News: August 2010

Jury awards former Paterson cop $550,000

Published August 24, 2010

Monday, August 23, 2010
Last updated: Monday August 23, 2010, 7:55 PM
BY JOHN PETRICK
The Record
STAFF WRITER

A jury awarded $550,000 to a former Paterson police officer Monday to compensate her for lost wages and emotional distress after she was fired in 2006 because of a medical condition.

Michele Sedeyn, 31, of Woodland Park, sued the City of Paterson and the Paterson Police Department in 2008 after the city fired her for not reporting to work under her doctor’s orders.

Following three weeks of trial before a jury and state Superior Court Judge Garry S. Rothstadt in Paterson, a jury found that the City of Paterson and its police department engaged in discrimination by terminating her because of her disability.

The panel awarded Sedeyn $300,000 to compensate her for lost earnings and another $250,000 for emotional distress. She will ask the court to reinstate her as a police officer, said her attorney, Charles Sciarra.

The panel did not find that the department or city discriminated against her because of her gender, as the suit also alleged. Part of the case asserted that male officers with medical conditions have been allowed to remain on leave without consequence. The defendant also asserted that a male superior referred to her using offensive language.

When she was discharged, Sedeyn was on the blood thinning medication to combat blood clotting that resulted from a pregnancy.

Sedeyn was prone to clotting, according to her suit, as the result of a previous knee injury that occurred on the job in 2002 when a vehicle ran a stop sign and crashed into her patrol car. Attempts to recover from torn tendons and a dislocated knee without surgery were unsuccessful and, in 2004, Sedeyn needed an operation.

As a result of that surgery, she developed two clots on her left leg and was hospitalized for 12 days, after which she was placed on the blood thinner Coumadin for six months to prevent any additional clotting.

“When plaintiff was placed on the blood thinners medication, her doctors advised that she should be extremely careful because the blood thinners prevented her blood from clotting and thus cuts or physical trauma could pose a serious health risk,” states the lawsuit, filed in state Superior Court in Paterson.

In June 2004, about six months after knee surgery, she finished her regime of blood thinners. She returned to work and resumed her patrol duties.

In March 2005, Sedeyn became pregnant. During the second trimester, according to the suit, her doctors advised her that her pregnancy had aggravated her pre-existing propensity to develop blood clots due to the accident. As a result, the doctors prescribed the blood thinner Fragmin to prevent additional clots. “All three doctors advised the plaintiff that she could not report to work on this medication due to the environment of her workplace and the high risk of serious injury,” according to her suit.

Sedyn provided a doctor’s note to the Paterson Police Chief’s Office and the Internal Affairs Unit and on July 25, 2005, she went on medical leave. On Dec. 1, 2005, she had her baby via Caesarian section. Her doctors advised her that she as be put back on blood thinning medication for six months to reduce the risk of clotting and the she should remain on leave until June of that year.

From there, the city challenged Sedeyn’s inability to report to work. Various doctors offered conflicting opinions as to how dangerous it was for her to perform even so much as light desk duty while on the medication. The police department, according to the suit, promised Sedeyn would not have any contact with inmates in the municipal holding cell at headquarters while assigned to desk duty, to insure her safety. Still, her doctors maintained it was too risky. Finally, on April 10, 2006, Sedeyn was fired.

What’s next
Sedeyn will file a motion next month asking state Superior Court Judge Garry S. Rothstadt in Paterson to order her reinstated to her job as police officer, according to Newark attorney Charles J. Sciarra, who represented her at trial.
 
Sedeyn will also seek punitive damages against the city. Court rules require punitive damages to be decided in a separate phase of a jury’s deliberations, assuming they have found any liability on the part of the defendant. The jury has been ordered by Judge Rothstadt to return to court on Sept. 21. The matter is being put off until then because of scheduling conflicts.

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State probes Passaic County motor pool

Published August 20, 2010

Investigators from the state Attorney
General’s office searched the Passaic County
Sheriff’s Department Motor Pool garage in the
rear of Lambert Castle in Paterson on
Thursday morning.

