Controversy surrounding the Helmetta Police Department has led to discussion of South Brunswick taking over its patrols through a shared-services agreement.
South Brunswick Police Chief Raymond Hayducka, who oversees a department of 76 police officers, said Helmetta would have to fund the salaries and benefits of two fulltime officers if the township were to take on the borough’s police services.
The discussion comes after Acting Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey raised concerns about the performance of the Helmetta Police Department, which has five full-time officers and two part-time officers. Carey notified Helmetta officials in December that he was concerned that the borough police force was not “performing its law enforcement and public safety functions at a sufficiently professional level.”
“Since last December, the situation has grown worse,” Carey wrote in a March 6 letter to Helmetta Mayor Nancy Martin and borough officials, saying he was “not confident” that the mayor understood what needed to be done to best serve and protect the public regarding police services in the borough.
“There is currently no chief or director in charge of the Police Department, and furthermore, I understand that the borough is hiring even more Class II police officers instead of full-time police officers,” he wrote.
Carey outlined two possible directions that he called “imperative” for Martin and the Borough Council to consider and act upon.
The first option is to hire a full-time director or chief, allowing the borough to be represented at meetings of the Middlesex County Association of Chiefs of Police. Carey noted that the chiefs’ association offers training and engages in an ongoing exchange of ideas and information. This would help Helmetta officers learn about and comply with directives and guidelines issued by the prosecutor’s office and the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, he wrote.
Helmetta officials are currently interviewing candidates for the director position, which Carey said should be full time. Since training costs and funding for the position would present significant economic demands for the borough, Carey suggested a shared-services agreement with South Brunswick.
“An arrangement such as this with a surrounding municipality would seem reasonable,” Carey wrote. “The fact that Helmetta already relies on a surrounding town [Spotswood] for its police dispatch, school, library and other services further supports the conclusion that consolidation would make sense for the borough.”
Over the past 13 months, current and former Helmetta police officers have filed three separate civil lawsuits against the borough. The latest, filed by former Class II Patrol Officer George Kosanovich, alleges that he faced harassment and intimidation because of his sexual orientation, and that he was pressured to meet a per-shift ticket quota, a claim also made in the other lawsuits.
Attorney Robert Tandy is representing all three plaintiffs in the litigation in state Superior Court, New Brunswick, where the cases are pending.
The borough, the mayor and the Police Department are represented in each case by attorney William Healey.
“These cases will be actively and aggressively defended,” Healey said on March 10, declining to comment further.
On Jan. 28, 2013, Tandy filed a complaint in Superior Court on behalf of former Police Director Andrew Ely, alleging that Martin directed police officers to issue traffic summonses for all speeding violations in excess of 5 mph above the speed limit — unless a Helmetta resident committed the violation.
Ely resigned “after continuous acts of retaliation and months of harassment,” according to the complaint. He was succeeded in November 2012 by another part-time police director, Gregory Bennett, who later made similar complaints and filed a lawsuit of his own. Bennett wrote in an email to the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office in October 2013 that the department’s officers worked in constant fear of losing their jobs.
“If they do not issue enough summonses, they face termination for not successfully completing their probationary terms,” the email stated.
According to the complaint, Bennett’s duties were severely limited after the mayor found out about his correspondence with the prosecutor; however, he continued to serve as police director at the time of the lawsuit.
Attempts to reach Martin, Bennett and members of the Borough Council for this story were unsuccessful. Contact Kathy Chang at [email protected].