Racist NJ mayor told cops to ‘keep Black people out’ of city: AG
A North Jersey mayor caught making secret recordings using the N-word ordered police to keep black people out of town, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin claimed in a lawsuit Thursday.
Longtime Clark Township Mayor Salvatore Bonaccorso asked leaders of the Clark Police Department to “continue chasing the ghosts out of town,” using a racial slur he had previously used, the AG’s office said.
Bonaccorso served as mayor of the New York suburbs, about 20 miles south of Central Park, from 2000 to 2025. He resigned early last year after pleading guilty in a corruption scandal.
A police officer told investigators that Bonaccorso praised him after a traffic stop, saying, “Good for you, pull over.” [N-word] – keep them out of town,” according to the suit.
“[Y]“You know why a lot of liberals stay out of Clark is that we are labeled as a racist town and they want nothing to do with that,” Bonaccorso, a Republican, told the police chief in 2019, according to the lawsuit. “You continue to do your job so we don’t have any problems.”
Bonaccorso ordered Clark police to focus on traffic stops near the neighboring towns of Rahway and Linden, which have much higher black and Hispanic populations, the attorney general said.
Between 2015 and 2020, Black people were arrested 3.7 times more often than white people in Clark, and Hispanic people were arrested 2.2 times more often than white people, according to an analysis by the AG’s office.
“Due to overt racial animus and discriminatory police practices, Clark violated New Jersey civil rights laws and the New Jersey Constitution,” Platkin said in a press release.
In addition to Bonaccorso and the city of Clark, the lawsuit also names former Clark Police Chief Pedro Matos and current Police Director Patrick Grady as defendants.
“That’s bullshit!!!!!” Bonaccorso told NJ.com in response to the lawsuit.
Bonaccorso and Matos have been under investigation over racism since 2020, and secret recordings of the duo using racist slurs, including the N-word, were released in 2022. However, that didn’t stop Bonaccorso from comfortably winning re-election in 2024 – although he resigned days after his inauguration due to the corruption scandal, not racism.
