Turner was born on July 4, 1957, to Bernard and Joyce Turner. Her father was an attorney who served on the Board of Education in Cresskill, New Jersey, and she has one sibling, a brother, Stuart Turner. Turner is from New Jersey and received her juris doctor from Georgetown Law, where she served as the editor of the school's Law and Policy in International Business law journal. She received a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University where she majored in both political science and Spanish. She also received an executive MBA from Rutgers University. Turner has sat on the Georgetown Law Alumni Board.
In 2018, Turner was heavily criticized for her behavior at a traffic stop by police in Tenafly, New Jersey. Police had stopped a vehicle that contained Turner's daughter, who had been traveling with friends. After police discovered the vehicle's registration was two years out of date and the driver did not have an insurance card, they moved to impound it. Turner arrived soon after to pick up her daughter and the other occupants of the impounded car and repeatedly demanded to know the reason for the traffic stop, telling the officers that she was a "friend of the mayor", that they could "not put a sentence together", requesting they address her by the title "commissioner", and stating that they had ruined the holiday of "Ph.D. students from MIT and Yale." She said she would be "talking to... the mayor", and then launched into a tirade which climaxed in Turner ordering one of the police officers to "shut the f*** up." New Jersey police released videotape of the interaction which quickly went viral on YouTube. The incident was nationally reported by CBS News, CNBC, and the New York Times, among others. Intense criticism of Turner followed, with the New Jersey Star Ledger writing that she was "unencumbered by clue" while a commentator for the Today Show described her as having "all the tact and manners of a zoo animal at feeding time." Some came to Turner's defense, including lawyer Donald Scarinci, who questioned the swift condemnation of Turner. Turner went on to apologize, saying "I let my emotions get the better of me and regret my tone toward the police officers and use of off-color language." She resigned from the Port Authority a week after the video emerged. Following Turner's resignation, Port Authority chair Kevin O'Toole issued an official apology to the Tenafly police officers involved in the incident. Turner was given an official censure by the Port Authority, which described her behavior as "outrageous and profoundly disturbing." In the earlier statement of apology released by Turner, she had asserted that her actions did not constitute a violation of the code of ethics. Nevertheless, six months following the incident, Turner was fined $1,500 by the Ethics Commission. Turner's actions at the traffic stop led to the introduction of legislation in New Jersey to eliminate police style badges being issued to politicians, with Senator Vin Gopal saying the incident had demonstrated that the badges could be used "for the abuse of power." The Record named the traffic stop one of the twelve "biggest moments of 2018."
