Bad Police Behavior: Who’s looking through your garbage?

This is an opinion piece on Neptune Township, N.J. and its police force. 

Unheard Voices presents this story to its readers to inform people whether you are Black, White, Latino or Asian, to become aware of what goes on in a neighborhood corrupted with bad police behavior.

Bad police behavior in Neptune Township, New Jersey

Unheard Voices focuses on Neptune Township because it is supposed to be the melting pot for people of color.

There are many interracial couples that reside in the township as seen through the many shades of beautiful kids that live there. Most people probably chose Neptune Township because they believe it offers greater racial tolerance. This, compared to neighboring towns like Ocean, Wall, and Tinton Falls.

Neptune Township includes a well‑known middle and upper‑middle‑class area residents call “up the hill,” a neighborhood of newer, more suburban homes that has long attracted Black professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, and educators among them. The township also has an area known as “down the hill,” which has a denser, more urban character and borders Asbury Park. While Asbury Park has struggled with crime and drug activity, residents are clear that proximity does not define character or community.

For this family, who intentionally purchased a home in a stable, middle‑class neighborhood to raise their child in a safe environment, the discovery that officers were surveilling people in this community was deeply unsettling.

Becoming a homeowner

This story begins in Neptune Township in 1991. For a couple from nearby Long Branch, buying a home was the realization of their American dream. In March of that year, they chose Neptune for its diversity, its welcoming mix of people, and its reasonable housing prices. Though Long Branch had been their first choice, Neptune offered the stability and community they wanted. They moved in, settled down, and began building their life there.

People regarded Neptune as Monmouth County’s best‑kept secret for affordable living. To Black and interracial couples, it was a beautiful safe haven for their kids to grow up. And the school system had and still has diversified faculty members which also made Neptune Township appealing. It was thought to be a safe place for this (wife) accountant and (husband) computer scientist. But this couple never thought the police force was racist until they showed their racist faces.

Police harassment

The first week that the couple moved to Neptune, a white police officer staked out in an unoccupied house across the street.

The couple’s husband tells Unheard Voices how he could feel someone looking at him while he was in the garage. The husband slowly turned around and spotted the police looking at him.

He said that it was very strange. Why were they looking at him? The white officer looked very comfortable in doing what he was doing.

Was this a typical procedure on how the police greeted the new neighbors of color? The husband immediately told his wife. They were both shocked. The husband decided to paint the garage windows green to match the door and to keep the police from looking inside of their place of residence. But that wasn’t end of their interaction with the officer.

The couple was slowly learning that some of the Neptune police officers were very racist. The police quickly reacted to the couple painting their garage’s windows. What did the police have in store for the new Black professional family next?

Bad police behavior: officer looks through couple’s garbage

The racist police decided that it was necessary to look through the couple’s garbage. What were they looking for?

The couple’s privacy was definitely being evaded. Neptune Township police had no grounds to do what they had done. The husband realized someone was picking through the garbage, and he saw the officer leave items behind.

The police laid the garbage out very nicely and meticulous as if he wanted us to recognize what he had done. The husband thought to himself that the police had a lot of nerve.

The couple knew then that Neptune wasn’t a nice place for Black people and the police was going to be trouble for their family in the future.

Attacked after wife’s passing

After the husband’s wife passed away in 2000 from lupus, the mayor of Neptune proclaimed the date of her funeral to belong to his wife in the township. The police went out on a complete attack against the husband.

By the year 2003, the police had harassed and made life totally miserable for the widowed husband and his family. The husband retired from his scientist job and teaching position to care for his two children, who police harassed and followed throughout the township.

Bad police behavior: Officer picked through neighbors’ garbage

By the end of 2003, the husband watched a white police officer pick through the garbage of another Black family that had just moved to the neighborhood as he was coming home from food shopping.

The husband could not believe his eyes. He slowly took his time so that he could watch the police officer’s every move. The officer had a long-pointed stick to use to move the garbage around. It was incredible.

It is very imperative that the people watch their officers at all times in their community, especially in Neptune. It’s unconstitutional and an infringement of one’s civil rights. This family definitely needed a voice and thank God for Unheard Voices for being there.

Unheard Voices

By 2004, Unheard Voices went into publication in the Neptune and Asbury Park area because of the injustices that existed there.

Unheard Voices first reported the story of police rummaging through the garbage. The Neptune and Asbury police departments resented the coverage of their communities and continued to harass the husband. This story was a good indicator that Black people needed a voice in their community.

The husband was a good friend of the mayor of Neptune Township and had a great relationship with a detective and the captain of the police force. The husband was able to express his concerns with them. They were totally shocked that the family were harassed by some racist cops in their unit.

They were able to put a stop to some of the madness that the husband and family were going through. The husband thanked these instrumental people in his life that helped to put an end to the police harassment towards him.

We at Unheard Voices try to relay stories like this to put communities and their bad police officers on blast. You have a voice here at Unheard Voices. Don’t be scared to tell your story.

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