A self-appointed panel castigated "the command structure" for failing to rescue the boys in June.
By Adam Fifield and Dwight OttInquirer Staff Writers
A citizens group that examined the deaths of three boys in a car trunk in June has faulted a range of city and county officials and singled out one Camden police lieutenant for failing to search the vehicle fully.
It also absolved the boys' families of any responsibility.
The self-appointed group, whose six members include political opponents of the city administration, released its findings at a news conference yesterday at the Walt Whitman Center for the Arts in Camden. It calls itself the Citizens Independent Review Panel.
"The command structure is responsible, the chief of police, prosecutor, mayor and [Camden's chief operating officer]... . These people owe it to the citizens to step up to the plate and say, 'We're responsible,' " said Keith Walker, cochair of the group and an unsuccessful candidate in the May election for Camden mayor.
The group also called for the implementation "without further delay" of a reform plan the police department is undertaking that will divide the city into four districts, each under the command of a captain.
The three boys - Anibal "Juni" Cruz, 11, Daniel "Danny" Agosto, 6, and Jesstin "Manny" Pagan, 5 - were last seen around 5 p.m. on June 22 and reported missing more than three hours later, sparking a massive two-day search. Their bodies were discovered on the evening of June 24 in the trunk of a 1992 Toyota Camry parked in the same yard in Camden's Cramer Hill section where they last had been seen.
The boys survived in the trunk for between 13 and 33 hours before suffocating, a medical examiner's report said, suggesting that immediate discovery would have saved their lives.
A review by a special three-member panel appointed by Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi and released on Aug. 2 listed a number of opportunities to discover the boys that had been missed by police and families. That panel's central recommendation was for all county law enforcement agencies to adopt national missing-child guidelines, which include searching inside cars.
But it did not name any officers or recommend any disciplinary action.
Walker yesterday called for disciplinary action against officers involved in the search, saying: "If it is not taken, it is a disservice to the community."
Former Camden Police Chief Robert Allenbach is listed as a cochair of the panel, but he did not appear at the news conference. Reached yesterday by phone, Allenbach said he was on his way to the Arctic region to hunt caribou. He said that he had not yet seen the report but that he agreed with some points Walker had read to him over the phone.
Allenbach, who was suspended in 2003 after Sarubbi found he failed "miserably" to implement state-recommended changes in the way he operated the police department, said the boys' deaths would not have occurred on his watch. "I'd have been at the scene," he said. "That trunk would have been opened. Anybody who knows how I was as a cop knows that to be true."
Camden Police Chief Edwin Figueroa said of the citizens group: "I'm sure they had their own agenda."
Figueroa said that there was no plan to discipline anyone involved in the search but that officers would receive additional training.
"We made a mistake," the chief said, adding that he accepted ultimate responsibility.
The prosecutor's report had said the Cruz family knew that Anibal played in the car but that "information was not made known to the Camden Police Department or the families of the other boys until after the bodies were discovered."
Walker disputed that yesterday, saying that Anibal's mother, Elba Cruz, said in an interview that she had no knowledge that her son regularly played in the car. He added that the families bear "zero blame" for what happened and that, by pinning culpability on them, officials were trying to "sweep the matter under the rug."
In a statement, Sarubbi defended the review he ordered as "fair, even-handed, well documented and credible." He added that the "vast majority of the report documents flaws and failures in police procedure" and does not assign equal blame to the parents.
The citizens group's report harshly criticized Lt. Nicole Martin, one of first officers to arrive on the scene. Citing the official account of another officer, Detective Tyree Nobles, who had written that Martin told him the car was "clear," the group stated that this claim "was misleading and was the main reason the search went askew."
However, Allenbach yesterday described Martin as "good people" and said he did not know whether she did anything wrong.
Martin wrote in her report that that she "looked inside the interior of what appeared to be an abandoned vehicle." It does not mention the trunk.
Martin could not be reached for comment yesterday.
John Williamson, president of Camden's Fraternal Order of Police, said he would "not dignify" the comments about Martin with a response.
Williamson argued that Walker "had no credibility whatsoever" and accused him of trying to exploit the tragedy for political gain.
He added that he believed many people, including Anibal's mother, share responsibility for what happened. "If you look at it in its totality, everyone failed," he said.
Walker said he was not exploiting the tragedy. "My political agenda did not cause the death of the three children," he said.
Noting that two command posts had been set up, the group's report claimed that a "serious breakdown in the command and control" hindered the search. It also alleged that a K-9 handler, Bruce Kanis, was rebuffed when he requested that his dogs be permitted to search cars in the area of the yard where the boys disappeared.
Figueroa said the police opted not to use Kanis' dogs because a bloodhound from the Cherry Hill Police Department was already being used.
At yesterday's news conference, Angel Cordero, a member of the citizens group and a Camden activist, said many people were too quick to place blame on the parents.
"If they live in the city of Camden and they are black and Hispanic and poor, they are automatically labeled as a poor parent," Cordero said. "Nobody would be blaming them if they lived in Cherry Hill."
