In August 2019, a Jersey City police lieutenant hosted a pig roast at his home, where he drank six to eight beers. An argument ensued with his girlfriend over leftover food and drinks. During the dispute, the lieutenant stated, “Today is your day,” retrieved his shotgun from a safe and, as his girlfriend and her son walked to their car, fired one round in their direction. A witness reported hearing him say, “It’s time to die.” The New Jersey State Police responded to the scene, arrested the lieutenant, and charged him with terroristic threats and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. In March 2020, with the consent of the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office, the lieutenant was permitted to plead guilty to a lesser charge and enrolled in a twelve-month pre-trial intervention program.
Separately from the criminal proceedings, the Jersey City Police Department (JCPD) opened an internal affairs investigation into the lieutenant’s conduct. As part of this administrative probe, the JCPD obtained records about the incident from the State Police and the prosecutor’s office. The JCPD ultimately sustained a finding of misconduct against the lieutenant for violating departmental rules on conduct, mishandling a firearm, and off-duty intoxicants, and suspended him for ninety days.
In March 2022, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided Rivera v. Union Cnty. Prosecutors’ Off., 270 A.3d 362 (N.J. 2022), which held that internal affairs reports could be disclosed under the common law right of access. Just four days later, the news organization States Newsroom, publishing as The New Jersey Monitor, filed a request for the internal affairs report on the lieutenant’s incident. Jersey City denied the request. While the ensuing lawsuit was pending, the lieutenant obtained an expungement of his criminal records from the Sussex County Superior Court in August 2022. The expungement order directed specific law enforcement and judicial agencies that had been involved in the criminal case to seal their records, but it did not name the JCPD or Jersey City. The City, however, upon learning of the order, argued that the order categorically barred the release of the internal affairs report. States Newsroom filed suit, and the trial court found for the City, reasoning that “the expungement order” was a “concrete wall that [it] hit.”
The Supreme Court of New Jersey disagreed. The Court reasoned that internal affairs reports are not themselves “criminal records” as defined by the statute; they are administrative records concerning violations of police department rules and regulations, not records of “detection, apprehension, arrest, detention, trial or disposition of an offense within the criminal justice system.”
However, the Court also held that the expungement statute and the specific expungement order did bar the release of any information within the report that would directly reveal the lieutenant’s expunged arrest, criminal charges, conviction, or the disposition of his criminal case.
The Court mandated a detailed procedure for the lower court to follow on remand, requiring it to first review the report in camera and “redact any information included in the IA report concerning the lieutenant’s arrest, charges, conviction, and disposition.” Only after those redactions were made was the trial court to conduct the common law balancing test from Rivera, weighing whether the interests favoring disclosure of the now-redacted report outweighed concerns for confidentiality. The Court explicitly stated that the JCPD “need not refrain from revealing information about the underlying incident that led to both the lieutenant’s arrest and its IA investigation,” as the expungement statute deems only the arrest and conviction not to have occurred, not the historical facts of the incident itself.
States Newsroom Inc. v. City of Jersey City, 2025 WL 2202105 (N.J. Aug. 4, 2025).