Joseph Reiman, the Carteret police officer charged with assaulting a teenager, is responsible for more than one-fifth of all incidents involving force
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CARTERET - The borough police officer charged with assaulting a teenager is responsible for more than one-fifth of all arrests involving force recorded by the department over a 23-month period, an NJ Advance Media analysis has found.
From the time Joseph Reiman was hired in July 2015, the 50-person department logged 115 incidents in which an officer used force, such as a punch, baton or weapon against a suspect, according to documents obtained under the state Open Public Records Act.
Joseph Reiman appears in court on Aug. 24, 2017.Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Reiman, 31, the brother of longtime Mayor Daniel Reiman, accounted for 24 of the incidents, more than twice as many as any other officer. Officer John Kelly had 11 and Officer Antonio Dominguez had nine, records show.
Those arrested by Reiman and residents who have witnessed altercations say he's quick to resort to violence. What's more, during interviews with NJ Advance Media, they said their complaints to local officials about his actions have been ignored.
In addition, while the Carteret police force is equipped with body cameras, videos that could tell the full story in some of Reiman's encounters do not exist or have been withheld, and at least one was corrupted, according to NJ Advance Media's investigation.
New Jersey Attorney General directives require all police videos associated with an arrest where force is used to be maintained for at least two years, either for a criminal investigation or in the event the person sues the officer or agency.
Councilwoman Susan Naples, who is Carteret's civilian police commissioner, said the department follows the state's guidelines on evidence video storage and trains twice annually on use of force.
She said, in her experience, officers who are "proactive in making arrests and crime-fighting activity" are more likely to face complaints over their arrests, but refused to say how many complaints have been lodged against Reiman, citing internal affairs guidelines.
Daniel Reiman, who was elected in 2002 and is now among the state's highest-paid mayors, said he has never been involved with matters involving his brother. A third Reiman brother, Charles, 37, is also a member of the police department.
"It is excessive," Dr. Maria Haberfield, a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said of Reiman's history of force during arrests. "Especially because he's a new police officer, there's something there that needed to be addressed."
Craig McCarthy | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
The borough of Carteret -- exit 12 on the NJ Turnpike -- has grown to nearly 24,000 residents across its mix of urban and suburban neighborhoods over the past 15 years. The police department handles an average of about 500 crime reports each year.
Prior to joining the force, Joseph Reiman served four tours of duty as a Marine, twice in Iraq and twice in Afghanistan, according to his discharge records obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act. Not long after he became a cop, he developed a reputation in town for using excessive force, according to dozens of interviews with residents conducted over the past three months.
When NJ Advance Media sought comments from residents and public officials familiar with the allegations against Reiman, most declined to speak, fearing retribution from local police and the mayor, whose political power extends throughout the county as a prominent member of the Middlesex County Democratic Organization.
Even those who agreed to be quoted by name said they were still scared of retribution.
"I fear what they can do to me," said Aramis Rosario, 28, who says Officer Reiman shoved him into a glass door at local bodega during an arrest in May of last year.
The month before Rosario was arrested he filed a complaint with the department, saying he felt his "life was in danger" from the cop and that Reiman and another officer, John Kelly, had harassed him for years.
Reiman made headlines in June when NJ Advance Media reported a teen's account of his violent arrest and a neighbor who said he saw the cop punching the 16-year-old.
The allegations were followed by criminal charges after an internal affairs investigation led by the prosecutor's office said the officer's dash-cam videos corroborated the teen's account. On Sept. 28, Reiman was indicted by a grand jury on the charges. The indictment was announced 120 days after the incident.
The 16-year-old, who's not being named because he's a minor, had led police on a brief chase while he was driving his mother's car without a license. He received a series of traffic tickets in the weeks after the incident.
Reiman since has been suspended with pay, pending the outcome of the charges.
His attorney, Charlies Sciarra, said Reiman was an "aggressive police officer" who led the department in arrests with indictable offenses last year and called the charges "frivolous."
"It's become the norm for people who are arrested to complain that they were mistreated," Sciarra said.
No other charges have been brought against Reiman in connection to other arrests, although it's not known if the department addressed the complaints through any internal disciplinary actions.
Craig McCarthy | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
A review of the department's records show that Reiman used compliance holds or his hands or fists in 24 separate arrests, more than twice the amount of the next officer's force records over the same period.
In 10 of those arrests, Reiman used his pepper spray on suspects, according to records.
Only two other officers, Antonio Dominguez and John Kelly, used their pepper spray more than once since July 2015. In total, the police department has recorded 115 instances of force being used during an arrest since Reiman joined the force, 18 of which involved pepper spray, according to police records.
"This is unusual for a small police department unless he has some re-occurring arrests with people that are violent," said Haberfield, explaining that most automated early-warning systems red flag an officer after three to five incidents per year.
"It's possible in a small town but would show with other officers," she said. "It's unlikely a coincidence because of his high number of use of force."
When asked if Reiman's arrest history showed an officer who was appropriately trained and should be on the force, Naples said, "The question is not simply the number of times an officer has to use any force at all in response to what that officer is confronting on the street. It is whether that force is appropriate in response to the situation being confronted."
NJ Advance Media investigated all 24 of the incidents involving Officer Reiman's use of force. The following are some of the most notable encounters.
