Borough PD needs council oversight

Roger Martindell, Princeton Borough Council
    Long ago, elected officials too frequently involved themselves in law enforcement issues for political purposes. To prevent such abuse, state law and local ordinances established a strict boundary between politicians and police. The pendulum has swung too far. Now, elected officials tend to avoid even reasonable oversight of local police. In the case of Princeton Borough, that has been at great cost to the taxpayers.
   Witness the 2008 rash of indictment, terminations and resignations of numerous borough police officers: they cost borough taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to officers who were suspended, and in investigative and prosecutorial time. Further, the borough lost its investment in highly trained veterans who left the force. The borough will have to find and train raw recruits at substantial additional expense.
   Had elected officials provided more oversight during the recent tumult within police ranks, these expenses might have been avoided without threat to the integrity of the police department.
   Case in point is the recent resignation of Sgt. Kevin Creegan: Mayor and council had at least three opportunities to oversee the matter and at each turn avoided doing so, as follows:
   • The borough could have completed an internal administrative investigation to avoid a March — September, 2008 delay during which time the County declined to indict Mr. Creegan but the Borough nevertheless paid him while suspended from work at his annual salary of more than $120,000/year.
   • The borough could have prosecuted Sgt. Creegan administratively in September 2008 and not waited for receipt of grand jury transcripts in January 2009, to avoid a September 2008 — January 2009 delay, during which additional four-month period Sgt. Creegan continued to be paid while suspended from work.
   • The borough could have pressed administrative charges against Sgt. Creegan to create a record of his alleged misconduct, instead of permitting him to resign from the force and keep the more $120,000 he earned during his year of suspension.
   That is not to conclude that Sgt. Creegan was guilty of any misconduct. Without any administrative hearing or criminal prosecution, no one will ever know the truth.
   But it is to conclude that, as a result of Mayor and council’s decision not to timely proceed in the Creegan case, Borough residents spent a small fortune and now will never know what he was accused of, whether he was appropriately investigated and prosecuted, and whether he should have been required to reimburse the borough for his salary during his year of suspension.
   Borough police argue that state regulations and local ordinances bar elected officials from exercising such oversight over their department. That is not true. Elected officials decide to hire individual applicants to the police department. Elected officials decide whether and how to fund the municipal police. Clearly, elected officials have a role in determining whether and how police should be discharged from employment: after all, police are borough employees.
   In sum, it is fit and proper that elected officials inquire into what went awry with the Borough police department in 2008 so that those problems do not linger into 2009 and beyond.
Roger Martindell, member
Princeton Borough Council