Obama-era prosecutor's probe into blue state police racial bias claims called 'untenable' for troopers

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin has ordered a special counsel probe into state police after a slowdown in traffic stops reportedly led to more crashes.

"If you enforce traffic laws, crashes go down. If you do not enforce them, crashes go up," said Betsy Brantner Smith, spokesperson for the National Police Association who spent three decades on the job. "Accidents are largely created by a disparity in speed, and unless we want to admit that, then we're going to fix it."

State troopers were accused of profiling minority drivers in a report from the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability that looked at stops between 2009 and 2021. Then they were told by union leaders that every stop they made would go under the microscope, according to a New York Times report. For months, they made fewer stops than normal.