Maplewood police chief, captain suspended over alleged brutality incident

<p>Maplewood&rsquo;s town council voted Tuesday night to suspend the town's police chief and a police captain for alleged police brutality.</p>

News 12 Staff

Aug 2, 2017, 2:03 AM

Updated 2,593 days ago

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Maplewood police chief, captain suspended over alleged brutality incident
Amid a protest during National Night Out of an alleged police brutality incident, Maplewood’s town council voted to suspend the town's police chief and a police captain.
News 12 New Jersey learned Tuesday night that Maplewood Police Chief Robert Cimino was suspended for 60 days with pay during a township committee meeting. A police captain was also suspended for 30 days.
Their suspensions were in response to alleged police brutality that took place July 5, 2016. A group of demonstrators were out Tuesday protesting the incident in which Maplewood police allegedly clashed with a large crowd of teenagers after the town’s Fourth of July fireworks show. Officials said fights broke out, and some people were arrested. Some Maplewood residents claimed police mistreated the crowd of mostly black teens.
Some of the conflict was recorded on video.
The protest, dubbed “Justice Night Out,” was held during National Night Out, a national event meant to strengthen the relationship between police and the community, so that demonstrators could descend on Maplewood’s celebration and call for the police chief to step down.
“National Night Out is about coming together with police and public safety and having a dialog with them,” said demonstrator Khadijah White. “We felt we wanted to demonstrate the kind of dialogue we wanted to have.”
TJ Whittaker, a teacher in the South Orange/Maplewood School District, said some of his students were in the crowd the night of the fireworks conflict. He said that since then, he's lobbied for the video to be released.
Whittaker said now that the video has been made public, he wants full transparency from public officials.
“What took place could have been tragic,” Whittaker said. “It was, at best, a bad situation that didn’t have to happen.”
The Maplewood National Night Out went on as planned and attracted hundreds of residents.
News 12 New Jersey attended the event and asked to speak with the police sergeant in charge of the event. The sergeant declined to be interviewed.
No further details were released in regard to the suspensions of the police chief and police captain.