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A NJ State Trooper Fatally Shot A Black Man. Now The Case Raises Questions About Mental Health Training for Officers
By
Karen Yi
Published Jul 23, 2020
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Courtesy: William O. Wagstaff III
By
Karen Yi
Published Jul 23, 2020
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Two days before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, another Black man was fatally shot by a New Jersey State Trooper during a traffic stop on the Garden State Parkway.
His name was Maurice Gordon.
Gordon, 28, lived in Poughkeepsie, NY and most recently worked as an UberEats delivery driver. Dashcam videos and 911 recordings released by the state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal’s Office, which is investigating the shooting, show Gordon interacted with six officers—five of whom were state troopers—during four different encounters on the same day. All were unaware he’d been stopped before.
A friend of Gordon’s first called 911 on May 22nd, telling a dispatcher he was worried. Gordon had driven off at 3 a.m. after talking about having a “paranormal experience.”
A day later and 141 miles from home, Gordon’s car would stall on the Garden State Parkway. And, four hours after Gordon’s first encounter with police, he was dead.
“The family still does not have a clear picture of exactly what happened on the day in question,” Gordon’s family’s attorney William O. Wagstaff III said. “This is not going to stop until we are satisfied.”
Listen to Karen Yi's report on WNYC:
As calls for systemic police reform—and in some cases, defunding the police—grow, Gordon’s case underpins a key issue that has long plagued departments: whether police are well-equipped to respond to people experiencing a mental health issue.
“Law enforcement, the only time we do change is lawsuits and deaths,” said Linden Police Capt. Abdul Williams. For years, Williams has advocated for an increase in crisis intervention training, an immersive 40-hour course that helps officers respond to people experiencing a mental health crisis.
“Everyone that we come across is in crisis,” said Williams, who is also Union County coordinator for the New Jersey Crisis Intervention Team Center of Excellence, which provides these trainings in the state. “All the skills that you are learning to deal with a person with a mental illness can be used for anyone in crisis.”
Phil Lubitz, director of advocacy at the National Alliance for Mental Illness New Jersey, says funding crisis intervention training is one way to answer the rising call to fund police in a different way.
“It’s a philosophy and approach to policing and interacting with the public that I think translates well with where we are today as a society,” said Lubitz, who helped develop police trainings.
New Jersey currently spends $100,000 on such trainings, according to the state Department of Human Services—an amount that has remained fixed for at least the last three years.
Four Hours, Four Stops
During Gordon’s first encounter with police, video shows his car in the middle of the parkway with no lights on. It's 3:13 am. He tells the officer he ran out of gas and that he's headed to the "real world." The officer calls a tow truck and Gordon is back on his way.
At 4:54 a.m. and 19 miles further south, another officer spots Gordon's car, again stalled on the highway. The officer calls another tow.
At 6:13 a.m. and 10 miles south, another trooper pulls Gordon over for speeding at 101 mph.
“I'm trying to get to a very far place,” Gordon tells the officer in the video.”Where's that?” the officer asks. “To the end of the video game,” Gordon responds.
And then, at 6:26 a.m. and another 12 miles south on the parkway, Gordon is stopped a fourth time. This time by Sgt. Randall Wetzel for speeding.
When Wetzel asks Gordon to move his car to the shoulder, Gordon’s car won’t start. He tells Gordon to wait inside his car until a tow truck arrives. Gordon tries to get out of his car a few times. But Wetzel motions him to get back in. Eventually Wetzel asks if Gordon would like to sit in the back of the trooper car and pats him down.
For 20 minutes Gordon sits in Wetzel’s cruiser, waiting for the tow, as Wetzel peppers him with more than 70 questions. Gordon is largely unresponsive; his few responses inaudible in the video.
“Do you want me to drive you toward Atlantic City? Did you call anybody on your phone? Like anyone you were trying to meet with? Are you just upset about the car?” Wetzel asks, according to the video.
Then Wetzel offers Gordon a mask. But when he opens the back door to give it to him, Gordon tries to get out and the two start fighting outside the cruiser. Gordon then tries to get into the driver’s seat of the police car—twice. Sgt. Wetzel pepper sprays him one of those times**.**
And then, less than 90 seconds after Wetzel and Gordon first get into a physical struggle, Wetzel fires his gun. Six shots. Gordon crumples to the ground.
“It's still confusing to me why Sgt. Wetzel immediately engages him physically instead of just saying if he believes that it was safer for him to be in the vehicle, ‘Hey, why don't you get back in the car?’” Wagstaff said.
He said Gordon should’ve been able to get out of the trooper's car without being killed. Gordon was not under arrest and did not have a weapon. He was shot at 7:09 a.m., documents show, but it’s not until 7:25 a.m. that a trooper tries to provide aid, according to a timeline by the Attorney General’s Office.
“That speaks to the depravity of the officer who shot him six times and then handcuffed his mortally wounded body,” Wagstaff said. “He left him to lay there and bleed out on the side of the Garden State Parkway.”
Wetzel would later tell another officer Gordon went for his gun, according to another video. Wetzel is on paid administrative leave while the investigation by the state Attorney General continues.
Wagstaff, however, has called for an independent prosecutor since State Police fall under the Attorney General’s Office. Wagstaff has also raised concerns about the investigation, and said the Attorney General’s Office has not provided Gordon’s family with all the evidence, including the medical examiner’s report.
In 2019, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal directed all investigations of police-involved shootings and in-custody deaths be investigated by the Office of Public Integrity & Accountability (OPIA)—an independent arm in his office—and outlined a 10-step process to improve transparency.
The OPIA investigator presents the case to a grand jury which decides whether to file criminal charges. Grand juries have largely been suspended due to COVID-19. Grewal’s office said all 15 fatal police-involved shootings cases (including one death where police were present) remain under investigation.
Grewal’s office said the medical examiner’s autopsy is not yet complete and will be shared with Gordon’s family when it is. In the meantime, Grewal has announced a series of new police reforms, including licensing police officers, revising the state’s 20-year-old use-of-force policy, and expanding crisis intervention training.
“We need to reach more officers in more police departments with this training, because we know it represents one of the best ways to prevent situations involving persons with mental health issues from becoming use-of-force incidents,” his office said in an email.
Grewal said the pilot will begin with state police and other local departments. His office said it could start as early as this summer.
Tagged
nj state trooper
mental health
police killing
Maurice Gordon
Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
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