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Donovan said she “doubts the lawfulness” of Molinelli’s Bergen County Law Enforcement Services Review Board Law Services Plan, which was issued last month — and first reported exclusively here on CLIFFVIEW PILOT. Calling it “misguided,” she claimed the move “compromises the public safety of the residents of Bergen County.”
In a letter to Molinelli, Donovan labeled it “a blatant attempt to usurp the statutory powers and duties of the Governing Body of Bergen County which consists of both the County Executive and the Freeholder Board.”
As a result, Donovan said, she is directing “the BCPD, the Sheriffs Department, and any and all other applicable agencies or Departments of County Government not to comply with or abide by any prosecutorial directive that purports to implement the Plan, the LSRB Findings or the Committee’s determinations.”
“In addition, I am forthwith notifying all municipal governing bodies in Bergen County that the County is not and will not assume any liability, risk or claim arising out of or in connection with the utilization of any County SWAT Team other than the BCPD Swat Team,” she wrote.
Donovan claims that she holds such authority, even though Molinelli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that the state Criminal Justice Act of 1970 permits him to implement his plan.
As first reported exclusively here, the prosecutor in January gave the county police six months to join a regional SWAT team (SEE: Molinelli putting county sheriff in charge of regional SWAT, splitting K-9 duties).
The BCPD unit would remain the first responder to a hostage or other SWAT-related emergency in those towns that don’t have their own squads, Molinelli said. After that, primary responsibility in those towns that don’t already have SWAT teams would fall to the new, multi-jurisdictional unit, he said.
Besides increasing costs to the county and its taxpayers, Donovan cited what she said are inconsistencies between “this eleventh-hour directive” and a previous study.
“[T]he Sheriff does not have any constitutionally prescribed powers or duties. Rather the Sheriff[‘]s Department[Office] core statutory functions include courthouse security, service of legal process, bench warrant execution , and prisoner transport but not traditional or tactical law enforcement functions,” she argued, adding that the expertise of Saudinio’s staff “is generally limited to handling emergency situations within the confines of correctional facilities
This, Donovan said, was determined by a 2007 study by experts Guidepost LLC on how the county should be policed.
Image of Donovan’s letter to Molinelli
She also expressed “serious concerns” over what she characterized as “undue influence” she believes Molinelli exerted on the committee to “rubber stamp” his plan after it initially found that “the regionalization of SWAT was not feasible.”
“Despite the laudable goal of consolidating duplicative services,” Donovan wrote to Molinelli, “you have blatantly disregarded the Committee’s initial findings without any reasonable basis to do so.”
The committee in 2012 found that “total consolidation of all tactical resources ” into a single, countywide SWAT team was “impractical,” and that “virtually all of the benefits of a regional team can be gained through policy and procedure changes while allowing each individual team to retain their current identity and structure,” Donovan wrote, quoting an earlier report.
“In apparent disagreement with these findings,” she told the prosecutor,”you directed the Committee to ‘assess and evaluate ‘the establishment of a regional team consisting of members of the Bergen County Police Department and the Bergen County Sheriff s Department with the availability of including members of the Prosecutor’s Office and [m]unicipal [p]olice [o]fficers’.”
“Put simply, the BCPD SWAT Team should not be minimized , merged or disbanded merely because your office permitted [a similar team under the sheriff],” Donovan insisted. “Rather than seemingly playing politics with such an important issue as the SWAT team, if you truly wanted to avoid duplication you would have never allowed the Sheriff [SWAT]Team to exist, never mandated its certification, and would have explored having the BCPD SWAT Team replace the Sheriff[‘s] Team in the jail for consideration by the County Executive.”
Donovan also criticized Molinelli (top, left) for not sending her a copy of the Law Enforcement Services final report.
The county executive sent copies of her 7-page letter to Molinelli — dated yesterday and issued to the media this afternoon — to, among others, Gov. Chris Christie and state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, as well as to various mayors and police chiefs in the county.
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A COPY OF THE LETTER is available here: DONOVAN letter to MOLINELLI re: Law Enforcement Review
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In January, CLIFFVIEW PILOT exclusively reported that the BCPD SWAT unit, until July, would be the first responder to a hostage or other SWAT-related emergency in those towns that don’t have their own squads, under changes made by Molinelli.
After that, primary responsibility in those towns that don’t already have SWAT teams falls to the new, multi-jurisdictional unit, under a directive that the prosecutor submitted for approval to the state Attorney General’s Office.
The unit already has nine members of the Hackensack Police Department training with Sheriff’s Officers and has drawn interest from other municipal police departments, Molinelli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT in a January interview.
Any agency in the county that chooses to do so can participate, the prosecutor said, adding that “the command structure and protocols” will be established by the Bergen County Police Chiefs Association.
Molinelli also split K9 duties: The BCPD will handle all accelerant and bomb calls, while the BCSO will handle all narcotics and cadaver calls.
Last month, the prosecutor officially released the plan, a copy of which can be obtained here:
Bergen County 2013 Law Enforcement Services Review Plan
The changes in how the county will be policed are contained in a special section of the report entitled “2012 Committee Report and Recommendations for the Regionalization of Specialized Services.”