A team of investigators, some wearing
rubber gloves, searched the garage and the
office of Paul Mariano, the civilian director of
the motor pool. Investigators removed a V-6
engine from the garage and loaded it on to a
flatbed truck and took it into evidence.

A spokesman for the Attorney General’s
office, Peter Aseltine, declined to comment.
Aseltine cited a department policy that the
office does not confirm or deny any ongoing
investigation.

Mariano, 49, of Wayne, went on vacation last
week, Sheriff’s Department spokesman Bill
Maer said. Before leaving, Mariano submitted
his retirement papers and is scheduled to
retire on Dec. 1, Maer said.

Mariano could not be reached for comment
on Thursday night. A boy who answered the
door at Mariano’s home in Wayne, who said
he was Mariano’s son, said his father was at
work. The boy said he had not heard from
his father all day on Thursday.

The motor pool is where sheriff’s
department vehicles are taken for repairs.
The unit is located in a series of garages
behind the Lambert Castle Museum on Valley
Road in Paterson.

Mariano, in addition to serving as head of the
motor pool, was a close friend of former
county Sheriff Jerry Speziale and served as
Speziale’s driver.

Speziale resigned abruptly last week to take
a job with the Port Authority Police
Department, citing family reasons.

Investigators from the Attorney General’s
office arrived shortly before 9 a.m. and began
searching the motor pool office and several
adjoining garages. They spent about three
hours at the motor pool complex and were
seen checking several sheriff’s vehicles and
speaking with motor pool mechanics during
the search.

The investigators would not comment to
reporters who had gathered at the scene.

Maer said the Sheriff’s Department was
cooperating fully with what he confirmed was
a criminal investigation.

“The department has not been informed of
any charges regarding any employees,” Maer
said, adding that the Sheriff’s Department
was “working closely” with the Attorney’s
General office.

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Thursday, August 19, 2010
Last updated: Thursday August 19, 2010, 7:55 PM

BY RICHARD COWEN
The Record
STAFF WRITER

 

NJSP Latino Peace Officer Chapter participate in sports-oriented summer camp.

Published August 18, 2010

LAWRENCE—Five Trenton-area children are going to a sports-oriented summer camp for the next two weeks, thanks to a group of state troopers.

The youths, aged from 9 to 11, began their time at Education, Sports and Fun (ESF) summer camp yesterday morning, dropped off by troopers in the Latino Peace Officers Association. The association pays the full tuition for the campers, and members of the organization will make sure the children whose parents can’t drive them get to and from the camp at The Lawrenceville School each day.
For Trooper Jose Rivera, who moved to Trenton from New York City when he was 9 years old, it’s an important part of showing underprivileged youngsters they have a future.  “More and more you go into the inner city in Trenton, it’s tough,” Rivera said. “And it’s getting tougher.”  “It focuses on that whole development,” he said of the camp. “That there are opportunities out here.” The 500 children who attend the day-long camp are there to learn as well as play, Rivera said. “It’s all sports, but ... all the counselors are teachers or they’re in the field of education,” Rivera said. “It’s all in the education.” The program has been going on for three years, said Sgt. Julian Castellanos, who arrived at the school for the campers’ first day. The founders of the Latino Peace Officers’ state police chapter were looking for ways to give back to the community. “When we did it, we reached out to other organizations: “What can we do?’” Castellanos said.The association participated in Read Across America and the Three Kings Hispanic celebrations in January, and provided scholarships for youths to attend the ESF camp.
The children the troopers are delivering this week and the next were picked based on high grades and conversations with their parents. Those like 11-year-old Yendry Montero, who have been to the camp before, look to it as a highlight of their summer. “It’s the best,” Yendry said.  Her North Trenton neighborhood doesn’t have a place for her to play her favorite sport, tennis. At camp, she has the facilities to play the game and the instructors to help her improve. Last year, she honed her skills on the court while finding a new game.  “We learned how to do lacrosse,” she said. “They say it’s a good way to stay active.” Ashly Adventers, 9, has just one thing on her mind for the next two weeks. “I want to play a lot of sports,” Ashly said.  Last year, the Ewing resident made her mark as a standout player in everything she tried. By the end of her first week, she was named team captain.  At the camp, the children are in nearly perpetual motion, said Rivera’s wife, Raquel, the assistant site director. “They’re up in the woods camp, they play sports all day long, they come down and have lunch, and then they go up and play more sports,” she said.Counselors make sure everyone is safe from overheating in the sometimes brutally hot temperatures. “They know the camp focuses on—every ten minutes, they hydrate,” Castellanos.  The troopers try to expand their presence in the children’s lives beyond the two weeks in August.“We try to stay in touch,” Castellanos said.“They’re part of our lives now,” Rivera said. “Like we told them, they’re now part of the state police family.” Contact Alex Zdan at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this e-mail address) or (609) 989-5705

Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Alex Zdan
STAFF WRITER

With Speziale gone, acting sheriff looks to settle down Passaic department

Published August 12, 2010

While Jerry Speziale reported to his new job with the Port Authority Police on Wednesday, acting Sheriff Charles Meyers spent his first day trying to restore calm to the Passaic County Sheriff’s Department.

Meyers attended roll calls and consulted his top brass, toured the jail, met with politicians, and spent most of his time “trying to put people’s mind at ease” following Speziale’s abrupt resignation after nine years as sheriff on Tuesday.

“The Sheriff’s Department has to move forward,” he said after a meeting with department brass. “The citizens deserve efficient services. The citizens deserve to have the employees they are paying to do a job do that job,” he said. “The employees deserve to go to work knowing what is expected of them.”

Meyers said a decision would be made “in a day or two” about the fate of eight sheriff’s investigators Speziale hired last year with his patronage power. The state Civil Service Commission says the hirings exceed the 15 percent limit of such patronage appointments and wants them terminated. Speziale has appealed that order, but the county freeholders have so far refused to fund the appeal.

Speziale, meanwhile, reported to work as the new deputy superintendent and assistant director of public safety at the Port Authority Police Department in Jersey City. PAPD spokesman Ron Marsico would not give details about what the new job entails and would only confirm that Speziale showed up that morning. The post pays Speziale $198,510 — a big raise from the $151,000 he made as sheriff.

Speziale did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. But he cited family reasons when he resigned, and he had been angling for the Port Authority job for months. His departure was accomplished with the help of two Republican legislators, Assemblyman Scott Rumana, Wayne, and state Sen. Kevin O’Toole, Cedar Grove.

According to Rumana, all three met with then-Governor-elect Chris Christie shortly before he took office in January to discuss how Speziale might find another police job in the state. Rumana, also chairman of the Passaic County Republican Party, was eager to get the highly popular Speziale, a Democrat, to drop out of the sheriff’s race. Speziale, according to Rumana, was looking for a job where he no longer would “have to be running for election.”

Meyers will serve as acting sheriff until Christie appoints someone to fill out the remainder of Speziale’s term. According to the statute, the governor doesn’t have to appoint anyone to the post, and could leave Meyers in the job through the November election. But if he does appoint someone, it has to be a Democrat.

The governor was on vacation on Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. His spokesman, Kevin Roberts, said the governor will consider the issue when he returns next week.

Meyers, who is an undersheriff in charge of the Passaic County Jail, said he has no interest in running for a full sheriff term in November.

“I could be here for eight minutes or eight months,” he said. “But I have no interest at all in running. I don’t aspire to be a politician. Public office is not my thing.”

Meyers and the freeholders will be busy enough dealing with other fallout of Speziale’s nine-year run. He leaves behind a long trail of unresolved lawsuits resulting from tangles with his staff including alleged wrongful firings, claimed discrimination, and horrid conditions at the jail.

