Police hearing video from Friends of Televised Access in Morris Township
By Kevin Coughlin
“Free” speech will cost a Morris Township police officer a five-day unpaid suspension, if a decision Wednesday by the local government holds up.
Sgt. Sean O’Hare, a 19-year veteran of the force, will be penalized for “conduct unbecoming” an officer for a crude email disparaging the town business administrator that he sent to union members in 2014.
The Morris Township committee voted 4-0 to accept findings from hearing officer Noel Schablik.
O’Hare may pursue a legal appeal of the “excessive” penalty, his attorney, Ashley Whitney, told the committee. The matter also is pending before the state Public Employment Relations Commission, she said. O’Hare did not address the township committee.
The controversy involves an off-duty email O’Hare sent, from a personal email account, to fellow members of PBA Local No. 133 during contract negotiations with the municipality.
A photo depicts O’Hare standing before a fountain, appearing to urinate into it. The caption references Tim Quinn, the town business administrator and former police chief, and a 2 percent contract cap that he proposed:
“PBA #133’s latest correspondence with BA Quinn … wash your mouth out with this Tim! Gargle with it! If you have to swallow, just swallow like 2% of it. Jerk off. Be safe! SPO.”
Quinn received an anonymous copy of the email in September 2014. An internal police investigation and a public hearing followed. At first, there was talk of a 20-day unpaid suspension. Police Chief John McGuinness filed administrative charges and called for a 10-day suspension.
FREE SPEECH?
Whitney had argued that the email was protected union speech, and union members and police from other towns expressed support last summer.
But Schablik, the hearing officer hired by the town, found that the communication did not meet legal tests for such protection because it took aim at an individual, rather than focusing on a “matter of broad public concern to the community.”
The obvious effect of sending the email, the hearing officer wrote in November, was
…to ridicule Mr. Quinn in a gross and vulgar way, with the entire union membership as his audience. The email shows or displays contempt for the Township Administration and in particular, Mr. Quinn… and brought derision and disrespect on the Township and its Business Administrator, clearly with the capacity of undermining the delicate and important working relationship between the parties.
The Township committee accepted Schablik’s recommendation to suspend O’Hare, the 2009 “Officer of the Year,” for the equivalent of five 12-hour days.
That’s $3,400 in salary, according to Quinn. The suspension will be imposed at the police chief’s discretion, he said, declining further comment because of anticipated appeal.
Calling the penalty excessive, O’Hare’s lawyer asserted the officer had “cooperated to the fullest [and] was honest, forthcoming and reasonable” throughout the investigation.
Hard-working cops and local taxpayers are the real “losers,” Whitney said. The Township could have saved $25,000 in legal costs by waiting for a decision from the Public Employment Relations Commission, she said.
The police department “has sought to harshly penalize [O’Hare] for a confidential, internal union communication that was conducted while off-duty, sent from a personal email, within a closed, private email chain, solely to union members,” Whitney reiterated to the Township committee.
HIGHER STANDARD
But police must be held to a higher standard, Township Special Counsel John Iaciofano countered.
Such conduct “cannot be accepted in a police department that, case after case in New Jersey, has been recognized to be a paramilitary organization subject to a high degree of discipline and authority,” Iaciofano told the committee.
O’Hare’s “otherwise sound record” weighed against stiffer penalties, the special counsel noted.
Committeeman Matheu Nunn recused himself from the vote because he is the Township’s former municipal prosecutor.
