A new lawsuit claims that the mayor of Spotswood, New Jersey, tried to have a Black man removed from a municipal building because of his race.
Mayor Jackie Palmer reportedly ordered officers from the Spotswood Police Department to remove the man on April 22, 2022.
The lawsuit was filed on Jan. 15 in the Superior Court of Middlesex County by Spotswood Police Officer Richard Sasso Jr. According to Pix 11 News, Palmer went on a racist rant after she tried to have a Black man inside the municipal building in Spotswood removed by the police. Sasso is suing the Borough of Spotswood and Palmer for unchecked power, cover-ups and overt racism, including the incident in April.
Palmer is the mayor of the predominantly white town with a population of less than 10,000 people, and she allegedly approached a Black man in the Spotswood Municipal Building while “clearly aggravated” and told him to leave the town hall for no reason. The man reported the incident three days later, on April 25, 2022, at the Spotswood Police Department, and Sasso was assigned to investigate.
Sasso said surveillance footage from the city building showed Palmer “being extremely antagonistic” and advising the man he had to listen to her “because she is the mayor.”
After the man returned to the city building on April 28, 2022, and recorded the visit to “document any wrongdoing,” the mayor’s staff called the Spotswood police, claiming they needed “police escorts to their offices, as they felt unsafe,” says the lawsuit, according to NJ Advance Media. “Throughout this time, the resident did nothing inappropriate and was not threatening in any manner.”
After the police arrived and Palmer was told that they could not remove him because the man had not committed any crime and arresting him would be a violation of his civil rights, the mayor became hostile.
“The elephant in the room is that he is f— Black, and this is not a diverse town,…
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