PRINCETON: Police hearing halted over grand jury testimony

By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
   Attorneys representing the Princeton Borough Police Department and a suspended officer didn’t get far into an administrative hearing on misconduct charges Tuesday morning before concluding that they couldn’t proceed without risking inappropriate public disclosure of confidential grand jury testimony.
   The hearing, which had been opened to the public at the request of the officer, Sgt. Kevin Creegan, was stopped and the parties involved met in private. Following the private discussion, Princeton Borough Police Chief Anthony Federico, who attended the hearing and the private discussion, said Feb. 13 was the tentative date set for resuming the hearing.
   ”It is probably going to have to be a closed hearing, we’ll see,” said Chief Federico.
   Sgt. Creegan is one of three borough police officers who were suspended with pay in February 2008, and are the subject of a grand jury investigation. The other two were Sgt. Kenneth Riley and Patrolman William Perez.
   In September, the Mercer County prosecutor’s office indicted Sgt. Riley on six felony charges for allegedly accessing his department’s video record database without authorization and showing other officers what he saw in order to adversely affect another officer’s standing. The contents of the video have not been made public.
   The prosecutor’s office has yet to make a decision over whether to indict or not in Patrolman Perez’s case. No charges were filed against Sgt. Creegan and his case was sent back to the borough and is now the subject of the borough administrative proceeding. The specific charges against Sgt. Creegan and Patrolman Perez have not been detailed in public.
   At the time of their suspension, Chief Federico said the officers were suspended after a complaint was filed by another unnamed officer. A spokesman for the State Policeman’s Benevolent Association said at the time the charges stemmed from the trio’s questioning of the manner in which another officer handled a motor vehicle stop involving a minority driver.At Tuesday’s hearing the problem arose over transcripts of grand jury testimony turned over to Sgt. Creegan’s attorney by Sgt. Riley’s attorney.
   ”Riley’s attorney gave them to me, he has no objection to their use,” in Sgt. Creegan’s hearing, said Scott A. Krasny, who is representing Sgt. Creegan in the case.
   But the borough’s attorney in the matter, Arthur R. Thibault, Jr., said he would object to the use of transcripts containing material other than Sgt. Creegan’s statements and testimony, and the transcripts obtained by Mr. Krasny and turned over to him for review contained testimony from “Sutter and other officers.”
   Mr. Krasny said the transcripts contained grand jury testimony under oath, but not from Sgt. Riley, who did not testify before the grand jury. “One of the witnesses is Sutter,” Mr. Krasny said, adding “it is significant testimony.”
   Reached after the hearing, Lt. Nicholas Sutter of the Borough Police Department said “I cannot comment on my grand jury testimony because it’s sealed.”
   Lt. Sutter said he oversaw the borough police internal investigation of the three officers. “I conducted the internal affairs investigation,” he said. He said the state attorney general’s guidelines prohibited him from commenting on the matter.
   Given the sealed nature of grand jury testimony, Mr. Thibault said there were only two ways for an attorney to obtain and use them on behalf of his client: if his client was indicted, or if the testimony was obtained through a court order.
   ”I think they were legitimately received,” Mr. Thibault said. “If Sgt. Riley’s attorney wants to hand them out that is his prerogative. The problem is how do we use them,” he said.
   Mr. Krasny said Mr. Thibault had a legitimate point. “So the next step would be to allow more time to allow me to make a motion to Superior Court,” to obtain an order to use the testimony, he said.
   Mr. Thibault said the judge might allow the testimony’s use, but only if the hearing was closed. “It complicates things a little bit more than what I had anticipated and what Mr. Krasny had anticipated as well,” he said.
   ”I guess we have no other option than to give you some time to file a motion,” said Robert Verry, the presiding hearing officer. “I can’t make it closed, she can,” Mr. Verry said of the Superior Court judge. “If he (Sgt. Creegan) continues to want to make it open we need to get a ruling on that,” he said.