A “profanity-laden” phone call to dispatch in which Plainsboro Police Corporal Nicholas Procaccini bashes police administration, along with video evidence that he repeatedly failed to obtain credentials from drivers he stopped, is enough to warrant termination from the department.
That’s according to Plainsboro Police Chief Richard Furda, who testified as the township and its police department wrapped up questioning of its key witnesses in the termination case against Procaccini on January 18.
“That is not professional; it is just not what I expect of my officers, and I certainly don’t expect it of a 20-year vet,” said Furda.
Videos depicting Procaccini’s alleged violations of police policy and recorded phone calls to the police dispatcher were aired during the five-hour hearing, which began with testimony from Lieutenant Thomas DeSimone and ended with Furda.
DeSimone testified that the credential violations were brought to his attention by Jay Duffy, then a sergeant, who was conducting reviews of officers’ motor vehicle stops. He passed the information on to Lieutenant Christopher Weidman, who asked DeSimone to review the matter.
In question were incidents on May 10, May 14, and May 19, of 2009. In all three videos — shown during the hearing — Procaccini did not ask for credentials.
In the first, which occurred on May 10 at 2:11 a.m., Procaccini pulled up behind a driver in a white sedan parked at a green light in the center lane of an unidentified road. When Procaccini put on his lights, the driver pulled over on the side of the road. Procaccini walked up to the car to make sure the driver was awake. The man can be heard telling Procaccini that he was visiting his girlfriend and was from Illinois and unfamiliar with the area.
Procaccini asked the man if he needed directions, and when the driver declined, Procaccini told him to have a good night and let him drive away.
“I would have looked further into a possible DUI violation,” said DeSimone, who made specific reference to the time of night the incident occurred.
On the same video, Procaccini is heard speaking with Officer Joseph Breyta, who was on a probationary period with the police department. Procaccini, who was his supervisor and field training officer, was in charge of writing Breyta’s two-month review, which would be used to determine whether or not Breyta would remain with the department.
Procaccini is heard telling Breyta “it’s all bulls—t.” He asked him to read it and see if there were any details he wanted Procaccini to add to the review.
“Their evaluations are critical to their being retained as police officers,” DeSimone said of the reviews, which he said the officers “hang their hats on.” DeSimone also said that Procaccini can be heard asking Breyta if he had received any written reprimands over the two-month period — information he should have already known as his supervisor.
“He’s not effectively evaluating the officer if he’s saying it’s all bulls—t,” DeSimone added. “It seems to me that Procaccini didn’t take it very seriously.”
Procaccini’s attorney, Timothy Smith, asked DeSimone whether he investigated to get the background on Procaccini’s comments to Breyta. Breyta had been worried about the implications of a review and about his career, and Procaccini was trying to make him feel better about it, Smith said. He asked if he was “aware of any other conversation that could put the tidbit into context.”
“Patrolman Breyta’s career was never in jeopardy,” said DeSimone, adding that Breyta was doing a good job. “It wasn’t content so much as it was an all-bulls—t attitude.”
The next video depicted another stop that Procaccini performed on May 14. Procaccini asked the driver for his credentials, but when the driver indicated he had to get out of the car to get his registration from his back seat, Procaccini said he would only need his driver’s license. Procaccini is seen walking back to the patrol car, where he reviewed the driver’s license. Moments later, he walked back to the driver, gave the driver’s license back, and told him to “Have a good night; just slow down a little bit, OK?”
The department played another video depicting two incidents in the morning of May 19. Procaccini was parked on Wyndhurst Drive and pulled the first car over just after 8:30 a.m. He walked up to the car, and said to the driver: “You’re going a little bit too fast — just slow down next time, OK?”
At 9:15 a.m. on the same morning, Procaccini stopped another car, saying essentially the same thing to that driver. DeSimone testified that there were four more stops that he reviewed on video from that morning that were not shown during the hearing. In all but one of those stops, Procaccini did not ask for credentials. There was one case in which he pulled up to the other vehicle and talked to the driver through the window, DeSimone said.
When questioned about the stops, Procaccini wrote to DeSimone that “I believe it was my discretion to do so.” DeSimone and the police department’s lawyer argued that under the police department’s rules and regulations, a police officer has discretion regarding whether or not to issue a ticket, but not with regard to whether or not he or she asks for credentials.
Smith argued that there is an exception written in the general rules and regulations that police officers can use their discretion to modify the procedures as they feel necessary.”It doesn’t say which procedures can or cannot be modified,” he said, adding that technically, Procaccini can use his discretion as to whether or not he thinks it is necessary to ask for credentials in certain situations. “It’s silent with regard to that issue.”
