Cory Booker Can Talk Donald Sterling, Mum on Newark Deputy Chief Accused of Racism, Corruption

You can’t say New Jersey Sen.
Cory Booker doesn’t know how to get attention. While he was mayor
of Newark, his critics bemoaned his “Hollywood” status. He’s got
more Twitter followers than there are residents in the city he led
for almost eight years. Last Monday on a morning news show in New
York City, Booker was asked about Donald Sterling, the owner of a
basketball team in Los Angeles who made racist comments in a
private conversation whose contents were leaked. He gave what was

a pretty standard answer that matched up with what is likely to
happen: Sterling losing the Clippers.

The same morning Booker made the comments about Sterling, a
controversy involving racially-tinged comments hit closer to home.
The Star Ledger
reported that Joseph Tutela, a Newark deputy chief who ran the
police department’s Internal Affairs division on three separate
occasions (including once while Booker was mayor), was under
investigation for working a second job while on duty and using cops
to perform maintenance on his home when he was in charge of
Internal Affairs.

In addition to this, The Ledger reported that
Tutela was also accused of making racist remarks about Portuguese
people (Newark has a significant Portuguese population) at the
retirement ceremony of the last police chief. The American Civil
Liberties Union of New Jersey also points out that more troubling
than the comments or the alleged corruption could be that the
Internal Affairs division, under Tutela and under other deputy
chiefs, has such a horrendous record on sustaining civilian
complaints. Only three complaints were sustained over a
non-consecutive two year period during which Tutela headed Internal
Affairs.

Donald Sterling was a private citizen in the public limelight.
He made offensive comments that were going to hurt his bottom line
and the bottom line of the National Basketball Association (NBA),
and so the NBA acted quickly to ban him from basketball and team
owners are expected to vote to force Sterling to sell his team.
Sterling’s finished. Presumably the NBA’s constitution (which has
not been made public) made it easier for the league to act.

Tutela, meanwhile, is a “public servant” shielded from the
public limelight. He’s been reportedly accused not just of making
racist comments but of corruption. He appears to have done a pretty
poor job as Internal Affairs chief. He may have only found a
handful of sustained complaints, yet the Department of Justice’s
decision in 2011 to investigate the department suggests the lack of
sustained complaints doesn’t stem from a lack of wrongdoing but a
lack of accountability. Tutela was also previously arrested and
charged with assaulting a cop (in 1988) and was investigated for
domestic violence twice in 2010 (around the same time he headed
Internal Affairs).

Sterling was convicted in a court of public opinion, a function
of the (show) business that Sterling is/was in. Tutela, on the
other hand, is immunized by his generous police contract from
conviction in a court of public opinion. No amount of outrage could
remove Tutela, and the politicians like Booker so eager to pile on
where outrage has gathered have little interest in digging up dirt
in their backyards.

We reached out to Senator Booker’s office last Monday, the day
the Tutela story broke and the day he made public comments about
Donald Sterling. We were promised a response but despite a follow
up none has been forthcoming yet.