EDISON — With the recent news of charges against five Edison police officers who were paid for extra-duty jobs they allegedly were not present for, municipal officials are seeking a third party to provide oversight for extra-duty jobs.
On June 13, members of the Township Council approved a resolution authorizing the use of competitive contracting for the management and administration of the Edison Police Division’s off-duty detail management.
“We will find out services, how much it will cost and how much autonomy [the services] are going to demand or acquire,” Township Attorney William Northgrave said.
In the meantime, Police Chief Thomas Bryan said he has since limited the allowance of extra-duty jobs in the department.
Residents who attended a council work session meeting on June 11 expressed frustration and embarrassment about the déjà vu negative news about the Edison Police Department.
“We have a core problem that we haven’t weeded out of our police department yet,” resident Bruce Diamond said. “We pay good money in taxes and I’m tired of reading embarrassing articles about police who feel they are entitled to do things the rest of us are not entitled to do.”
Bryan said the five officers who were charged are currently suspended with no pay. He said those officers are the only officers currently suspended on the force.
“It is an ongoing investigation and I can’t discuss it,” he said. “I, too, don’t like to see things about my police department of this nature at all. If we don’t know it’s happening how do we know it is happening? We identified a problem, reported it to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office and it is an ongoing investigation.”
The officers, Sgt. Ioannis (John) Mpletsakis, 38, Patrolman Paul Pappas, 43, Patrolman James Panagoulakos, 32, all of Edison, Patrolman Gregory Makras, 33, of Cranford, and Sgt. Brian Rossmeyer, 41, of Bedminister, were each charged on June 1 with two counts of official misconduct in the second degree and one count of theft by unlawful taking in the third degree, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
During an investigation between Nov. 14, 2016, and May 1, it was determined certain police officers of the Edison Police Department had allegedly been getting paid for extra-duty jobs for which they were not present, Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey said. The side jobs were in addition to the officers’ regular hours, during which a member of the police department is assigned to work for the town, he said.
The officers who volunteer to take the extra assignments have full police responsibilities while performing the extra-duty assignments. The extra-duty assignments include directing traffic for utility companies at work sites and providing security services for local businesses and residential communities, Carey said.
In Edison, there is no centralized system of assignment for the extra-duty jobs. Instead, Carey said, several individuals in the police department have wide discretion as to who gets the assignments.
Payment for the side jobs is billed through the township’s payroll for police services. The fee charged includes an administrative fee and an additional fee for a police vehicle when one is required, Carey said.
The officers are scheduled to make their initial court appearance in state Superior Court, New Brunswick, on June 21.
Diamond asked the chief with the suspensions and police officers out on disability, how the department is handling overtime expenses.
“Our projections are right on target with our manpower and what we are looking at right now with this portion of the year,” Bryan answered. “However, common sense will tell you, if we look to lose more officers and look to replenish them, it could amount to some overtime. Right now, we are looking pretty good with our projections.”
Diamond said the negative news about the Edison Police Department is frustrating.
“I thought we were over with all this in the last adventure when we were putting pressure on the department to give up internal affairs and it turns out one of the guys promoted that was already in trouble from 10 years ago is in this shenanigan,” he said. “I think bad apples are bad apples. There’s something wrong with the testing we do. We’re not finding the finest human beings to join the Edison Police Department.”
Bryan said it has a lot to do with the hiring process; however, he said at the same time there is a legal process that the department has to go through also.
“I’m not the beginning and end of everything,” he said. “I have my views on things … if we are told legally we have to bring an officer back after we look to terminate him it’s beyond my control and beyond the mayor’s control.”
Diamond said in all fairness, he is not saying all Edison police officers are bad apples; however, “there is enough people [in the department] who do not understand what honors and ethics mean.”
“We find ourselves every ‘X’ number of years having this uncomfortable conversation,” he said.
Bryan said he agreed with Diamond’s comments.
“If you look at history, even the prosecutor said it, there was a cancer here that has been surgically extracted and eliminated,” he said. “Again it metastasized to a degree here. We identified a problem and we are getting rid of the problem.”
Bryan said despite the recent news, the Edison Police Department has received a lot of positive press from the county and state.
“This [recent incident] is something we didn’t know about,” he said. “And it makes it that much harder for each one of my officers who are the front line out there. … There’s a lot of good men and women in the Edison Police Department that don’t deserve this.”
Walter Stochel said he was disappointed to read in the newspaper about the trouble with the Edison Police Department.
“It’s shocking to read these things again,” he said. “I’ve been in this town since I was 11 years old and it seems every few years there’s a scandal with the police department. It’s not just one or two [officers]. Now since the 1970s, hundreds of [officers] have been involved [in illegal activity] and it’s got to stop.”
In 2015, then-state Senator Peter Barnes (D-Middlesex), who is also a former councilman in the township, proposed a bill to remove the internal affairs functions from the Edison Police Department and the unit would be overseen by the state Attorney General’s Office. The bill raised a lot of opposition.
Stochel said in 2016 when debating the Barnes bill, the public was given assurances that all bad apples were being removed.
“I remember one [police] member saying the biggest threat to public safety in Edison was the Barnes bill,” he said. “Well that’s clearly not the case.”
Stochel questioned since the township handles the billing for the no-show jobs, is the township a co-conspirator for the scam and is the township liable to payback for the no-show jobs?
“I wonder how these could be no-show jobs if for traffic control at work zones and the officer is not there, you would know unless you were told you had to hire two off duty officers and one doesn’t show up and you submit the bill and it gets paid,” he said.
Northgrave noted the money charged in the particular case did not come out of the police budget nor did it come out of tax revenue.
“This was paid by private industry,” he said. “Not to minimize [the incident], but I didn’t want anyone thinking that this was taxpayer money being spent.”
Diamond said it doesn’t matter “where the money came from whether it came from the contractor, it came from a grant, or if it came from heaven.”
“It represents a dishonorable, disgusting situation that just seems rampant to go on and on,” he said. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the chief, but there is a culture here that raises dishonor. There is something wrong and if the argument is 75 to 85 percent of policemen are good and shouldn’t be tagged liked this then we need to do a better job of getting rid of bad people and we don’t do a great job doing that.”
Resident Lois Wolke said she sympathizes with all the good police officers whose reputation is overshadowed by the embarrassing and negative headlines.
“More frightening is the no-show jobs may be the tip of the iceberg and the lack of financial oversight may be going on in some way in other departments,” she said, adding township officials should consider hiring a full-time chief financial officer.
Bryan said the department has a lot of oversight on the road and with random drug testing; however, in the recent situation, he said it happened underneath another situation going on.
Resident Frank Greco recommended township officials create a committee to monitor the situation.
“This is a good town … let’s keep it that way,” he said.
Contact Kathy Chang at kchang@newspapermediagroup.com.
