By Mark Mueller |
A year after suspensions, two
Edison police officers still collecting salaries of $120K, $89K
4 plead not guilty in Edison
police retaliation case
Complaint filed against Edison
police chief for bicycle shopping while on duty and in uniform
Texts between Edison cops point
to retaliation, assistant prosecutor says
Indicted Edison cops will fight
charges, lawyers say
In what amounts to a long
vacation at taxpayer expense, two Edison police officers continue to draw hefty
salaries more than a year after they were suspended amid allegations of
impropriety.
Patrolmen Anthony Sarni, who
earns $120,000 annually, and David Pedana, who makes $89,000, were suspended in
October 2013 over unrelated episodes of alleged misconduct.
Sarni, while still in uniform
after the completion of his shift, returned to the scene of a 911 call at an
Edison hotel, where he allegedly tried to coerce a woman to have sex with him.
The woman rebuffed the 40-year-old officer and filed a complaint, authorities
have said.
Pedana, 35, is accused of
sending text messages that contained numerous racial epithets, including some
directed at fellow officers.
Township officials signaled
their intention to fire the two in May of this year, sending the officers
letters saying they were entitled to defend themselves at departmental
disciplinary hearings.
But those hearings, akin to
trials, have yet to take place. Moreover, they haven't even been scheduled,
according to members of the department.
“My God, that’s a good gig if
you can get it,” Edison Councilman Wayne Mascola said. “We’re not talking chump
change here. We all know what kind of money these officers make. Something has
to be done for the taxpayers’ sake.”
Mascola added that because he
didn’t know what kind of evidence exists against the officers, he wasn’t
advocating for their dismissal. But he urged Mayor Thomas Lankey, the township’s
public safety director, to move more swiftly in scheduling disciplinary
hearings.
“A decision has to be made, and we have to
move on,” Mascola said. “It’s been 13 months. Why are we waiting around on
this?”
Lankey declined to be
interviewed for this story. In an emailed statement, he addressed the
circumstances that required the township to pay the officers during their
suspensions. The statement did not say why hearings have yet to be held.
“In the private sector,
employees who are accused of wrongdoing can be suspended without pay pending an
inquiry or they can simply be terminated,” Lankey said. “The public sector – in
our case, municipal government – is constrained by state statute, case law and
union contracts.”
Under state rules, police
officers must continue to receive pay while suspended unless they’re charged
with a duty-related fourth-degree crime, a crime of the third degree or higher,
or a crime of moral turpitude. While Sarni and Pedana face multiple
administrative counts, they were not charged with crimes.
Pedana could not be reached for
comment. An attorney for Sarni did not return several phone calls.
Such lengthy suspensions with
pay are not unprecedented, but they are rare, said Wayne Fisher, a former
deputy director in the state Division of Criminal Justice and now a professor
at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Criminal Justice.
A police officer in Coconut
Creek, Fla., returned to work last year after a suspension of nearly 18 months,
according to published reports. In Georgia, seven police officers were placed
on desk duty for several years while continuing to collect full pay, the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2009.
In the Edison case, Fisher said
it is within the mayor’s purview to continue paying the officers, but he said
Lankey should publicly explain why the suspension has dragged on.
“He has a responsibility to the
people of Edison -- the taxpayers of Edison -- to say what is taking so long to
bring this to a disposition,” Fisher said. “The inability or disinclination to
answer that question in and of itself says something.”
Edison police Chief Thomas
Bryan declined to comment on the suspensions, saying he was not at liberty to
discuss personnel issues.
Sarni and Pedana are among at
least six Edison officers out on suspension.
Acting Lt. William Gesell and
two patrolmen, Victor Aravena and Brian Favretto, allegedly conspired with
another officer, Michael Dotro, to retaliate against a North Brunswick cop who
brought a drunken driving charge against one of Dotro’s associates.
The four were indicted in
October on a range of criminal counts related to the alleged retaliation plot,
which was not carried out. In an unrelated matter, Aravena was charged with
pressuring a fellow Edison officer to change a police report in May 2013.
The officers, all suspended
without pay, have pleaded not guilty.
The charges against them grew
out of a case that rocked the police department last year: the arrest of Dotro
on charges that he tried to kill one of his superiors by setting fire to the
man’s house as he and his family slept inside.
The superior, Deputy Chief Mark
Anderko, and his relatives escaped unharmed. Dotro faces five counts of
attempted murder and other counts for the alleged arson attack.
In the wake of Dotro’s arrest,
the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office seized cell phones from many of his
colleagues to determine if any of them had advance knowledge of the fire. The
alleged retaliation plot -- along with the racist text messages on Pedana’s
phone -- were discovered during that investigation, authorities have said.
Mark Mueller may be reached at
mmueller@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkJMueller. Find NJ.com
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