A newly filed lawsuit is challenging what it says is a Jackson Township Police Department practice of ordering people to surrender their fingerprints even when New Jersey law does not require them to do so — and an Ocean County judge wasted little time stepping in.
Ocean County Criminal Division Presiding Judge Guy P. Ryan has issued an Order to Show Cause with immediate temporary restraints barring the Jackson Township Police Department from forcing plaintiff Gerardo Garciatorres to submit to fingerprinting — or charging him with another offense for refusing to comply.
The lawsuit presents a remarkably straightforward accusation: Jackson Police allegedly demanded fingerprints under a statute whose own language does not apply to the charge Garciatorres is facing.
And according to the lawsuit, this may be much bigger than one defendant or one police officer.
Garciatorres was charged by Jackson Police Officer Steve Bado with simple assault under N.J.S.A. 2C:12-1(a)(1), a disorderly persons offense. He was charged on a summons and was not arrested.
But on August 11, Jackson Police also handed him a document entitled "FINGERPRINTING REQUIREMENT."
The notice ordered Garciatorres to report to police headquarters and submit to fingerprinting pursuant to N.J.S.A. 53:1-15. More ominously, it warned him:
"Failure to comply will result in an additional charge of NJSA 53:1-15 Refusal to Submit to Fingerprinting, a Disorderly Persons offense."
There was just one problem, according to Garciatorres's lawsuit:
The statute printed directly on the police department's own form appears to say that it does not apply to him.
N.J.S.A. 53:1-15 identifies categories of people who must submit to identification procedures, including certain people charged with indictable offenses who have not been arrested, people charged in an indictment, certain people convicted of assault or harassment constituting domestic violence, people subject to final restraining orders, and applicants for conditional dismissal.
Garciatorres alleges he fits none of those categories. He has been charged only with a disorderly persons simple-assault offense; he has not been indicted or convicted, is not subject to a final restraining order, and has not applied for conditional dismissal.
His attorneys at Maxwell, Tassini & Gardner, LLC therefore contend that police were effectively giving him an extraordinary choice: surrender biometric information the government allegedly had no legal authority to demand — or refuse and face another criminal charge.
The emergent brief argued that once fingerprints are collected and transmitted to state and federal repositories, they cannot meaningfully be taken back. It further argued that a citizen should not have to risk prosecution simply to challenge whether a police demand is lawful.
Perhaps the most significant allegation in the lawsuit concerns the document Jackson Police used.
According to the Complaint, the fingerprint demand was not an informal instruction concocted on the spot. It was issued on a preprinted Jackson Township Police Department form bearing a January 2023 revision date.
Garciatorres alleges that the standardized form demonstrates that the demand reflects an official "policy, custom, or practice" of Jackson Township and its police department.
His New Jersey Civil Rights Act claim similarly alleges that the attempted coercion was carried out pursuant to that departmental policy or practice.
If proven, that allegation could transform the dispute from a fight over one man's fingerprints into a much broader question:
How many other people charged only with disorderly persons offenses have received the same form and surrendered their fingerprints because Jackson Police told them they had no choice?
The lawsuit does not presently answer that question, and it does not establish how frequently the form has been used. But the existence of what plaintiff describes as a standardized departmental form raises an obvious question about whether Garciatorres's experience was an isolated occurrence.
Garciatorres sought emergent relief in Superior Court.
Judge Ryan granted it.
In issuing the Order to Show Cause, the Court found that Garciatorres had demonstrated a "probability of success on the merits," that the balance of hardships favored him, and that immediate and irreparable damage would probably occur before the matter could be fully heard.
Those are significant findings at the opening stage of the litigation.
Effective immediately, Judge Ryan restrained Jackson Township, its police department, its officers, employees and others acting with them from enforcing the August 11 notice against Garciatorres.
The Department is prohibited from requiring him to appear for the disputed fingerprinting and, critically, from issuing, filing or referring for prosecution any charge based upon his refusal to comply.
The Court also expressly stayed Garciatorres's obligation to respond to the fingerprint notice while the litigation proceeds.
The Court has not yet entered a final judgment declaring Jackson's practices unlawful, and Jackson Township will have an opportunity to defend its actions on the return date.
Nor has Judge Ryan yet ruled that Jackson maintains an unlawful department-wide fingerprinting policy. That broader allegation remains to be proven.
But the strength of the temporary order sends an unmistakable message about the immediate dispute.
A police department does not get to expand its authority simply by printing a form saying that it has that authority.
If a statute authorizes fingerprinting under specified circumstances, police must operate within those statutory boundaries.
And when a citizen contends that government officials are threatening him with a new criminal prosecution unless he complies with a demand the Legislature never authorized, the courthouse doors remain open.
Here, Judge Ryan opened them quickly.
The case now puts Jackson Township in the position of having to explain not only why Garciatorres received the fingerprinting demand, but potentially why the Department maintains the standardized form that was used to issue it.
For Jackson residents, that latter question may ultimately prove far more important than the fingerprints of any one defendant.
Because if Garciatorres is correct that the form reflects a broader departmental practice, the question will no longer be simply whether Jackson Police improperly demanded his fingerprints.
It will be how many times they may have done it before somebody finally said no — and took them to court.
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