Jay Duffy, then a sergeant with the Plainsboro Police Department, was routinely reviewing tapes of his officers’ motor vehicle stops when he saw Corporal Nicholas Procaccini pulling someone over.
But instead of pulling behind the driver, he pulled up next to the car, rolled down his window, and spoke to the driver from his patrol car. He did not ask for any credentials.
As Duffy went through more tapes, he also saw Procaccini pull up behind a car at a traffic light. Procaccini had reported his location over the radio, stating that the car was sitting at the green light. Instead of investigating, however, Procaccini let the car drive away while another patrol officer was on the way.
These alleged incidents not only violated police policy regarding conducting traffic stops, but they were repetitive, Lieutenant Duffy testified on December 16, during a continuation of a hearing over Procaccini’s termination. The hearing is expected to continue on Monday, December 28, at 1 p.m., and again on Wednesday, December 30, at 9:30 a.m.
Over the course of two and a half hours, Duffy testified on just two of the four charges of misconduct the police department and township have brought against Procaccini, who has been with the department for 19 years.
The police department is pursuing Procaccini’s termination based on four charges: he was late for duty; he did not follow protocol when making motor vehicle stops; he violated procedure dealing with sick leave; and he violated policy in using the department’s E-mail system. Central to the township’s argument is that there are strict laws and regulations governing police departments in New Jersey, and that Procaccini, who served as the president of the Plainsboro PBA for 14 years, violated those laws.
Procaccini’s attorney, however, has characterized Procaccini, of South Lane in West Windsor, as a whistleblower. He alleges that the charges are for behavior exhibited by many officers in the department and that his client is unfairly being targeted as a result of defending another officer whom he says was terminated for filing a sexual harassment complaint.
That officer, Jennifer Wittmer, has filed her own lawsuit against the township and its police department based on allegations of sexual harassment. Another officer, Jason Mariano, has also filed a claim alleging that, like Procaccini, he was targeted after coming to her defense.
The hearing began on December 16 with the township labor attorney Arthur Thibault, of Liberty Corner, calling Duffy as a police witness. The first charge for which Duffy was asked to testify was that Procaccini was late for duty.
Police allege that Procaccini reported to work a little before 10 a.m. — just before a scheduled active shooter training session — on a day in April he was scheduled to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., his regular shift. Procaccini allegedly did not have permission to come in late, they argue.
Duffy said that on April 21, 2009, Duffy’s squad was scheduled for a regularly scheduled day shift from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. On that day, Lieutenant Thomas DeSimone had scheduled the active shooter training session.
Duffy said he arrived just before 6 a.m. and immediately went over to the training site to set up. At 10 a.m., when the training session was supposed to begin, he noticed that Procaccini was not at the site, so he called headquarters. Procaccini arrived a little after 10 a.m. and participated in training.
He said the incident prompted him to examine Procaccini’s time card, and he found that Procaccini had punched in at 9:56 a.m., just before he was supposed to be at training, and not for his scheduled work shift at 6 a.m.
Duffy sent him an E-mail, questioning him about the incident, and Procaccini wrote back, telling him that he was given permission to come in at 10 a.m. because he was given an “owed day,” which occurs when management schedules an officer to work on a day off, and in return, schedules a different day off. “But this was a regular routine work day,” Duffy said. Procaccini also said he was reassigned from being on the road to coming in for a training day, which Duffy disputed.
Duffy explained that DeSimone is the one who scheduled the training and would have had to give Procaccini permission to come in later than his regular work time of 6 a.m. “I could not find that he was given any permission.”
Duffy said he did not have any knowledge at the time that Procaccini had been previously reprimanded for a similar case. It was not until after he submitted a report to internal affairs about the incident that he found out that Procaccini had been verbally reprimanded for a similar incident regarding a shooting training, which was recorded in 2008, eight months before the April incident.
During cross-examination, Timothy Smith, of South Orange, Procaccini’s attorney, focused many of his questions over whether it had been past practice to allow officers to come in just before the training on a training day. Duffy disputed the matter, however, saying that there were no contractual training days, but rather that trainings were scheduled on regular work days. Officers may be asked to come in for work days on days they are supposed to be off.