DeSimone said that if there were “six stops, and he did not ask for credentials on one of them, it wouldn’t be a problem,” but that Procaccini had established a pattern of consistently violating the rules and regulations. “It might have been OK if he articulated the reasons he did so for one stop. If there is a reason why you had to modify it, tell us why you had to modify it.”
Furda also testified on the motor vehicle stops, saying “I found these to be somewhat egregious.” He said that it was unsafe to allow a driver to drive off after a motor vehicle stop without obtaining their credentials and that it was even more significant given his rank and his position as a supervisor.
Furda also testified about Procaccini’s alleged violations of sick leave, including one instance in which Procaccini got into an accident on Old Trenton Road and Route 571 in East Windsor while driving during a day he was out on sick leave, and was supposed to be confined to his home.
The accident occurred at 5:44 p.m. on June 16, 2009, but Procaccini did not call into dispatch, as policy states, to report he was leaving.
A recording of a phone call Procaccini made to the dispatcher after the accident, however, was used by police to show that Procaccini was not only in violation of sick leave, but that he was “unprofessional.”
In the recording, Procaccini can be heard using frequent profanity. He described rear-ending someone and said that he had been on his way to the municipal complex to discuss matters with the police administration. “I wouldn’t have been on the road if it wasn’t for these f—ing a—holes,” he said on the tape.
“He was talking about the command staff and, I’m assuming, Sergeant Duffy,” Furda said. “This shows a clear disdain for the command staff in the police department. It shows his lack of desire to follow the policy.”
Furda also mentioned another occasion in which Procaccini left his home, without calling to the dispatcher, to help his sister with regard to a aggressive driver situation in East Windsor.
Furda said he was also offended by what Procaccini had told Breyta and that it was “not the right message to send to a new hire.”
Also during the hearing, DeSimone testified with regard to Procaccini’s alleged misuse of the department’s E-mail system. DeSimone said he was asked to conduct the investigation by Furda.
DeSimone was told to look into whether Procaccini signed off on his review of new orders and regulations sent to each officer through the department’s Power DMS system — software that keeps track of general orders, rules and regulations, directives from the attorney general and prosecutor’s office, and memos.
Officers are required, under written police policy, to electronically sign off on the directives and orders by entering their badge numbers and passwords to send an electronic receipt to the system (which is separate from the department’s E-mail system) once they have read each new item.
The police chief reviews the inbox and can see how many receipts he has received for each directive. The chief originally had asked DeSimone to tell all of the officers to clear their inboxes and sign off on policies because he had found in his periodic check of the system that there were policies from 2008 that officers still had not signed off on. DeSimone E-mailed the sergeants, asking them to pass the message to all of their officers, giving them a deadline of April 21.
In July, Furda asked DeSimone to look into Procaccini’s use of the system and whether or not he was up to date in signing off on the policies. By this time, three other officers were also being investigated by other lieutenants for not signing off on the policies, but DeSimone said he had no knowledge regarding how those cases were handled. In response to a question from Smith, he also denied knowing whether another officer had up to 90 policies left unsigned in his account.
“I looked into Procaccini’s because that’s where Furda directed me,” he said. “The other three officers were investigated by other people.”
DeSimone said he found that between April 17 and July, there had been 51 entries that Procaccini had not signed off on — 33 of which occurred while Procaccini was at work and not on sick leave, DeSimone testified.
When DeSimone submitted a questionnaire to Procaccini about the matter, Procaccini wrote back that he knew how to check the Power DMS system and that he may or may not have reviewed some of the directives in question. He read: “I am not aware if I am up to date or not,” from Procaccini’s response.
However, DeSimone said he found during his investigation that Procaccini had reviewed other documents, including a promotional document, during that time and that his last log-in to the system was on June 26, 2009.
Smith pointed out that the system only tracks the receipts when an officer signs off on a policy, and not whether or not an officer actually reads the directive. He also said that because DeSimone E-mailed the sergeants asking them to pass along the message to their units about checking the system, “you don’t know for sure whether or not he got the instruction” to do so.
Also, “if this is such an important issue, why did the department wait two years to investigate this?” Smith asked, referring to the initial direction to officers to review policies that had been sitting in the system for about two years.
DeSimone testified that the chief is the only person in the department who has access to the system’s inbox and is the only person who can determine whether officers signed off on certain policies. He goes into the inbox periodically to check. Still, argued Smith, “at any point, from March, 2007, to July, 2009, the chief had the ability to check in on these.”
The public hearing process began in October. 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.
A continuation of the hearing scheduled for January 20, during which Furda was to be cross-examined by Smith, was postponed and has not yet been rescheduled.
