PRINCETON: Whistle-blower case settled

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   A Princeton Police sergeant has settled a whistle-blower’s lawsuit he brought against the borough in 2011, his lawyer said Tuesday, but the details have not been disclosed.
   B. David Jarashow, the attorney representing 22-year-veteran Sgt. Kenneth Riley, said none of the details of the settlement could be disclosed. Sgt. Riley was looking for $100,000 to resolve the suit, one that stemmed from retaliatory actions he claimed the borough took against him for reporting allegations against a fellow officer.
   The suit, a carryover from pending litigation that the consolidated town inherited, was handled by the town’s insurance carrier. Princeton municipal attorney Edwin W. Schmierer said Wednesday that he had raised with the Princeton Council, in closed session, that the carrier had recommended settling the case and that the governing body had agreed to it.
   He said the carrier would pay the bulk of the settlement, while the town has to pay a portion. He did not have details.
   Lori A. Dvorak, the attorney handling the case on behalf of the insurance carrier, did not respond to phone messages left at her office.
   Sgt. Riley, hired in January 1991, waged a lengthy and winning legal battle to save his job. In his lawsuit, he said he was the “target” of an internal affairs investigation and “terminated” in October 2010.
   In court papers, Sgt. Riley said he had reported to a supervisor that in January 2008, a fellow sergeant, Robert Currier, allowed a suspected drunken driver to urinate in public contrary to a borough ordinance. The driver was not going to take a field sobriety test unless he could relieve himself, court papers showed. Mr. Jarashow said in an interview last year that the driver had urinated in the bushes of the Princeton home of author Toni Morrison.
   Mr. Currier was cleared of wrongdoing, court papers showed. But the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office zeroed in on Sgt. Riley.
   A six-count indictment, handed up in September 2008, charged him with official misconduct and related charges. Authorities claimed he had showed the police video footage of that January 2008 traffic stop to others to damage Sgt. Currier’s “standing in the department,” and that Sgt. Riley had lied when asked why he had accessed the police video data base, according to court papers.
   The criminal charges, however, were thrown out in November 2009 by a Superior Court judge. Despite that, the borough pressed its internal case against Sgt. Riley. He won that legal battle in January 2011, when a judge threw out all the charges and ordered him reinstated with $400,000 in back pay and legal fees.
   Sgt. Riley still works for the department, Mr. Jarashow said.