the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Neptune NJ, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority will pay $250,000 to settle a driver’s lawsuit that was filed after a former State Trooper downloaded an intimate video from her cellphone during a 2016 traffic stop on the Garden State Parkway.
The Authority’s board of commissioners unanimously approved the settlement at a meeting Tuesday. The Authority runs the Parkway. The payment settles a lawsuit filed by a New Orleans woman who was stopped by former State Trooper Marquice Prather on July 24, 2016 near Exit 100 in Neptune.
Marquice Prather, 38, of Linden, N.J., pleaded guilty today to charges of third-degree invasion of privacy, fourth-degree tampering with physical evidence, and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records before Superior Court Judge Benjamin S. Bucca in Middlesex County. Under the plea agreement, Prather must forfeit his job as a state trooper and will be permanently barred from public office or employment. The state will recommend that Prather be sentenced to a term of probation. Prather has been suspended without pay by the State Police since his arrest on Dec. 9, 2016.
Prather requested and searched the cell phones of numerous female drivers without justification, after asking the women to unlock the phones. He looked through personal information and images on the phones and, in some cases, reproduced intimate photos and videos of the women.
What a jerk.