By Riley Yates
nj.com
CLARK, N.J. — Two Clark police officers caught using racial slurs can be fired, a judge has ruled, rejecting their claims that the investigation against them took so long they shouldn’t face discipline.
The decision strikes a blow to efforts by Clark Police Chief Pedro Matos and Sgt. Joseph Teston to keep their jobs, despite being secretly recorded using epithets that included the n-word.
It represents the latest development in a long-running racism scandal that roiled the suburban community in Union County, cost local taxpayers millions of dollars and led to the downfall of its longtime mayor, Sal Bonaccorso.
Matos, Teston and a third cop embroiled in the controversy had sued to block their discipline. The Dec. 18 ruling by Superior Court Judge Lisa Miralles Walsh clears the way for those hearings to proceed, in a tortured case in which those officers have spent more than five years collecting their six-figure salaries and annual raises while suspended.
Charles Sciarra, an attorney for Matos, said he has not decided whether he will appeal the ruling. He said he expects his client will face his disciplinary proceedings soon in the new year, and criticized outgoing state Attorney General Matthew Platkin and his office’s handling of the probe.
“Three-plus years doing a quote/unquote investigation,” Sciarra said in a statement. “Another two years dragging his feet proving ever-so-slightly that an investigation was ongoing. AG Platkin’s history of delay and incompetence in police investigations is a matter of historical fact, period.”
The state Office of the Attorney General did not respond to a request for comment.
The scandal erupted into the public eye after revelations that the township paid a $400,000 hush-money settlement in 2020 to a whistleblower, Lt. Antonio Manata. He had threatened to expose the damning recordings he’d surreptitiously made of the officers and Bonaccorso.
Platkin called for Matos and Teston to be fired in November 2023, following a long-delayed criminal investigation. He also called for the demotion of the third officer, Capt. Vincent Concina, who was accused by Manata of retaliation.
Platkin did so as he released a report that excoriated township officials for their efforts to cover up the tapes, which captured Matos, Teston and Bonaccorso casually tossing off slurs against Black people. Bonaccorso also called women in law enforcement “f------ disasters.”
In their lawsuits, the three cops maintained the protracted probe violated their procedural safeguards. Their lawyers described the delays as “ungodly” and “absurdly long,” and insisted their clients shouldn’t face any discipline as a result.
State law requires that internal affairs charges be filed within 45 days of gathering “sufficient information” to support them, a clock that begins ticking once a criminal investigation concludes. The officers’ suits claimed the inquiries against them were effectively over by April 2022, more than 1 1/2 years before the Attorney General’s office issued its report.
Prosecutors denied slow-walking their work, saying the time was well spent, given the nature of the allegations, the need to investigate them fully and the potential for criminal charges related to the cover-up or allegations of biased policing.
At a Dec. 3 court hearing in Elizabeth, lawyers for the attorney general and the Union County Prosecutor’s Office said neither the length nor the effectiveness of the investigation matters for disciplinary proceedings to move forward. Rather, the sole question was whether that inquiry was ongoing, which it was, they told Walsh.
Walsh’s decision was made public in a brief order, but the reasoning behind it was filed under seal. That came after the Attorney General’s office objected to the release of details of authorities’ investigative records, saying they deserved to be kept confidential.
Attorneys for Teston and Concina did not respond to requests for comment.
The probe faced criticism from legal and law enforcement experts over its slow speed and lack of transparency. It began in July 2020, when Union County prosecutors seized control of the police department, citing unspecified “credible allegations of misconduct.”
But the public became aware of the recordings only in March 2022, when NJ Advance Media published some of them and revealed details of the settlement.
Ultimately, the recordings and payout produced no criminal case. But the investigation unearthed unrelated allegations against Bonaccorso, who was charged with running his landscaping business out of his township office, and forging signatures on permit applications for work his company performed.
Bonaccorso is serving three years of probation after pleading guilty in January to conspiracy to commit official misconduct and forgery. He was forced to resign days after being sworn into a seventh term and is barred from holding public office again.
In the meantime, the three officers remain on the Clark payroll, at a cost of more than $2.6 million in salary alone since they were suspended, according to township records.
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