The New Jersey Supreme Court made a big call this week in connection to police transparency.

At the center of all this is a Jersey City police officer who allegedly fired his gun while off-duty in 2019 while under the influence. The city launched an internal affairs investigation and The New Jersey Monitor asked for the report a few years later. The city argued that the officer’s charges had been expunged and that the report was off-limits.

The Monitor (through its parent group States Newsroom and with Attorney CJ Griffin) took the city to court in 2022 to get the record which eventually landed the case before the state’s highest court. This week, the justices ruled unanimously that Jersey City can’t just hide internal affairs reports behind an expungement and that the public has a right to access them.

That’s the win.

Here’s the hit.

The court also said the city must redact any reference to the arrest itself. In practice, that could mean scrubbing out some of the most important context…like, what actually happened, what prompted the investigation in the first place.

The concern now is that the public may get a document with a lot of words but very little insight.

After the decision, The New Jersey Monitor called out Jersey City’s long game – what they described as “clever delay.” The city waited just long enough for the officer’s record to be expunged before appealing, then used that expungement to argue for secrecy. So even with this ruling, there’s a chance the city drags its feet or buries the report under so many redactions that it becomes meaningless.

The officer was eventually cleared to return to duty. But questions remain.

Back in May, we reported on this case ( “What Happened After Shots Were Fired?”) and laid out what was known at the time. The Monitor’s legal challenge promised answers, yet, even with a ruling in hand, how much of what really happened makes it to the public is still a bit up in the air.

Other states have a clearer pathway to this kind of information. In New York, lawmakers repealed a long-standing police secrecy law in 2020. In California, multiple bills require the release of records when officers use force, lie, or commit misconduct. Those laws give the public direct access without needing to go to court. In New Jersey, that kind of access still has to be determined on a case by case basis.

So here we are… one loophole closed, another cracked open. Expungement can’t block the release of internal reports anymore but if everything important gets redacted, what are we actually left with?

For now, we’re waiting to see what Jersey City does next and whether the report they release will shine a light, or just cast more shadows.

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