Prosecutors in Paterson, N.J., are reviewing footage of a plainclothes law enforcement officer caught searching the trunk of a parked minivan, reportedly without permission.
The undated video went viral after being posted to entertainment news site Media Take Out on Friday, July 14, the Paterson Press reported. In it, a plainclothes officer in a red T-shirt is seen rummaging through the vehicle, an action that spurred allegations of the cop carrying out an illegal search.
When the owner of the van confronts the officer about why he’s searching his car, the officer quickly shuts the trunk door and walks away.
Local officials have confirmed that the officer seen in the video is a member of the Passiac County Sheriff’s Office. Department spokesman Bill Maer told the Paterson Times that the incident has been referred to the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office in order “to assure an independent investigation of the circumstances around the search video.”
The name of the officer hasn’t been released nor have details on whether anyone was arrested.
In the video, the apparent owner of the car walks toward his vehicle and sees the officer searching through his trunk with the hatch wide open.
“The f-ck is you doin’, yo?” the man asks as he approaches the officer. “What are you in my van for?”
The officer instructs the man to follow him to another area of the street, but he refuses and continues to press the officer about why his car was being searched while he was out dining with his family. That’s when the officer explains that the authorities had been getting “a lot of complaints about guns.”
“I don’t care about none of that,” the man is heard saying, adding that he’s not even from the area. “What are you in my van for? I am over here eating with my family and you’re sitting here in my van.”
The man then asks the officer how he got into the car, to which he responds, “It was wide open.” The man reiterates that that doesn’t give the officer the right to poke through his van without permission.
The plainclothes cop is later joined by a uniformed officer, after which the man requests their names an badge numbers.
“Y’all doing shit that y’all ain’t supposed to be fucking doing,” the man says while zooming in on the license plates of nearby police cars. “I know my rights.”
In an interview with the Paterson Times, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, Ed Barocas, called the video “incredibly troubling and disturbing.”
“You have an individual who appears to be a law enforcement officer entering someone’s vehicle without permission and seemingly without any lawful authority,” Barocas said. “Not only is it improper, it’s a crime.”
NJ.com noted that while the Fourth Amendment protects citizens against illegal searches and seizures, New Jersey police have permission to search vehicles without a warrant or the owner’s permission if they believe probable cause exists that a crime was committed.
“We don’t know if it’s just an unlawful search which is bad enough itself or something more nefarious,” Barocas said.