ARAMIS ROSARIO
The Perth Amboy resident says Reiman was harassing him outside a bodega on May 9, 2016, over the tint and license plate on his parked car. Reiman, according to Rosario, eventually forcefully arrested him when he refused to hand over his driver's license.
"I wasn't even driving," said Rosario, who says Reiman pushed him into a Plexiglass door, cracking it, and wrestled him to the ground.
Rosario's account of the arrest was corroborated by Richard Diaz, the owner of the La Primera bodega. Diaz says he saw Reiman shove Rosario into the door and he challenged the police report that states Rosario started to kick the door and "slam his head into the door" during the arrest.
"It's never going to change," Diaz told NJ Advance Media.
Rosario was charged with obstructing and resisting arrest, and the use-of-force form lists the incident as a traffic stop.
Two other officers assisted in the arrest, one of whom arrived as the struggle started with a body camera that could have captured the incident, according to a review Reiman's body camera video.
However, the only video that exists of the encounter is the shaky recording from Reiman's body cam, which does not clearly show the two, according to Carteret Police Capt. Michael Dammann, the department's records custodian.
HASSAN COLEMAN
Coleman was arrested with Matthew Collier, who faced drug charges, during a traffic stop in October last year, records show.
Sixteen body camera and dashboard videos were reviewed by NJ Advance Media, which show most of the incident, including the transportation to jail. However, the dash-cam video that would have captured Coleman's arrest was corrupt and stops playing when Collier is being cuffed.
Reiman can be seen on scene in plain clothes, but what happens to Coleman is unclear.
An officer can be heard in one of body-camera videos screaming, "Get on the ground! Stop resisting!" as Coleman is cuffed out of frame.
"I'm not resisting," Coleman responds.
He can later be heard crying and asks, "What the [expletive] did I do?"
The use-of-force form, which says Reiman used his fists or hands and a baton to hit Coleman, provides no narrative for the arrest, with only "See IR for further details," a reference to an Investigation Report, which is not a public document.
The body-camera video shows a small pool of blood on the pavement after Coleman was placed in the cruiser.
The 27-year-old was charged with resisting arrest and obstruction, according to police and court documents.
Internal affairs complaints were filed over the incident, although their outcome is not known. Neither Coleman nor any of the three others involved in the traffic stop could be reached for comment.
NICHOLAS PETRO
The teenager was put in a headlock by Reiman, allegedly without cause, when police were called to a Roosevelt Avenue home over a parking dispute on Aug. 6, 2016, records show.
The teen's parents, Larry Burt and Marin Petro, say Reiman was unprofessional and out of control. The use-of-force report says, "the juvenile forced himself in between the juvenile's father and this officer" and "bumped me."
Petro, who was 17 at the time of the incident, told NJ Advance Media he never touched Reiman. He said his father had been yelling for the car to be moved and he went looking for the car keys in their SUV.
A video of the exchange, obtained by NJ Advance Media, doesn't capture the encounter but shows the officer letting Petro go moments later.
Dammann allegedly refused to turn over Reiman's body camera of the incident, according to Burt. The use-of-force form says Petro was charged with assault, but Burt says nothing came of the charge.
Dammann told NJ Advance Media that Burt's account is not the full narrative, but could not comment further because Petro was a minor at that time.
"With that being said, this incident has been thoroughly reviewed by the Carteret Police Department in accordance with the Attorney Generals Guidelines," he said in an emailed response.
DARIOUS FELDER
According to the use-of-force records, Reiman put Felder, 24, in a headlock while he was being processed at the police station.
"Due to Darious' threatening comments and aggressive nature his actions were interpreted as hostile and he was taken to the bench with a compliance hold," Reiman wrote in the report from Aug. 4, 2015. Felder was charged with obstruction.
It was unclear if Felder was handcuffed during the incident.
Requests for further details on the Felder's processing were not answered.
JAMAL MERRITT
Merritt's case occurred during Reiman's first four months on the force, records show. The 35-year-old says he was beaten and pepper-sprayed for nearly a minute during his arrest after he yelled at officers when police exited his sister's house with at least one gun drawn while her children slept.
Police were searching the neighborhood in north Carteret for a known gang member when they entered Merritt's sister's home. He arrived to see his sister and mom screaming at the officers and he says he yelled at them, which police said added to a hostile situation. The alleged gang member was not in the house and Merritt says the family has no ties to the suspect.
Merritt has been fighting the charges of obstruction and resisting for nearly two years in municipal court, along with his family.
The police department has refused to hand over dashboard videos from the arrest, saying they were destroyed or should not be part of discovery, according to the audio of their court proceedings. Only three videos from another police car have been provided, which do not capture any of the encounter between Reiman and Merritt, according to a review of the recordings obtained by NJ Advance Media.
Merritt's mother, Carol Foster, filed an excessive force complaint over the incident immediately following the encounter, but nothing came of the report, she told NJ Advance Media. Merritt says that while at the station after his arrest, Reiman tried to convince him to get his mother to drop the complaint.
"My family gets charged for saying to stop beating me," said Merritt, whose mother, sister, Nakia Merritt, and friend, Zoraida Roque, were all charged also with obstruction in the incident.
Craig McCarthy may be reached at 732-372-2078 or at CMcCarthy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @createcraig and on Facebook here. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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