Police Call Councilman's Ticket Survey an 'Attack'

In an effort to drive more revenue to the borough, Caldwell Councilman Gordon Lawshe questioned if all members of the police department have been keeping their eyes on the road.

According to Lawshe, chairman of the public safety committee, a recent survey was conducted to examine the amount of traffic summonses—excluding parking tickets—each officer of the 20-member department has issued over a four-month period.

The results were surprising, Lawshe said during his committee report at Tuesday night's council meeting.

According to Lawshe, two "high-ranking" officers combined to issue one summons over the four-month period, while another wrote none one month and 13 the next.

"I don't want anyone to think since we wrote this summary up that we're picking on anybody or anything like that. However, people have to be accountable here," Lawshe said.

"We have two high-ranking police officers in the department that in four months, one wrote one ticket and the other officer wrote zero. That's not acceptable. It's totally not acceptable unless that person was sick or whatever. Somebody has to be accountable here."

However, Councilman Kay Slattery was concerned that this could be "getting awfully close to demanding or asking quotas from the police department," she said.

Lawshe said that isn't the case.

"There is no such thing as a quota system. The reason why we did this, Councilman Slattery, was that revenue is down," he said.

"Looking at this, I was shocked at some of the things here. How can a police officer—and the chief is going to get back to us on this—in four months not write one summons in this town? I think that's a very fair question to ask. Number two, how can an officer one month write zero tickets and then the next month write 13?"

Caldwell Sgt. Michael Pellegrino, who leads the department's traffic division, was one of four off-duty officers who attended the council meeting and felt the survey was an "attack" on the police and was further upset since there could have been a legitimate reason why an officer was unable to write a summons during a particular month that Lawshe didn't know about.

"I take it personally as a squad supervisor about this revenue thing with summonses. There are other ways this town can generate revenue besides summonses. You can raise the rates of parking tickets, which haven't been raised in I don't know how many years that would be comparable to other towns around here," Pellegrino addressed Lawshe during the public-comment portion of the meeting.

"As far as one person writing zero and then writing 13 the next month, you don't know. Is that person on vacation? Did you look at the schedule? That's why I take it personal. I've been here 14 years as a police officer and I've written many, many summonses and I continue to do that, but to come out and say revenue is down, and I know there are other areas in the borough where revenue has come down in other aspects, whether its DPW or the community center, so to point us out specifically I felt that was a little bit of an attack on us. "

However, Councilman Peter Murray, a member of the public safety committee, said the intent of the survey was to assist Police Chief Kurt Dombrowski's management of the department.

According to Murray, other areas, including police overtime with the municipal court and for D.A.R.E. programs, were discussed with the chief.

In addition, the need for a second detective has also been identified with the police committee examining the possibility of hiring a new police officer while a member of the department is promoted to the detective bureau, which currently only consists of Detective/Sgt. Tony Marta.

"What we were asked to do as a police committee was to help the chief in certain areas. We looked at the court, we looked at D.A.R.E., because anything that was accruing overtime is what we had targeted," Murray said.

"When we sat down with Kurt, what we tried to do was provide certain data, certain information, certain advice that he ultimately has oversight on. We didn't come in and dictate anything. But if there were certain things that were staring us in the faces, we had every right to bring them up to him. That's all that we've done. Now there's an analysis of tickets. There are other analyses that we've done as well."

When reached Wednesday, Dombrowski was still in the process of examining the potential causes for the disparity in the amount of summonses issued that ranged from zero to as many as 68 by Officer William Roberts during the four-month period of the survey.

But Dombrowski reminded the governing body on Tuesday night that an officer's job stretches beyond the scope of just writing tickets.

"We have one-fifth of my department here tonight. They are all here on their time off because they care," Dombrowski said. "We talked a lot about the summonses tonight and I understand that's a part of our job but it's not the only thing we do in this town. 

"It's not about the quantity of the amount of summonses an officer writes against motorists that makes him a good officer, it's the service they provide every single day they come in. I'm damn proud of them and I stand behind them 100 percent."

According to Pellegrino, he instructs his squad to hand out summonses each day, but sometimes a warning to a motorist is all that's necessary.

"I tell my guys every day to go out there and write tickets. I'll tell you what, my guys stop a lot of cars, but we have discretionary powers as police officers here in the state of New Jersey. We do not have to give out summonses if we feel we don't want to," Pellegrino said. 

"We're being singled out here tonight about revenue being down in the police department and nothing else is being said about any other areas in this borough."

According to Murray, municipalities have few sources of revenue and the police department just happens to be one of them.

Councilman Joseph Norton, chairman of the finance committee, presented the during Tuesday night's meeting that includes $139,000 in additional revenue from restructuring fees for off-duty police.

According to Norton, the borough increased the charge to outside companies like PSE&G for the use of off-duty officers for traffic or security detail.

"There's no picking on the police force. When you're talking about revenue, there are only so many places where a town can gain revenue," Murray said.

"It just so happens that the police department is one of those entities that bring in money to a town. We're not saying go out and get us a million dollars to get us in a surplus, so go out and write tickets like they are going out of style. Do your public safety. Do your jobs. You do it well. For any inference to say that we're putting these things together to make you look bad is an absolute atrocity."