Cousin of Pa. man killed by TPD demands justice
TRENTON » In Minneapolis, it was a George Floyd.
In New Jersey’s capital city, it was Stephen Dolceamore.
Dolceamore, 29, of Clifton Heights Borough in Pennsylvania, was the white man who died at the hands of Trenton Police officers on April 3 outside St. Francis Medical Center, according to a relative who spoke to The Trentonian.
Dolceamore’s death happened more than a month before Floyd, a Black man, suffocated to death under the knee of white cop Derek Chauvin.
The death of Floyd, who repeatedly told officers he couldn’t breathe, spurred global protests and riots, and a national push for police reform, including here in the Garden State.
Attorney General Gurbir Grewal pledged to create a statewide database of police use of force and to license police officers. His office is revisiting decadesold useof-force guidelines and is fighting some of the state’s top police unions which are suing to prevent the release of the names and misconduct summaries of New Jersey cops who have been fired, demoted or suspended for more than five days due to disciplinary infractions.
The case, representing a possible sea change in the way New Jersey polices the police, is expected to land before the state Supreme Court, experts have said.
‘Crickets’
Meanwhile, Dolceamore’s death — despite videos showing officers chasing, macing, pummeling, and using their knees to straddle over the emotionally disturbed man’s legs and chest while his hands appeared restrained behind his back — in Grewal’s backyard of Trenton produced “crickets,” said Gina Rambo, Dolceamore’s cousin.
No protests. No politicians speaking out. No push for reform. And still no answers from officials.
“Nobody touched it,” Rambo told The Trentonian in an exclusive interview. “It’s like crickets.”
Without publicly identifying him, the AG’s office acknowledged it’s investigating Dolceamore’s death but refused repeated Trentonian inquiries to release more information about what happened.
The AG’s office of Public Integrity and Accountability and the New Jersey State Police Homicide Unit by law must investigate whenever someone dies during an encounter with cops or while in custody.
The names of the officers who were involved in and used force during Dolceamore’s arrest have not been disclosed.
The AG’s office will likely review video surveillance, police reports, the autopsy findings and other evidence before determining whether the officers’ force was justified.
“That investigation is ongoing. We are not releasing any further information at this time,” AG spokesman Peter Aseltine said in an email last month.
The Middlesex County medical examiner declined to provide The Trentonian with Dolceamore’s autopsy. In a response to a public records request, it said it couldn’t “release the requested records” and referred the newspaper to the AG’s office to “process your request.”
A subsequent public records request with the AG’s office hasn’t been fulfilled.
Perhaps most troubling of all, the city of Trenton — where Mayor Reed Gusciora and council committed to police reform (the legislative body passed two measures last month) — is fighting to keep secret the records and body-camera videos of the police interaction with Dolceamore.
The Trentonian filed suit against the city in May to compel release of the records, 911 tape and footage, which will provide a more detailed look at the police officers’ actions in subduing Dolceamore.
Footage that has emerged was taken by bystanders, at a distance, and doesn’t show the encounter from beginning to end.
Gusciora wouldn’t own the city’s decision to fight transparency.
“I’m a great believer in the process,” he said. “If you win, God bless you. The public should absolutely have a full accounting, whether the time is now or whether something is under investigation, at some point there should be.”
C.J. Griffin, a public records expert and the attorney representing The Trentonian in the lawsuit, said the case illustrates the roadblocks many municipalities still put up in obtaining police records.
“It shouldn’t be this difficult because the Supreme Court said three years ago that we’re entitled to videos and information about them, but we still face serious delays in access, unlawful denials of access, and agencies passing us from one agency to the next to chase the records,” Griffin said. “Nothing demands greater transparency than when someone dies in police custody or is killed by the police, but access remains an uphill battle.
“Sadly, we see a lot of politicians who march in Black Lives Matter protests and talk about police reform, but then they pass budgets or support policies that fail to actually protect Black lives or significantly reform the police. Talking the talk is great, but we need them to walk the walk.”
The city tapped an outside firm to handle the litigation.
On June 23, attorney Cristal Holmes-Bowie asked a judge to extend the case for another two months, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to consult “other state agencies” involved with deciding what records are produced.
Arguments before Mercer County Assignment Judge Mary Jacobson are scheduled for Aug. 21, court records show.
Gusciora said he doesn’t “excuse” what happened to Dolceamore.
“It very well could have been preventable,” he said. “At the same time, that guy was running in and out of traffic and having a serious mental breakdown.”
Suffering in Silence
For Rambo, the silence over her cousin’s death has been deafening.
And not just with the state’s top cop.
She reached out to several news outlets, tagging reporters on social media trying to drum up interest in Dolceamore’s death.
She decided to tell her cousin’s story to The Trentonian, which published an account about the TPD officers’ actions, as captured by bystander videos, a day after Dolceamore was killed.
“I hate to say that the media has just a specific agenda if it has to do with race,” she said. “If it’s a white cop on a Black man, they’re gonna blow it up to kingdom come. But if it’s a white cop and a white person, then it just doesn’t get anything.”
The reason for that focus is well-founded: Blacks account for less than 13 percent of the population in America, “but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans, according to the Washington Post’s database of police shootings.
The Post’s database — documenting fatal police shootings since Jan. 1, 2015 — shows police fatally shot 13 unarmed Black men in 2019, and six in 2020 through July 6. By comparison, police fatally shot 22 unarmed white men in 2019, and 10 so far this year.
Over that same period, in New Jersey, two unarmed Black men, 46-yearold Gregory Griffin and 28-year-old Maurice Gordon, were fatally shot by police while no unarmed white men were fatally shot those years, The Post’s database shows.
The last time New Jersey cops killed an unarmed white man was in March 2017, when 56-yearold Christopher Apostolos was shot at an apartment in Toms River.
The data doesn’t track “deaths of people in po
lice custody, fatal shootings by off-duty officers or non-shooting deaths,” so Floyd’s and Dolceamore’s deaths do not show up in the database.