Democratic Party Chairman John Currie said the party has to move quickly to find someone to run against Republican Felix Garcia. Some candidates have begun to emerge. Former Paterson police Chief Larry Spagnola said he wants the job, and one of Speziale’s closest allies in the Sheriff’s Department, Chief Leonard Lovely, says he’s interested.

“It would be an honor if they would consider me,” Spagnola said. “Let’s just say I’m getting a lot of calls from people and that shoe would fit. I would love to put those shoes on.”

Lovely was a little more cautious. He said he hadn’t gotten the call from Currie, and won’t make a decision until he does. “At this time, I’m not 100 percent sure that I would run,” Lovely said. “But I’m not ruling it out.”

Another official being talked about is Glenn Brown, the Paterson public safety director, and Joey Torres, the former Paterson mayor.

BY RICHARD COWEN
The Record
STAFF WRITER

Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale is off-base with internet-posting prosecution

Published August 11, 2010

I’m sure glad I don’t live in Passaic County. The sheriff might throw me in the slammer for impersonating J.J. Moon.
“J.J. Moon” is the screen name I use when I post on surfing websites. It’s also the name of a fictional surf star created by Surfer Magazine during the 1960s. J.J. would often be pictured riding a huge wave in Hawaii or riding the nose at Malibu.

But the photos were created with a cut-and-paste technique that was the low-tech equivalent of Photoshop. It was all a big joke, and you’d have to have been really dull-witted to take it seriously.

Share Sort of like Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale. At least I hope he’s dull-witted. Otherwise he’s guilty of the most blatant case of political persecution I’ve ever seen.

The victim was Harry Clark, a 49-year-old resident of West Milford who fixes copy machines for a living and who is active with the Republican Party. In 2007, for a joke, he created an account at this newspaper’s website, nj.com, under the screen name “JimGeist.” That name is very close to that of a local Democrat by the name of James Geist.

The joke was obvious to anyone paying attention. The profile of “JimGeist,” for example, included the statement “I am an admirer of the greatest guy in the world Harry Clark.”

Geist was not amused. He fired off a letter to his fellow Democrat, Sheriff Jerry Speziale, in which he noted that “some Republicans have been using the internet site http://www.nj.com/forums/westmilford/ to harass several of our members,” by which Geist meant members of the West Milford Democratic Club. He went on to call for the sheriff to bring criminal charges against whoever was doing the posting.

At this point, Speziale should have called up Geist and recited the old saying, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Instead, he put his crack internet crime team on the case. Before long Clark was being hauled off by three officers. The sheriff’s office had signed off on two complaints charging him with forgery and identity theft based on “posting messages ridiculing and defaming others without consent.”

As I sat in Clark’s kitchen the other day reading that complaint I nearly fell out of my chair. I have a blog on nj.com. If posting messages ridiculing and defaming others under a false name is a crime, then half my readers belong in jail.

But there’s something about the internet that makes people go crazy, even people who should know better, such as journalists. The local paper led its Passaic County section with news of the arrest for “alleged misuse of the internet” that involved “anonymous, insulting remarks” without giving the slightest hint that insulting remarks, whether anonymous or not, are not against the law. The story ended with the reporter’s observation that “Clark most likely will face thousands of dollars in fines, and could be given jail time.”

Well maybe in the old Soviet Union. Here in the good, old U.S. of A. the prosecution was troubled from the beginning. Though a prosecutor initially told Clark, “these are very serious charges and you could go to jail for a long time for this,” he says, by September of that year the charges had been downgraded to a disorderly persons offense to be heard in municipal court.

That should have been the end of it, but the prosecutor persisted, changing the putative offense to “harassment” when it was obvious the fraud and identity-theft charges were bogus.

Finally, the case came before someone with some common sense, Pompton Lakes Municipal Court Judge Frank Santoro. Last month he threw the whole thing out.

When I got Sheriff’s spokesman Bill Maer on the phone, he said Speziale stands by the prosecution.

“We maintain that our investigators found that the manner in which this individual did this, by saying they were somebody else setting up a fictitious screen name and saying they were somebody else, was illegal,” said Maer.

