By Tim O’Meilia
A Manalapan resident’s complaint that the town police engage in racial profiling has been transferred to a different agency for possible investigation and the resident could complain to a state civil rights agency as well.
In a Jan. 7 letter to resident Kersen de Jong, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said it lacks the jurisdiction to investigate alleged violations of a state policy forbidding racial profiling by police departments.
“The failure to have such a policy or to effectively enforce that policy is not a crime,” wrote FDLE attorney Michael Ramage. He also said the FDLE cannot conduct internal investigations of other police agencies.
The FDLE forwarded de Jong’s complaint, including 37 pages of backup material and a recording of a Dec. 5 meeting with town officials, to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee, which had asked for the documents after speaking with the FDLE.
De Jong claims that both Police Chief Carmen Mattox and Officer Keith Shepherd told him on separate occasions that 1,400 traffic stops made by Manalapan police in 2011 were designed to keep non-residents and “riffraff” out of town.
Both Mattox and Shepherd denied making statements to that effect.
In referring the complaint to the U.S. Attorney, FDLE’s Ramage noted the recording of the Dec. 5 meeting. “I believe the substance of that discourse may demonstrate to you that there is some degree of ‘lack of communication’ between de Jong and the police department that contributes to his perception that racial profiling is occurring. At least, that is the conclusion I reached after listening to it,” he wrote.
In a response to FDLE’s letter, de Jong said he and a victim of profiling have consulted a West Palm Beach law firm and may complain to the Florida Commission on Human Relations. “The issue of profiling is indeed not one for only actual victims, but also for the community at large,” he wrote in his FDLE response.
In an email to The Coastal Star, de Jong said he also may ask the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office to investigate.
De Jong made several other allegations in his complaint, including that Mattox, Shepherd and Town Manager Linda Stumpf misled him about Shepherd’s employment. Shepherd was dismissed at the end of his probationary period in 2010 by then-Chief Clay Walker and rehired by Mattox in February.
Commissioner Howard Roder, who listened to the tape, concluded that Mattox and Stumpf lied during the meeting and Shepherd lied on his employment application. He told other commissioners in an email that they should review the situation.
Roder got no support from other commissioners at the Jan. 22 Town Commission meeting. Commissioner Louis DeStefano said Roder was trying to make an end run around the commission’s vote of confidence for Stumpf at the November meeting. Roder had proposed firing her.
“I don’t see a policy violation in the hiring of Officer Shepherd,” the town’s labor attorney, Jeffrey Pheterson, told the commission.
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