With criminal charges hanging over him, a former white New Jersey cop acquitted in an unrelated criminal case is suing his former department, claiming he has been unfairly targeted because of his race instead of his well-documented history of abusing Black men.
Former Paterson police officer Spencer Finch was fired and arrested in 2021 after he was recorded on body camera video beating an unarmed Black man named Brandon Cosby with a flashlight 14 times, then kneeing the man in the face as he sat on the floor handcuffed during a domestic violence call. The video is posted further down in the article.
In January 2023, Finch was charged over an unrelated incident in 2018 when he used excessive force against another Black man named Justin Montgomery. Finch was acquitted of the 2021 charge against Cosby in December 2023, but the charges from the 2018 incident against Montgomery remain pending.
Finch’s main argument in his 126-page lawsuit is that the Paterson Police Department is rife with corruption, but he is the only cop who lost their job because of it, concluding he was solely targeted because of his white skin. Not much different than the lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania cop last year, as reported by Atlanta Black Star…