None of the officers involved in last year's violent arrest, in which one Carteret cop faces criminal charges, switched on their body-worn cameras during a struggle that left a 16-year-old bloodied and bruised.

The lack of video from the other officers creates a nearly 2-minute gap in the encounter and violated the New Jersey Attorney General's directive for body cameras, which experts say was specifically crafted to limit situations where there's a dispute over what happened during an officer's encounter with a citizen.

Carteret Police Officer Joseph Reiman appears in court on official misconduct charges in New Brunswick on Friday, Feb. 9, 2018. (Andrew Miller | For NJ Advance Media

NJ Advance Media reviewed the final police video from the encounter, released last week through a public records request, and more than a dozen other previously obtained videos to find the gap of time -- a period that will likely become a contentious issue in the criminal and civil cases against Officer Joseph Reiman, according to experts.

The borough's police director, Kenneth Lebrato, declined to comment beyond providing a copy of the local guidance on body-worn cameras, which appears to be similar, if not identical, to the state's directive.

State and local guidelines require body-worn cameras to be activated when an "officer is responding to a call for service and is at or near the location to which the officer has been dispatched." Officers must announce, document and report to a supervisor when a camera is deactivated and should reactivate it when it is "safe and practicable to do so," according to the directives.

According to police videos reviewed by NJ Advance Media, the incident started just after 12:30 on the morning of May 31, 2017, when Reiman tried to pull over a sedan, which was driven by an unlicensed teen.

"Anyone near? I got a car taking off on me ... he's going down toward Bergen," the officer can be heard saying over the radio in his brother's cruiser.

Officer Charles Reiman, the middle Reiman brother, starts speeding to the scene as the department tries to get an exact location of the crash, according to a recording from his car.

A dashboard camera from Joseph Reiman's police car shows the brief police chase and captures the image of the officer as he punches the teen for more than a minute. But the two fall out of view and what happens next could not be made out in the blurry nighttime video.

Charles Reiman pulls up to the scene about 90 seconds after getting the call and finds his brother and the teen on the ground just feet from where the teen crashed his parent's car into a suspension wire, a dashboard recording shows.

The officer didn't activate his body worn camera for almost two minutes. He began recording as the officers read the teen his rights and put him in the cruiser to take him to police headquarters, according to recordings released by the borough.

In that time, two other officers who assisted in the arrest -- Officer Antonio Dominguez and special law enforcement officer Kevin Horn -- arrived on scene. Dominguez did not turn on his device, and Horn doesn't appear to be wearing a camera, according to a review of police videos.

The department previously announced it had equipped all its officers with the technology.

Another officer, who was not involved in the arrest but responded to the scene, turned on her body camera after approaching the scene 51 seconds before Charles Reiman activated his device.

"Does he need to go to the hospital?" she asks.

When the 16-year-old and Charles Reiman get to the police station, the teen tells the officer he's having trouble breathing. Reiman responds, saying an ambulance is on the way.

In another police video, which captured other Carteret officers discussing the encounter in the hours that followed, one officer remarked that probably none of the officers had their body cameras on but the department's administration would cover for them.

Officer Joseph Reiman, the brother of longtime mayor Daniel Reiman, has since been indicted on a charge of assault and multiple counts of official misconduct, including failing to turn on his body camera in the arrest.

The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office has said the dashcam corroborated the teen's account of the encounter. Reiman's attorney has argued the teen's injuries were the result of the car crash, but since the car was destroyed, he was unable to inspect the wreck.

Lee Vartan -- a former first assistant to the New Jersey Attorney General, who was in the state office when the guideline was drafted and implemented -- said the statewide policy was rolled out in 2015 to create uniform rules as to when to turn on body cameras.

Vartan said it was an important policy to protect officers against baseless accusations in the majority of cases but, also, in the 1 percent of instances where there is potential wrongdoing to provide objective evidence to appease the community.

"It benefits all parties," he said. "Now, we have subjective evidence applied on both sides to battle what happened."

"These are the thing the prosecution will latch on to," said Jon Shane, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and retired Newark police captain, referring to the gap in time.

Shane said, while similar lapses in policing often come up when a criminal case goes to trial, it creates an uphill battle for the defense, which now has to create a narrative for the missing time.

NJ Advance Media came across one other instance last year when looking into Joseph Reiman's use-of-force history during an arrest in 2016 when a second officer, Dominguez, arrived and did not activate his body camera until Aramis Rosario was put in the backseat of a police car.

When questioned about the start time of the recording, Carteret Capt. Michael Dammann, who handled most of the internal affairs investigations and excessive force complaints, said previously he gave his officers some leeway in activating their cameras when responding to a scene so the officers could focus on policing and public safety first.

Rosario charges have since been dismissed.

It was unclear if the two officers were disciplined for not turning on their cameras.

According to Vartan, a likely recourse for violating the state AG guidelines could range from additional training to internal discipline, which would be handled by local internal affairs and not made public.

"Turning off [body-worn cameras] or not turning them on could create a great deal of problems for the officers," Shane said but explained it would only likely be an issue if it was a pattern with these officers.

Police experts interviewed by NJ Advance Media agreed it was more common for the first officer to not have their body-camera on if an incident escalated quickly without notice. But they said, superiors rely on the assisting officers, who should be aware of the situation before arriving, to capture the majority of the encounter on their cameras.

When asked about how the lack of video affected the case, Reiman's attorney, Charles Sciarra, said in a statement: "If I have this correct, the Star-Ledger consulted an 'expert' about body cameras who concluded I have a difficult job. Must be a slow news day."

"What is relevant is that my client was charged with official misconduct - five years no parole - for knowingly and consciously not turning on his body camera while he pursued this maniac who was driving nearly eighty miles an hour on residential streets while also trying to radio out information on the police radio," he said.

Reiman, who was hired in 2015 as a disabled veteran, has been suspended with pay as he fights the charges. He currently has an annual salary of $61,505, which is about $5,000 more than he was making when he was charged, according to salary records obtained through a records request.

A federal lawsuit has also been filed by the teen's family over the arrest.

The teen was only issued a series of traffic summonses in the days after the accident, according to this father.

Craig McCarthy may be reached at 732-372-2078 or at CMcCarthy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @createcraig and on Facebook here. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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