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That changed on Friday, March 11, when state authorities announced that they'd charged Torres, 63, with criminal contempt.
“State law provides that any person convicted of a crime involving their public office will be forever barred from holding another public position in New Jersey,” Acting New Jersey Attorney General Platkin said. “To promote public trust and integrity in government, we must ensure that this law and the court orders issued to implement it are rigorously enforced.”
Torres served 13 months of a five-year state sentence after admitting in 2017 that he had Paterson public employees work at a private warehouse leased by his daughter and nephew on city overtime.
Before going to prison, Torres signed off on a Superior Court judge's forfeiture order that specifically said he would be charged with a crime if he applied for any kind of public employment after being convicted of conspiring to commit official misconduct, Platkin said.
Then came rumblings of a comeback that began late last year.
On Feb. 12, Torres "made a public speech stating that he is running for mayor of the City of Paterson in the 2022 election and requesting that the people in the audience vote to return him to City Hall," Platkin said Friday.
Three weeks later, he went to the Paterson City Clerk’s Office and presented a stack of purported nominating petitions in support of his candidacy, the attorney general said.
The clerk rejected the petitions, as she was required to do under state law. Unfazed, Torres went to court, saying he'd be "irreparably harmed by being denied his right to run for office," Platkin said.
"By holding himself out as a candidate for mayor, soliciting signatures on nominating petitions, and attempting to submit the petitions at the clerk’s office, Torres purposely and knowingly disobeyed the 2017 forfeiture order that he signed and consented to following his guilty plea," the attorney general said.
As a result, Platkin's Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) charged Torres following a joint investigation by the OPIA and New Jersey State Police corruption units.
Torres couldn't immediately be reached for comment late Friday afternoon.
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