We're continuing our coverage tonight into the Paterson Police Department and the fallout from the police killing of 31-year-old violence intervention specialist Najee Seabrooks.

NJ Spotlight News analyzed use of force by the department and found disproportionate rates against Black and brown people in comparison to law enforcement in New Jersey as a whole.

Our senior writer and digital projects editor Colleen O'Dea is with me now to explain what she found.

Colleen, hey, good to see you.

So you dug into the numbers.

What stuck out to you?

So it looks like when you look at the number of interactions that resulted in fatal force by police.

55% of those involved Black people.

And that compares with 45% statewide.

For Hispanics, that was 17%, which compares with 9% statewide.

You know, those numbers, I think, are something that that should be questioned and looked into.

Those were those were a little bit better than this audit that was done in 2020.

The results were released last year by an outside group.

But I mean, they're still higher than the state average.

And certainly when you look at the population of Paterson and you consider it in particular, the force used against Blacks, the population of Paterson is only about 23% Black.

So when you're looking at 55% of force used against Blacks, that certainly leads to some questions.

Yeah.

I mean it is a diverse city.

So does that account for why we're seeing some of those big discrepancies, the fact that the population is largely Hispanic and Black?

Yeah.

So, so right.

There were about 20% of force incidents were against whites and the population is only about 7% white.

So that is something that, that makes sense.

And it is a very diverse city.

But when you look at the idea that that less than a quarter of the population is Black, but more than half of the force used was against Black individuals.

That's something again that that I think that leads to some question.

Is this playing into at all the calls from social justice groups for a federal investigation, federal oversight?

Have they looked at any of this data?

I mean, absolutely right.

They've been calling for I mean, folks involved in Paterson have known or have been complaining for a while about the police department in and some of their methods and the way that they use force.

And certainly now that we've got a whole bunch of social justice groups involved, they are looking at this kind of data and that is behind their calls to the Justice Department.

I mean, I certainly think it sounds like this is the kind of thing that would help them make their case.

Now, what the Justice Department is going to decide, we you know, we will probably not know for a while.

So, Colleen, where does it go from here then?

Because we know Paterson's Mayor Andre Sayegh is vehemently opposed he said to any type of intervention.

So the Department of Justice is going to look at all of this data.

I think they will also look at the fact that there have been seven people in total killed by Paterson police since 2015.

That is the same amount as New Jersey State Police for the entire state during that time period.

And it's second only to Newark, which has had eight deaths and is the state's largest city.

So that's the kind of information that the Department of Justice is going to look at.

They're going to look for essentially a pattern of police actions that are potentially concerning.

I'm not sure that the mayor gets to have a say in this.

I mean, certainly the department will consider that.

But we do have some state legislators who are also calling for the Justice Department to take a look at this.

And if the department thinks that there is a is a pattern, is a problem, that is certainly something that they would probably wind up trying to get involved with.

All right.

Colleen O'Dea for us.

Thank you so much, Colleen.

Thank you Bri.