Clark, New Jersey – A New Jersey town whose former mayor was heard denigrating black people in secret recordings by an informant now faces a state lawsuit alleging that he and local police officials directed officers to keep minorities out of the community.
Complaintfiled by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the office’s Civil Rights Division, names former Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso, suspended city Police Chief Pedro Matos and current Police Director Patrick Grady as defendants. It alleges that town leaders “systematically discriminated against and harassed black and other non-white motorists.”
Bonaccorso, a Republican, was the city’s mayor for nearly 25 years before resigning in January 2025, just days after beginning his seventh term in office. He was easily re-elected in November 2024 despite allegations of corruption. He left office after pleading guilty to using town resources for his own landscaping business and forging signatures on permit applications for work his company performed in the area.
Bonaccorso did not respond to a voicemail message left Friday. When asked about the lawsuit before NJ.comsent them a two-word response, using an expletive to describe the suit.
In 2020, a police officer told officials that he secretly recorded Bonaccorso, Matos and another police official using racial slurs while referring to black people. The town agreed to pay $400,000 to settle the matter out of court, but the allegations later became public.
Clark Mayor Angel Albanese, a Republican who succeeded Bonaccorso, called the state’s lawsuit “frivolous” and accused Platkin of “playing politics” as his term as attorney general expires. Charles Sciarra, Matos’ attorney, expressed similar views while noting the timing of the lawsuit.
Matos has been on paid leave since the Union County Prosecutor’s Office took control of the police department in July 2020. He has filed a lawsuit against Clark to try to prevent the city from firing him, and those disciplinary proceedings remain active. The Public Prosecutor’s supervision ended last March.
The lawsuit alleges that the city and its police leadership engaged in a variety of discriminatory policing practices at Bonaccorso’s behest. Clark is a suburb of New York, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) south of Manhattan.
According to an analysis cited by the district attorney’s office, black people were stopped 3.7 times more often than white people in Clark between 2015 and 2020, and Hispanic people were stopped 2.2 times more often than white people.
While some of these racial disparities persisted to some extent even after the Attorney General’s oversight began, data from 2020 to 2024 revealed some notable changes and improvements in police practices that coincided with the reduction of some of these racial disparities, the Attorney General’s Office said.