TRENTON — One of the state's top lawmakers today condemned the State Police for beating a mentally disabled man three years ago and then keeping his family in the dark about what happened.

"The actions toward this young man and his family's struggle for a response are disturbing and unacceptable," Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said in a statement.

Oliver also said state authorities must better communicate the results of internal investigations against troopers "so families aren't finding out developments through the newspaper."

"I expect the State Police will ensure the public trust by taking the proper steps to fix this all the way around and ensure something like this doesn't happen again," Oliver said.

Her comments came a day after The Sunday Star-Ledger first disclosed a State Police video showing the beating of James Bayliss, then 21, after a 2009 traffic stop in Warren County.

On Friday, after being told the newspaper was planning to publish a story and make the video public on nj.com, the State Police announced for the first time that two troopers involved in the incident used unreasonable force.

Two sources with knowledge of the case confirmed those troopers were Staff Sgt. Richard Wambold Jr. and Trooper Keith Juckett. They requested anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss personnel matters.

View full size

The announcement came three years and two weeks after the incident, and after nearly two dozen attempts by Bayliss and his family to get an answer. The State Police said Friday they are still determining what disciplinary action will be taken against the troopers.

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, Deborah Jacobs, also condemned the beating and said it is "the latest in a series of misconduct matters that have surfaced since the federal monitoring of the State Police ended."

"This case is especially troubling because of the amount of time it took for the internal affairs investigation to be completed," Jacobs said in a statement. "Although it is critical for internal affairs investigations to be conducted thoroughly, it is just as important for them to be carried through expeditiously in order to preserve public confidence in the process and to avoid any recurrence of misconduct."

The State Police video, which had never before been made public, shows Bayliss standing against the car as Wambold frisks him. A few seconds later, after what appears to be a slight movement, the video shows Wambold throw Bayliss to the ground, kneel and punch him several times in the face.

An eyewitness in a nearby home said in a sworn deposition that she watched from her window as two troopers, later identified as Wambold and Trooper Keith Juckett, then dragged a limp, handcuffed Bayliss toward a parked patrol car and rammed his head against a tire.

She said the troopers' actions "disgusted" her.

What's more, Bayliss is not an average young man. A car accident in 2005 left him with a permanent mental disability, and his friend driving the car that morning, Timothy Snyder, told the State Police troopers on the scene about his condition before he was beaten.

For his part, Wambold said in his report on the incident in Mansfield Township that Bayliss did several things to provoke a forceful response. While seated in his car, Bayliss repeatedly failed to heed instructions, hid his hands and stared menacingly at troopers, Wambold said.

View full size

Wambold said Bayliss tried to head-butt him during the frisk, and once he was on the ground, he struck the trooper with a glancing blow to the lower lip. Wambold also said he smelled alcohol in the car. And Bayliss had been drinking that night, his father and Snyder said.

In 2004, Wambold was honored by the State Police with the Distinguished Service Medal for shooting an armed suspect in Warren County a year earlier after the suspect had shot a local police officer.

The state Attorney General's Office told The Sunday Star-Ledger that while most troopers perform honorably and with restraint, authorities must "ensure that force is used only as appropriate and authorized to protect the officer and others" and to maintain the public's trust.

"Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa has made it clear that excessive use of force, whether it involves a state trooper or any other law enforcement officer, will not be tolerated and will be met with strong and appropriate disciplinary action," a spokesman for Chiesa, Paul Loriquet, said in a statement.

"This case clearly involved a breach of the Attorney General's policy regarding use of force."

The attorney general's guidelines state that a police officer is justified to use physical force as protection, to overcome resistance, to make an arrest and to protect property.

Related coverage:

• Mark in the Morning: State troopers take it too far in beating down handcuffed man

• Three years later, State Police admit to using unreasonable force on N.J. man's disabled son