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And despite having waited 18 months for vindication, Kugler isn’t angry.
“I’ve turned the page,” he told Daily Voice. “I’m moving forward and expect to proudly return to be chief of police once again and serve my community and the general public.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
State authorities wrongly applied a borough ordinance meant to keep police from giving local business owners rides to make bank deposits when they secured an indictment against him in September 2021, Judge Marilyn Clark ruled.
The retired Clark, who was returned to Superior Court in Paterson to decide the case, said state prosecutors did so, in part, by not telling grand jurors the whole story.
Kugler had announced his candidacy for Bergen County sheriff when the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office charged him with ordering on-duty police officers to conduct escorts using department vehicles for his funeral business.
The chief received a summons charging him with conspiracy, official misconduct and corruption of public resources – and was suspended pending the outcome of the case.
In his place, the AG's Office gave temporary control of the day-to-day operations of Kugler's department to Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella.
The news was a stunner. Even Kugler's political opponents were stumped by the charges.
Kugler, for his part, made no apologies for ordering uniformed escorts to cemeteries both in and outside of Saddle Brook. Police departments routinely provide escorts for funerals, both out of respect for the dead and the simple matter of vehicular safety.
The timing also seemed more than coincidental.
Kugler has been with the Saddle Brook police department for 36 years, all but 10 of those as chief. He was seeking a rematch at the time against incumbent Sheriff Anthony Cureton, who defeated him in 2018.
Cureton went on to hammer Hasbrouck Heights GOP Mayor Jack DeLorenzo by a margin of 54% to 37%. Kugler, who’d switched parties after Bergen's Democrats selected the incumbent as their candidate, finished third in a field of four.
Kugler turned his attention to the investigation by the New Jersey State Police Official Corruption Bureau and the OPIA Corruption Bureau following the election.
Undercover detectives working for the bureau apparently had recorded two processions from the Kugler Community Home for Funerals as part of the probe.
State authorities based their case, it turns out, on a 1978 township ordinance that they claimed prohibited the assignments “with the exception of escorts for the municipal government of Saddle Brook or nonprofit organizations.”
They were wrong, the judge ruled.
The Saddle Brook Council didn’t intend to ban police escorts from funeral homes when it adopted the ordinance nearly 45 years ago, Clark said.
They were merely responding to escorts for merchants making bank deposits or seeking “any type of protection,” the judge said, which apparently was being abused and stressing police manpower at the time.
“I do not believe that the topic of banning police funeral escorts ever occurred to them, or was ever in any way their intention,” Clark wrote in her Nov. 2 decision dismissing the indictment.
The judge also emphasized that state prosecutors should’ve told the grand jurors that Kugler didn’t get any economic benefit from what had been a common practice.
“The state did not tell the grand jurors that on prior occasions, Business Administrator [Peter] Lo Dico and Mayor Robert White had themselves requested that Chief Kugler have the department provide police escorts as an honor for deceased community members, with no expense being charged,” she wrote.
SEE: State of New Jersey v. Robert Kugler Order From Superior Court Judge Marilyn C. Clark
Kugler, who became a grandfather for the first time this summer, conceded that the ordeal his family had to endure over the past 18 months left him “disappointed.”
He's clearly intent, however, on not dwelling on the past -- and remains firmly focused on returning to his role as the borough’s chief law enforcer.
That couldn’t have happened, Kugler noted, without the skill, dedication and professionalism of his attorney, John Bruno Jr. of Rutherford, and the entire defense staff.
Their ”very thorough and exhaustive fact-driven legal briefs” proved conclusively that “no violation of law or otherwise was committed,” Kugler said.
They’re not done, however.
By the chief’s calculations, he’s lost more than $300,000 in pay, legal fees and other expenses as a result of what he called a “false narrative.”
His application for reinstatement will include a demand for restitution – basically “everything that he is entitled to,” Bruno said.
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