PASSAIC — City police shot and killed an unnamed 24-year-old city man shortly before midnight Thursday near the intersection of Harrison Street and Myrtle Avenue, the Attorney General’s Office said in a prepared statement.

The officers were responding to several 911 calls reporting gunfire in the area when they came upon the man and two companions, the statement said. Police confronted the men, two of whom allegedly had handguns, and shot the 24-year-old during the encounter. He had a pistol, the statement said. Authorities brought him St. Mary’s General Hospital in Passaic, where he was pronounced dead.

Another officer fired at the second man but missed. The man fled on foot, and police say they found a handgun at the scene, the attorney general said. No other information was released.

The shooting comes just two days after Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law provisions that change the way authorities investigate such police-involved deaths. Before, the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office would handle the case. Now, the investigation is automatically sent to the attorney general, whose detectives will review the event to make sure the officers' gunshots were justified.

The law also requires the attorney general to present evidence to a county or state grand jury to determine if the officers connected to the death should be indicted, and demands any subsequent trial take place in another county.

The shooting was only a few blocks from a city police substation that opened in December 2018 to help combat gang violence.

Needed reform?

Murphy, along with the law's advocates, said the change was necessary to ensure impartial investigations and improve the relationship between the cops and the community.

"We must acknowledge that there are communities in our state who have raised doubts and voiced concerns with the way police-involved deaths are handled," Murphy said Wednesday in an accompanying signing statement.

Hector Lora, the city's mayor, said Friday he's standing by the Passaic police.

"I have full confidence there will be a thorough and just investigation, and it will show that the police did everything accordingly and by the book," Lora said.

The law was initially proposed last year in the state Legislature. The law's passage gained renewed urgency after the controversial death of Jameek Lowery in Paterson last month Lowery, 27, died at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center after an encounter with the Paterson police. Authorities and Lowery's family continue to paint different portraits of how the young man died.

The NAACP, ACLU and several Democratic lawmakers in the state Senate and General Assembly also cheered the move.

But others, including Gurbir Grewal, the state attorney general, disagreed.

Grewal promised this week to do everything he could to enact the law, but also said during legislative hearings in December that the changes would undermine public trust in law enforcement and the county prosecutors’ offices.

Elie Honig, executive director of the Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities, echoed Grewal's comments during a Friday interview. The Attorney General’s Office reviewed county prosecutors' findings in these cases anyway, Honig said, and requiring the 200 or so detectives in Grewal’s stable to do the legwork is unnecessary, counter-productive and will slow investigations.

"You have a shooting last night in Passaic — normally you'd have the Passaic County Prosecutor respond to that," Honig said. "Now you have to mobilize a team of State Police and DCJ detectives to come in from all different areas of the state. I guarantee you the response time is significantly slower."

Honig also said there will be little difference in the investigations conducted by the two offices. And measuring the law’s success will be tough.

"It can't be about: 'Well, are we indicting more cops or not?' Every case has to stand or fall on its own merits," Honig said. "There does seem to be the suggestion in this legislation that more cops need to be indicted. And I completely reject that."

Staff writer Joshua Jongsma contributed to this report.

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