“I would ask that all chiefs give careful review of the plan, as it provides opportunities for qualified law enforcement officers countywide to become part of a regional SWAT team, and divides responsibilities for K9 specialized services after April 16, 2013 — which, in my judgment, will once and for all remove any redundancies in Bergen County between the Sheriff’s Department and the Bergen County Police,” Molinelli said last month.
” I am confident that this will permit both the Sheriff’s Department and the County Police an opportunity to make a careful review of their resources on a going forward basis so as to minimize any impact upon the taxpayers while continuing to provide the exemplary police services that each agency has for so many years,” he said.
Noting that the Bergen County Police Department SWAT team has been in operation 38 years, Donovan said the regional team Molnelli ordered under the sheriff’s direction is “seemingly duplicative”
One of her main points is that Molinelli didn’t file the plan with Chiesa’s office in time – which, in order to take effect this year, would have been Dec. 15 of last year.
“The Plan, on its face, indicates that it was signed on January 16, 2013, and … was signed by you on March 14, 2013,” she told the prosecutor.
She added that BCPD Chief Brian Higgins (above, right), a member of the Law Enforcement Services Review Board, didn’t get his copy until March 15.
Molinelli said he tried but couldn’t strike an agreement between Higgins and Sheriff Michael Saudino (middle) over K9 responsibilities. Each has its own unit.
So he came up with the plan “to remove redundancies. Each will no longer have to hold onto dogs that aren’t essential to their particular function,” he told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Molinelli said he reached his conclusions with the help of a study group that he commissioned last year to recommended how best to police the county.
He specifically asked the team to address K9, SWAT and bomb squad services.
The committee, chaired by retired Tenafly Police Chief Michael Bruno, submitted “an exemplary report” to him in January at a Law Services Review Board meeting at the prosecutor’s office in Paramus, Molinelli said.
“I would like to publicly thank Chief Bruno as well as the members of the committee in the preparation of this report and upon which I have approved the law services review plan which, in part, accepts in part the direct committee recommendations,” Molinelli said last month.
Molinelli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that Bruno’s review team “found that it wouldn’t be practical to suddenly create a countywide SWAT team. To unravel the current setup, with seven towns that already have created their own units, would be very expensive…. However, it said the creation of a new regional SWAT team handled by the Sheriff’s Office could be done.
“Everyone will be able to train together,” he said. “They would also naturally be the first responders in any jurisdiction that has people with them. They also can back up any of the seven towns that have their own SWAT unit.”
Molinelli pledged to make changes after the outgoing freeholder board last year nixed a plan to merge the BCPD and Sheriff’s Office. The prosecutor said his aim was to “reverse” the “1894 mentality” of creating separate and individual specialized units — such as SWAT and K-9 teams, the way local police departments were created in the 19th Century — and, instead, collect, consolidate and coordinate operations.
The freeholders rejection last year of an ordinance dissolving the 89-member BCPD gave a victory to Donovan and ended talk of a “super department” run by the county sheriff — at least at the time.
Saudino, in turn, presented a plan under which his office would take control of the bomb squad, merge both departments’ K-9 units and move more than three dozen officers into “Homeland Security” duty — serving papers and conducting random park patrols.
Saudino proposed putting both the county communications center and the Office of Emergency Management under civilian control, with a minimal number of officers assigned to both.
The sheriff also saw no need for Civil Service waivers, suggesting instead moving BCPD officers into his office’s pay scale — in other words: $30,000 a year pay cuts, on average, for those who ended up working for the Sheriff’s Office.
Factoring in those moves, along with attrition, Saudino put the potential cost savings at $19.5 million over two years.
In Donovan’s view, putting “critical police functions” in the hands of an elected official “jeopardizes public safety.” READ MORE….
She went further in yesterday’s letter, accusing the prosecutor of “inappropriate influence over the Committee’s work.”
Despite what Donovan said were earlier findings by the panel that went against the later decision, Molinelli “demanded” that committee members “assess creating a single tactical unit comprised of officers from the BC Police Department, the BC Sheriffs Department” with availability from municipal police departments, her letter alleges.
“At this time, you directed that no county agency should have a stand-alone tactical team,” it adds.
“This was evidently done despite the fact that the duties for Departments of County Government are subject to the authority of the County Executive under the form of government adopted by the voters of Bergen County except where the State Legislature expressly delegates a duty to a particular Department of County Government,” Donovan wrote.
“Most alarmingly,” she added, “you apparently stated that ‘refusal by any agencies to work together or resistance to change would be deemed unacceptable.
“You apparently advised the Committee that if your proposed plan ‘could not be accomplished’ then the Committee should set forth its reasons in writing,” Donovan’s letter says. “You apparently further stated that if the Committee ‘as a whole recommend this plan,’ that any dissenting members may place their opinions in writing for inclusion in the final report to the Board of Chosen Freeholders.
“Upon receipt of your ‘mandate’ above, the Committee dramatically reversed its course after the September 17, 2012 meeting,” she concluded.
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