Joe Paszkowski, 65, of Columbus, Pa., was charged with threatening to kill by means of hanging, but the charge was dropped after a Morris County grand jury returned a “no bill” and refused to indict him, according to court records.
The suit says that in the recorded message in April that resulted in his arrest, Paszkowski told a person in Roxbury, “I’m going to hang both of you … so bad. I’m coming up to New Jersey … I’m going to … have a prosecutor look into the case for what you did.”
But in his reports, Officer John Sylvester included only the first part of the message, and “deliberately and maliciously” left out the second part mentioning the prosecutor, said Paszkowski’s attorney, Joel Rachmiel.
Those words “clearly negate any threat to kill another by hanging,” Rachmiel said.
Paszkowski says he was arrested and held at a jail in Pennsylvania, where the “stress and anxiety” caused by the “baseless charge” made him suffer breathing problems, which necessitated his hospitalization.
