New information on an Edison police officer facing administrative misconduct charges provides some insight into the accusations against him.
Officer Anthony Sarni, an 11-year veteran of the Edison Police Department, has been suspended with pay — an annual salary of $120,000 — since September 2014. The suspension stemmed from events that allegedly occurred in September 2012, when Sarni was off duty. The charges against him are pending.
Township officials had not disclosed the allegations against the patrolman; however, 62 pages of Internal Affairs documents that surfaced last week provide a transcript of the interview Edison Detective Sgt. Thomas Errico and Lt. Joseph Shannon conducted with Sarni on July 26, 2013.
Last year, Sarni filed a lawsuit against the township seeking to dismiss the misconduct charges, along with charges involving failure to be truthful on the date of the interview.
The beginning of the interview, titled, “Voluntary Statement of Officer Anthony Sarni,” has Errico informing Sarni that he is obligated to answer all questions and provide complete information during the investigation. He warned Sarni that failure to do so could lead to suspension or termination; Sarni told Errico that he understood.
According to the documents, obtained by NJ.com, Sarni had responded to a criminal mischief incident — in which a fire extinguisher had been discharged underneath a woman’s hotel room door — at the Extended Stay America hotel during the evening of Sept. 11, 2012.
The woman reached out to Edison police on or around Oct. 16, 2012, alleging that Sarni came back to her room in uniform after his shift, intimidated her and forced her to model lingerie she had bought from Victoria’s Secret. The Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division began an investigation the following day.
On June 20, 2013, after its own investigation, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office advised the township that it wouldn’t pursue criminal charges against Sarni, and that the township should proceed administratively.
During the interview, after two hours of denying the allegations and a few minutes talking to his attorney, Sarni started “vaguely” recalling what had happened that night. He said it was hard to remember all the details because it had been 10 months. After some prodding, Sarni — a married father of four — admitted that he had felt an attraction to the woman, who is in her midtwenties; however, he told officers that his intentions were “pure.” He went back to the room simply to check on her well-being and to have a conversation, he said.
“Are my morals in question, am I proud of that, no,” Sarni said during the interview.
The officers told Sarni they were privy to text messages between the woman and Sarni that were “sexual in nature.”
Sarni eventually admitted that he asked the woman to try on the lingerie.
“I can’t say I didn’t want it to go further,” he told the investigators, adding that no physical contact took place during the 40 minutes he spent in the room.
Sarni also said the interaction was consensual.
“If I thought that there was an intimidation factor, I would have ran away,” he said, adding that he would have stopped it if the woman had been uncomfortable. “I don’t want to lose my life, my livelihood, you know, so yes, I do believe it was absolutely [consensual].”
Sarni had said he was reluctant to speak to the investigators at first because of the history of confidential information from Internal Affairs investigations and administrative charges being disclosed to the press.
Errico assured Sarni in the interview that anything leaked to the public did not come from the Internal Affairs office.
It is not clear if Sarni has been subject to a departmental disciplinary hearing. The township hired attorney Michael A. D’Anton, of Chasan Leyner & Lamparello, Secaucus, as its independent hearing officer to handle Sarni’s case.