Frank Nucera, who retired as Bordentown Township police chief while under FBI investigation in January, was charged with civil rights and hate crime charges.
[Ads /]
According to court documents, Nucera approached the 18-year-old from behind and slammed his head into a doorjamb while the suspect was being escorted by two officers from a hotel in September 2016.
Nucera, who also served as a township administrator before retiring, was arrested Wednesday morning and is scheduled to appear in court later in the day. A phone listing for Nucera rang unanswered Wednesday.
Nucera had a history of making racist comments and used police dogs to intimidate African-Americans, including stationing them at high school basketball games to intimidate black fans, prosecutors said.
Bordentown is a predominantly white town of about 11,000 a few miles from New Jersey's majority African-American capital city of Trenton.
One of his police officers secretly recorded Nucera's comments over the course of a year because prosecutors said he was "increasingly alarmed by (Nucera's) racist remarks and hostility toward African Americans." Prosecutors said that some of them "contain extremely offensive racist comments" by Nucera.
[Ads /]
In one of the recordings outlined by prosecutors, Nucera said of African Americans that he was "tired of them" and "it's getting to the point where I could shoot one."
----------
Send a breaking news alert
Report a correction or typo
Learn more about the 6abc apps