and the one that’s used depends on who’s watching.