Embattled Police Director sits down for rare interview
TRENTON >> Following a hellacious and salacious week after she walked back her decision to step down as acting police director, Carol Russell granted a rare interview saying she feels “boxed in” in her new role leading the boys in blue in the capital city.
Appearing on the air Friday night with WiMG 1300 “On The Reel” radio host Darren “Freedom” Green, a longtime community activist and former mayoral candidate, the retired 20-year TPD cop who retired with the rank of sergeant was asked whether the rankand-file have been receptive to her vision of community policing.
“Have they been receptive? Negative,” she said. “Again, it’s that box. It’s about keeping me contained. First of all, there has never been a woman to lead the police department. And as you know, across the county, it is male-dominated. Not only maledominated, but whitemale-dominated. To take instructions, or orders or commands from a female, and then that female being black, is like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ There is pushback. I promised to go in, to talk less, listen more, observe, make my assessment and then make my moves. That’s chess player strategy. That’s where I am. It’s not satisfying everybody.”
The decision to go on the air with Green was a surprising move for the media-shy Russell, who has ducked and dodged repeated interview requests with The Trentonian, apparently fearing hardball questions about her background.
Russell wasn’t asked about, and didn’t really address, how she had agreed to resign following a meeting this week with the mayor and city officials, going so far as to turn in her keys, only to show up the next day at police headquarters, where she had to be let in through a side door of the building, sources said.
“And I did not resign, Mr. Green. I did not resign. Don’t believe the hype,” Russell said at the tail end of the interview, which came a day after City Council president Kathy McBride called a news conference to back a Trentonian report and say she wouldn’t schedule Russell for a confirmation hearing.
The mayor had indicated he planned to put up his much-maligned pick up for advice and consent this week
But McBride said the council wouldn’t take up a vote on Russell, whose once-historic appointment has become a “political football,” until the acting police director received approval from the Department of Community Affairs.
Adding another odd dynamic to what city leaders have suggested has become a “sideshow,” DCA said in a statement it was waiting for the legislative body to act before making the final call on whether to approve of Russell, imperiled by critics who have said she is unqualified to lead the department.
If the timing of Russell’s interview was interesting, so was her interviewer.
Green finished fourth in this year’s mayoral race. He then endorsed Gusciora’s opponent, Paul Perez, in the runoff, and has at times been fiercely critical of the mayor since he took office.
But Green, who has been supportive of the mayor’s pick of Russell to become the police department’s first female director, admitted his goal in having the acting police director on wasn’t to interrogate her but to give her a “platform to lay out her vision.”
The community activist approached Russell, who he has known for more than 15 years, about interviewing with him not long after she was introduced at Gusciora’s State of the City speech.
Friday was the first time she took up Green on the offer, in a 30-minute segment that was more hands-off than no-holds-barred.
Russell was allowed to bring one of her friends in the booth, who attempted to keep her from straying too far from her talking points.
“I wanted to give her a chance to relax,” Green said. “I didn’t want her on pin and needles. I didn’t want to be aggressively coming at her. I tried to lead a conversation.”
Green, who had a copy of The Trentonian in hand on the desk in front of him, kicked off the interview with an open-ended layup for Russell.
“So many times how we’re heard from is fragmented, or slanted, or scripted by other people,” Green pontificated. “The mic is yours. The platform is yours. You can talk about anything you want to.”
“Wow,” Russell responded, not knowing where to start.
Prodding her on, Green said, “I wanted to lay that open because again so many times you’re put in to a position where people are throwing things at you. How you feeling and what’s going on for you in the city of Trenton?”
Finally opening up, Russell said she felt like she had “only four little square corners to work in.”
She proceeded to talk about “accountability” in the department and “collaboration” with the community, as she tries to roll out her plan for policing in the capital city.
“They’re already telling me we can’t,” she said about her ideas for community policing, which include officers regularly getting out of their cars to interact with residents. “If you telling me, ‘Well, we can’t,’ if you tell me that you can’t, in my ears, that’s telling me that you won’t.”
Russell already rankled members of the department when she demanded – and was later denied by the county prosecutor – access to the force’s internal affairs records.
But she seemed to care little about how she is perceived by the rank-and-
file, saying officers must respect her orders about getting out of their patrol units and walking the beat.
“They’re going to and if they don’t they’re going to be held accountable,” she said. “If I say something to you, it’s not a challenge. It’s an order you have to follow it. Because if you don’t that’s insubordination. So, what you need to do is, if I ask you to do something, just do it and it can really make life easier.”
Life hasn’t been easy for Russell since she came aboard Nov. 5.
Her first full day on the job coincided with a series of bombshell Trentonian reports about her involvement in a decadesold alleged race-baiting entrapment scheme, her qualifications to lead the department and questions about her residency.
Russell put down on her resume that she still lives on Bryn Mawr Avenue, but property records showed she sold that house in 2006.
City leaders suggested they’ve talked to her neighbors who indicated she hasn’t lived on the block in years.
That was just one aspect of what Green described as “a nightmare playing out on the front page of the newspaper.”
But the community activist felt the mayor, who has shouted “fake news” over The Trentonian’s wellsourced reporting about the acting police director, was to blame for mishandling Russell’s appointment.
And then the administration hasn’t helped by limiting her access to council members and the media, Green suggested.
The mayor has denied handling Russell with “kids gloves.”
If nothing else, Green said he wanted to give her a chance to speak her mind before any confirmation hearing.
“You’re the candidate for the position. People need to hear you,” he said.
Before they left the booth, Russell’s friend encouraged her to tell the story of a time when she was in patrol and got a call about a couple of young men allegedly selling drugs at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Sanford Street.
“So I roll up,” Russell said. “They looking at me. I say, hi gentlemen.’ I address them. If I want you to move. Move yourself gentlemen, I need my corner. So I say, ‘hi, gentlemen, how are you? ‘Hey, hey, sarge. How you doing?’ ‘Oh, I’m good. So listen, is anybody out here selling drugs?’ They looked at each other like, ‘no we ain’t selling no drugs. What happened you got a call?’ ‘Yeah, I did.’ ‘Nah, none of us.’ ‘OK, cool. ‘Good to hear.’ I said, ‘but if you’re not selling drugs, I’m sorry, but ya’ll gotta go because this corner is for selling drugs only.’
“Flipped it on them?” Green interjected.
“And they left,” Russell said. Green then asked the acting police director what she was “bringing to the table, in terms of your experience, your qualifications, to be able to bring this million dollar department forward?”
“Just that,” Russell responded, before launching into another bizarre anecdote. “Years of experience on this police department, years of experience within the schools, the connection with the youth, years of experience with this entire community. And the big question becomes qualifications. What’s the qualifier, Mr. Green?
“I’m gonna leave you with this: You’re sitting in a restaurant. You’re choking. You have something lodged in your throat, and I see your eyes bulging and you’re giving me that visual saying like, ‘please help me.’ I don’t think what’s going through your mind is, ‘Is she a doctor? Does she have a medical degree? You know what your face is saying to me? ‘Please help me. I hope she does know the Heimlich maneuver, but even if she doesn’t have a card that qualifies her, just go through the motions. I need this out of my throat.’ You can’t talk because you’re not getting air. This city is asking for some help.”