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Rutherford council fires police sergeant
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
By DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
HERALD NEWS
RUTHERFORD -- The Borough Council voted Monday to terminate the fourth officer involved in the June 2005 incident in which a Rutherford woman was mistakenly taken from her home by out-of-state bounty hunters.
Sgt. Nicholas Loizzi had been suspended with pay since July 26, 2005. The termination would be retroactive to the day of his suspension, and he may have to repay the borough for the salary he collected during that period, said Borough Administrator Timothy Stafford.
"The borough feels that Mr. Loizzi is a hazard to co-workers as well as members of the public, due to the underlying events," Stafford said Tuesday.
On June 28, 2005, two bounty hunters from Pennsylvania-based Mantis Recovery Service showed up on the doorsteps of Rutherford resident Claudia Santana. They thought she was Claudia Rincon, a fugitive from Morris County, who was wanted for allegedly embezzling $69,000 from a former employer.
Santana called the Rutherford Police Department, but when police arrived at her house, they looked at the photograph the bounty hunters provided and allowed the men to take her away.
She was released in Dover, after the men realized that they had made a mistake.
After the incident, four officers -- Sgt. Robert Buell, Officer Christopher Esposito, Officer Andrzej Hein and Loizzi -- were suspended with pay.
Loizzi was also charged with filing a false report and official misconduct, his attorney said Tuesday. In September, a state Superior Court judge recommended that the criminal charges against Loizzi be dropped.
Stuart J. Alterman, Loizzi's attorney, said Tuesday that his client was "wrongfully terminated" in a "tainted and prejudicial" process. Alterman said his client had waived the local process to appeal directly to the Office of Administrative Law, a state agency that hears disputes.
"The whole thing is ridiculous," Alterman said. "The way the department handled the whole thing, it's disgraceful."
Last November, the Borough Council voted to fire the three other officers involved in the bounty hunting incident.
"We really thought the decision was unfair and unduly harsh, given the total lack of supervision and training that the patrolmen had received from the Rutherford Police Department," James Patuto, the attorney for Hein, said Tuesday. "The Rutherford Police Department gave them no guidance whatsoever, and they decided that after not training them that they hadn't followed proper procedure, when Rutherford didn't actually have a procedure."
Four council members -- Maura Keyes, George Fecanin, Ray Frazier and Joseph Sommer -- voted for the termination. Councilman John Genovesi abstained.
Reach Denisa R. Superville at 973-569-7135 or
superville@northjersey.com.
