The investigation of Viki Knox -- the Union High School teacher whose homophobic posts on her personal Facebook page created a national frenzy -- demonstrates just how far we've come in the area of civil rights for gays and lesbians. Twenty years ago, as the Internet...

In the year since the ACLU of New Jersey sent a battery of grievances to the Department of Justice asking it to investigate the Newark Police Department, a few things have happened: the DOJ arrived, Police Director Garry McCarthy promptly left and, most recently, Director Samuel...

In police departments, as in biology, a culture can decide the difference between something that saves your life and something that poisons you.

The culture of a police department determines the extent of misconduct, and this certainly applies to Newark, NJ. After decades of efforts to bring accountability to the...

When word of an impending transition in the Newark Police Department leadership hit the news, the ACLU of New Jersey immediately called for Mayor Cory Booker to release the Internal Affairs records of any candidate under consideration for the new or interim Newark Police Director. Later that week,...

Fortunately, I don't have to fly anywhere this Thanksgiving. Still, I've started to dread the airport even more than usual, and I am not looking forward to the new "choose your own adventure" awaiting me the next time I board a plane. I call it "Janet's Choice" in honor of...

When it comes to understanding the 2009 statewide crime statistics that the New Jersey Attorney General's Office released this week, it's helpful to keep in mind Mark Twain's saying about the three kinds of lies: "lies, damn lies, and statistics." This principle applies fully to crime statistics and...

In the aftermath of Newark's infamous 1967 unrest, with stacks of citizen complaints in hand, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU-N) made an impassioned plea to the federal courts to rein in the rampant Newark Police Department.

Decades later, after countless lawsuits and campaigns for reform failed...

Faced with a $70 million budget gap, Mayor Cory Booker has proposed cost-cutting measures ranging from layoffs to shutting down city pools to wiping out the city's toilet paper budget.

But one important area for potential multi-million dollar savings hasn't gotten the attention it deserves: cutting the astronomical costs...

Two weeks ago, amid news of layoffs in Newark, the City and its taxpayers took yet another financial hit: a high dollar verdict for a former police officer mistreated by the Newark Police.

A jury awarded Darren Nance $600,000, finding that the Newark Police had racially discriminated and retaliated against...

In his late-March budget address, New Jersey's Governor Chris Christie announced that the day of reckoning for a debt-awash Garden State had arrived. His spending plan would chart a new course, he promised.

But that course plunges New Jersey into dangerous waters, with women and children going first. Christie proposes...

When a former deputy mayor of Newark was indicted on corruption last week, the city's nationally known reformist mayor Cory Booker described his strategy to stop corruption from within.

"We don't wait for other people to investigate corruption in our city. We are aggressively working against it every single...

All of America watched New Jersey's gubernatorial election. Some interpreted the result as a referendum on Barack Obama's leadership, but everyone voting in our state understood that the Democrat on the ticket was Jon Corzine, and Corzine alone, not a stand-in for our president.

Corzine's loss was not an acid...

When most of us think about lack of access to water among the poor, we're more likely to envision people in third-world countries — victims of drought, famine or polluted rivers — rather than our neighbors here in the United States. After all, water is a necessity that we...

In his six months in office, President Obama has disappointed social justice advocates with his positions on issues like gay rights, warrantless wiretapping and, most recently, indefinite detention. We all want to see our president succeed; he generates hope and excitement, and embodies long-awaited change. But we...