BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer
NEWARK – A 17-year Newark police veteran who lives in Brick has been suspended without pay after admitting to drug dealing close to 250,000 milligrams of OxyContin after getting prescriptions filled in several counties, authorities said.
Ronald Pomponio, 40, of Brick, pleaded guilty Sept. 5 to a one-count information charging conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute oxycodone, said J. Gregory Reinert, public affairs officer for the U.S. Attorney General’s Office in Newark.
A second Newark officer, John Hernandez, 34, of Bayville, pleaded guilty to the same charge Sept. 5.
Pomponio filled dozens of prescriptions in various New Jersey pharmacies, sometimes filling more than one prescription at different pharmacies in one day, Reinert said.
Reinert said he was unsure where the pills were distributed.
Oxycodone is a time-released pain killer that comes in pill form that becomes more potent, and habit forming, if crushed then ingested.
Both men were suspended without pay from the department June 15, said Newark Detective Hubert Henderson.
Pomponio was not formally charged until Sept. 5. Hernandez, an officer for the past 13 years, was arrested June 15.
Both men are expected to be terminated from the department subsequent to departmental hearings, Henderson said.
“The department holds to the highest standards of conduct,” he said. “They have betrayed their oaths of office and they’re going to be terminated at departmental hearings.”
Newark Police Chief Anthony Campos said in a statement that he would not let the “unscrupulous actions of a few” damage the fine reputation of the Newark Police Department and threatened that any officer who doesn’t conduct him or herself within the confines of departmental rules will be “cut out like a cancerous cell.”
Henderson said he did not know when the departmental hearings would take place.
Pomponio is scheduled to be sentenced by a federal judge Dec. 18. Hernandez is scheduled for sentencing the Dec. 19.
Both men were released on $100,000 bonds secured by property, Reinert said.
The charge comes with it a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and up to a $1 million fine, Reinert said.
In determining an actual sentence, federal sentencing guidelines may be consulted. The guidelines provide appropriate sentencing ranges that take into account the severity and characteristics of the offense, the defendant’s criminal history and other factors, although the judge is not bound by the guidelines in determining a sentence, Reinert said.
In September 2005, the FBI arrested nine individuals as a result of an investigation that included the FBI, DEA and the Northern New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force. Dr. Joan Jaszczult, 45, of Bloomfield, was one of the them.
Jaszczult allegedly accepted cash payments from Pomponio and Hernandez to write “excessive amounts” of prescriptions for OxyContin and other oxycodone-based narcotics, Reinert said.