NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Rutgers University released 1,272 pages of police records after being served with an amended complaint in a public records lawsuit filed by this reporter.
The Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) logs list each and every call that the city’s two major police departments responded to between February 1 and May 31, plus other instances where officers were dispatched.
After eighteen weeks of stalling, Rutgers released the records about 30 hours after being served with the amended complaint.
Then, the following day, Rutgers released an additional 299 pages consisting of the logs from January 2019, 132 days after New Brunswick Today had first requested them.
On February 20, the university claimed it was “attempting to export the data you have requested,” and “trying to determine whether we can produce the requested records,” and began repeatedly granting themselves extensions to produce them over the next several months.
Eventually, a lawsuit was filed by this reporter, and this matter was added to the case on June 6, five days before Rutgers finally began to provide some of the information requested.Â
The litigation is still active in Middlesex County Superior Court, filed under docket #MID-L-4039-19. This reporter is represented by Walter Luers in the matter.
Rutgers took over the responsibility of maintaining these logs for New Brunswick’s police department beginning on December 10, 2018.
UPDATE (12:33pm): This article was updated to reflect the production of the January 2019 records.
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Charlie is the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, and the winner of the Awbrey Award for Community-Oriented Local Journalism. He is a proud Rutgers University journalism graduate, a community organizer, and a former independent candidate for mayor of New Brunswick.
