well New Jersey is facing fresh scrutiny over a 2019 law designed to create greater police accountability it put the Attorney General's office in charge of overseeing Investigations into police involved deaths it's all to determine whether police are justified in incidents where they take a life but a special report by NJ Advance media out this week revealed the law has been controversial and disappointing to the families of those killed who claim the probes are secretive long delayed and rarely result in criminal charges I'm joined Now by Riley Yates the lead reporter on this story so Riley of course you all spoke with a number of families who are directly involved in these incidents what did they tell you or what did your report reporting point out as to why they feel they have no confidence in this law well so the criticisms I'd say were threefold you had criticisms over the length of time it took for these these investigations to be concluded we had about it's about two years for the investigations to be concluded and part of that of course is covid-19 falls under these uh four years that that the AG's office has overseen these investigations but then there's also just a concern that you hear from the families that out of all these investigations that have concluded just one has led to an indictment and I think equally and maybe even more so there's concerns from the families that both during the process and after the process they don't really get a lot of answers so they don't hear here's why excuse me they don't hear here's why the officers weren't indicted or here's what we concluded the evidence showed and here's why we believe that the officer acted appropriately and without that they're kind of left wondering well why did my loved one die which was really one of the main intents of of this law one of the main intentions there by your team's reporting there were 75 cases 29 unresolved um more than half though 46 were concluded but as you mentioned took years to get to that point what did you find when you dug deeper into the folks who were involved in these deaths and were they all in emergency crisis like situations that I think a lot of us our minds go to when we picture this yeah a whole lot of these cases were I would say mental health cases where people were called to homes or even roadsides with you know people who are suicidal or people who were despondent and in their interactions with police ultimately they were they were shot and killed but uh New Jersey's law is very expansive and so the the when we think about police involved deaths we tend to think about shootings but New Jersey's law actually requires them to investigate a lot of other deaths too like deaths in custody someone who maybe has a medical episode while in a jail or well in a holding cell or uh somebody even who was hit by a car being chased by police and so those were also represented in what we were looking at well I can recall folks who backed this initially feeling like this was going to be the big change the landmark push change in what's been police accountability what are they now calling for because at issue was the fact that the prosecutors in counties previously handled these investigations and there was concern that they were too close to the law enforcement who perhaps you know had committed some of the the fatalities and so what then do they think should happen from here yeah well it's it's definitely striking that some of the most vocal supporters of the law now are critical of it and they say that it hasn't lived up to that sort of uh I mean the the praise of that law was very very uh full-throated when it was passed and there were people who had that kind of full-throated Praise who now say it's not living up to that uh you know I think I think I my guess would be that people aren't calling for to go back to the old system that the old system had its own issues but I think probably what you're what a lot of folks would like to see as they'd like to see greater transparency and they'd like to see more uh answers from the prosecutor's office um that's uh that's something that you know looking at other states other states have have set up systems that do do allow that and that do ultimately when a case is resolved there's a there's a you know lengthy reports that are issued that explain here's what happened here's why we concluded that the officers acted appropriately here's even you know policy recommendations and here's what could have been done better even if we don't charge did the Attorney General's office have an explanation as to why these cases do take so long you mentioned covid but it can all be pandemic related no it isn't all pandemic related in fact the he at the time uh raised these concerns was opposed to this law and raised these concerns as saying it's going to lead to delays because we don't have the same expertise that local prosecutors have we don't have the same kind of on the ground uh know-how and that that will lead to inevitably lead to delays and he warned and he said that will that will undermine uh faith in the process uh but but the AG's office says it this is the process it's working it's thorough it's fair uh they say you know there's a trade-off right the quicker you do it the less thorough you are and they say they can't they can't say more because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings a little bit of a catch-22 there Riley Yates lead data reporter for NJ Advanced media and the lead reporter on this series thank you so much thank you