by Steve Strunsky, Associated Press
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Sheriff Gerald Speziale does not shy away from the limelight.
Speziale, who was elected sheriff by Passaic County voters in November, had a dramatic 15-year career as a New York City Police officer spent largely as an undercover investigator assigned to a Drug Enforcement Administration Task force.
Like a later-day Frank Serpico, another NYPD alumnus portrayed on the big screen by Al Pacino, Speziale is going public with his undercover exploits in an upcoming book and film.
“Without a Badge,” the tentative title of both projects, chronicles Speziale’s days investigating Columbia’s Cali drug cartel and other criminal enterprises in South and Central America from 1991 to 1997.
“We’re certainly talking about a major film, and a major star,” said David Permut, who is producing the film for Warner Brothers, with Antoine Fuqua of “Training Day” lined up as director. “The one thing that studio executives and I have joked about is that this could be the first in a series of Jerry Speziale movies.”
But apart from stories in the Hollywood Reporter, which has written about Speziale’s film project, the sheriff has attracted some less-than-favorable headlines recently, following a failed attempt to arrest the leader of a phony document ring.
On July 31, Speziale’s office raided the Paterson storefront of Mohamed el-Atriss, whom the sheriff said was heading a ring that produced so-called international drivers licenses and other phony documents.
Speziale and the FBI also said El-Atriss had provided false documents to two of the Sept. 11 terrorists on American Airlines Flight 77. El-Atriss was not charged with any crime by the FBI after the agency questioned him, but he remained a suspect in an ongoing investigation.
But when the sheriff’s black-clad deputies in assault gear moved in to arrest el-Atriss, they learned from his employees that he had gone to Egypt two days earlier. Speziale had invited several media organizations, including the Associated Press, to watch the raid first-hand.
On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Chris Christie, and the state attorney general, Peter Samson, sent a clear signal of their disapproval when they announced a new policy requiring that state and local law enforcement agencies consult with their federal counterparts before seeking warrants in potentially terror-related cases.
Speziale’s critics leaped at the opportunity.
“He’s just a publicity hound, a cowboy and a hot dog,” said Ronald S. Fava, a former Passaic County prosecutor, and Speziale’s Republican opponent last November. “In 13 years as prosecutor, we never invited the media along on a raid, it’s unprofessional and dangerous.”
Speziale, whose office is now seeking el-Atriss’s extradition after he turned himself in to Egyptian officials, insisted the investigation was a success, in that el-Atriss’s activities were halted.
“It’s very important to put in the media that the criminal element is aware that if you decide to break the law, we are going to reach out and grab you,” he added.
Marilyn Zdobinski, acting first assistant Passaic County prosecutor, said her office approved the el-Atriss warrant after it indicated that Speziale’s office had been in contact with the FBI about the matter.
“Quite frankly, we had no reason to think the FBI didn’t know about it,” Zdobinski said.
Speziale, 42, who lives with his family in Passaic County, began his law enforcement career with the NYPD in 1982, working largely with the DEA’s Joint Drug Enforcement Task Force. His colleagues included Bernard Kerik, later New York’s police commissioner.
He was eligible to retire after 15 years because he was shot in a spectacular incident in a Bronx vestibule in 1986, in which the gunman shot and killed a civilian woman and wounded a second officer, before being shot to death himself.
Following his retirement from the NYPD, he met a book agent, Frank Weimann of The Literally Group in Manhattan, who agreed that a first person account of Speziale’s covert activities would make for compelling reading. The particular dynamic of the book, which Weimann expects out of Kennsington Publishing this spring, flows from Speziale’s relationship with a confidential informant who later betrays him.
“The book itself is as exciting as the life this guy has led, that’s for sure,” Weimann said.
Speziale went back to work for two and half years heading the Passaic County Sheriff’s narcotics bureau. Then, in May 2000, Speziale took over as chief of police in New Hope, Pa. The job lasted five months, because his predecessor successfully sued local authorities to get his job back.
From there, Speziale went to work as chief of the Bergen County Sheriff’s uniformed division, where he remained until he was elected to his current job.
“I’m the scapegoat on this one,” he said. “But you know what? It doesn’t change me, and I’m going forward.
“All I can say is, over the last 20 years, when I’ve watch my friends get killed, and I’ve had to take lives myself and had to put my life on the line every day for the public, I wasn’t running around saying, ‘Oh, I wonder if I’m going to be famous over this?”’