Smith also referred to Officer Jason Mariano, who was scheduled to train that day, but also came in at 10 a.m., like Procaccini. When questioned about this, Duffy said “I don’t know where he was working that day, but he wasn’t scheduled to work a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. day,” he said. But, “his responsibilities that day were to come in for training.”
He said he was aware that “something went wrong that day because I know he had to stay that day.”
However, Smith said, suggesting that Procaccini was being unfairly targeted: “He was supposed to come in at 6 a.m. but came in at 10 a.m., and he wasn’t charged.”
“If Mariano, it’s discovered, was late on April 21, even though he was scheduled to be off on that day, he should have been considered late if he came late for training,” Smith asked. Duffy replied, “Yes.”
When Smith asked about other types of training, including Breathalyzer training in Sayreville, he asked Duffy whether officers were allowed to leave early instead of finishing their regular work days. Duffy denied the suggestion that officers left right from the facility and said that “you go back to the police department and ask a supervisor if you can go home early.”
Smith asked why charges against Procaccini for this matter were not brought until July, three months after the incident, Duffy said he was trying to find out if Procaccini did, in fact, have authorization to come in late. Once no record of permission was found, he sent the report, but it was the chief who initiated the charges. “I recommended that the complaint be sustained so that was my understanding of where we were going,” he said, of pursuing the charges against Procaccini. “We needed to do something about this.”
With regard to Duffy’s review of the tapes in which he allegedly observed Procaccini’s failure to ask for credentials, Duffy said he was looking at the tapes of Procaccini, Officer Joseph Breyta, Officer Eric Potts, and Officer Joseph Diggs. He said he did not look at all of the tapes equally, and that he actually reviewed more of Breyta’s tapes.
“They were just easier to find,” he said, explaining that he has to go to dispatch, find a log of all the stops they made, and which car they were driving while they made the stops. Then, he looks up the tapes for each individual car and looks up the times. Because Breyta is very proactive, he found many more of his tapes, he said.
Procaccini’s tapes were not the only tapes with which he found issue. “Regarding the credential issue, I don’t believe that was a problem (with the other officers), but there were other problems,” he said.
While Duffy maintained that he did not have a discussion of the tapes with Procaccini in this case, he did recall sitting down to review the tapes with Procaccini in a prior incident with regard to Diggs. “Corporal Procaccini and I both looked at video because I found that Patrolman Diggs was not asking for credentials.”
At that time, Duffy said they discussed the video. “He did not maintain the same opinion as I did in that he did not feel it was inappropriate.” Duffy said he told Procaccini, however, to watch out for it.
Questions about the treatment of Diggs and how he was reprimanded caused a short shouting match between the two attorneys, and hearing officer Robert Czech had to quell the shouting.
Thibault said he believed Diggs’s case should be left out of the hearing, while Smith argued that it was significant because “you have to have uniformity in the treatment of officers. To suggest that it was not relevant to how this case was handled is preposterous,” he said.
When Smith alleged corruption, Thibault accused him of wanting to “make statements” because of the hearing’s public nature. “We’re talking about a corporal with over 19 years on the job. You take into account the number of years somebody has and whether or not they are a supervisor.”
Further, “we are not trying what happened to Diggs; we’re trying what [Procaccini] did.”
Smith responded: “If this type of action is something that is so commonplace, and it’s only being disciplined to any degree in this case, it’s wrong,” he said of the department’s actions to pursue Procaccini based on his failure to obtain credentials.
Duffy testified that he wrote a written reprimand for Diggs. “I did do a report to the internal affairs officer. I put on there that Diggs had this problem, and that I’m going to manage it.”
“I was going to get into a training and the whole nine yards with him,” he said.
However, “I’ve never seen, other than Procaccini’s stops and Diggs, an officer walk up to the car repeatedly for five stops consecutively, and never ask for credentials.” Still, Diggs’s situation “was nowhere near as egregious as Corporal Procaccini’s.”