Interesting. But then why isn’t the sheriff going after Geist himself? In the course of the proceedings it developed that he has been posting online using the name of a certain “Barack Obama.”

When I got Geist on the phone, he said his use of Obama’s name and the name of other political figures online was clearly satirical. And I’m sure it was. But Clark’s use of Geist’s name was also a joke, a common one on the internet. Of the thousands who play such jokes every day, only Clark had his name dragged through the mud and spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees.

Maer denied politics entered into the prosecution. And maybe he’s right. Maybe the sheriff and the prosecutor are so busy that neither has had the time to read the Constitution.

It’s about time they did, starting with the First Amendment.

Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger

N.J. appeals court rules 911 operators can be sued for mistakes

Published August 4, 2010

A state appeals court ruled today that 911 operators and dispatchers are not immune from being sued for failing to perform their duties.
The decision would have paved the way for the family of a slain Seton Hall University student to continue a lawsuit against the city of Newark, but the matter was settled before the three-judge panel issued its unanimous decision.
“This case has good precedential effect for potential acts of 911 operators who mishandle calls,” said Brian Levine, the attorney for the family of the student, Sohayla Massachi.
In 2007, the appellate court ruled Newark could be sued and was not exempt from the state’s Torts Claim Act, which lays out conditions under which someone who is wronged can sue. But weighing in on an issue it did not address in 2007, today’s decision said the city was also not immune from liability under the state’s Telecommunications Act, which established the statewide 911 emergency system.
Attorneys for Newark argued the Telecommunications Act protected a public safety answering point (PSAP) like the communications center. But Levine contended — and the appellate panel agreed — the law protected against mechanical failures such as dropped calls or power outages, not against the mistakes of individual operators or dispatchers.
“We hold that the immunity (the law) affords PSAPs and their employees is limited to negligence in the mechanical delivery of 911 services, such as errors or omissions in the operation, maintenance, design or performance of the 911 telephone equipment,” Judge Linda Baxter wrote. “The immunity ... does not extend to the conduct at issue here, namely, the bungled response to an incoming 911 call.”
The judges sent the case back for retrial on how a $5.5 million jury award should be distributed. A trial jury decided in 2008 that Newark was 75 percent negligent, Seton Hall was 15 percent responsible and its security firm, Argenbright Security, was 10 percent at fault.
The appellate court said the jury should have been allowed to consider whether Massachi’s ex-boyfriend, Christopher Honrath, who shot and killed her before taking his own life, bore some responsibility.
Had the award been upheld, Newark would have been on the hook for $4.1 million. While the appellate case was pending, Levine said, Newark and the family settled out of court this spring, with the city agreeing to pay $1 million. The family settled with Seton Hall and Argenbright around 2007 for an undisclosed amount, he said.
Massachi, 23, an education major at Seton Hall who lived in Union Township, met Honrath, 24, on the internet and dated him briefly before obtaining a retraining order to keep him away from her.
On May 10, 2000, Honrath forced Massachi into his Plymouth Laser as she walked alongside Seton Hall’s South Orange campus. After driving them to his apartment in Westfield, Honrath shot Massachi and then himself.
On two separate occasions that day, witnesses reported a man forcing a screaming woman into his car. Two of the witnesses said they told a campus security guard who said he couldn’t do anything about the incident because it was off-campus and advised them to call South Orange police. The other witnesses, off-duty Essex County Sheriffs Officers Melissa Lester and Elwood Thompson, called 911 and the call was routed to the area’s 911 emergency communications center in Newark.
The court said that when 911 operator Debory Venable issued the alert, she mistakenly said the vehicle was a Chevrolet Blazer and did not tell police it was in motion. As a result, officers were directed to an incorrect location. Venable also did not keep the 911 caller on the line to track the location of the Laser.
From the license plate number provided by the witnesses, George Mike, a 911 dispatcher traced the car to Honrath and was able to obtain his address in Westfield. However, he did not issue a general alert to Newark police and neighboring municipalities and did not contact Westfield police.
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