Anthony Sarni was fired after what has been deemed the "lingerie episode."
EDISON -- Township officials said that Edison will continue its efforts to fire a cop who admitted that he asked a woman to try on "outfits" at her hotel room after an emergency call, despite a judge's ruling that he should get his job back.
"While we agree with the judge that this employee's actions were 'deplorable' and 'reprehensible,' Edison cannot and does not accept the court's decision that this employee should return to duty," the town's labor lawyer, Allan C. Roth, said in an email Friday. "Township officials have received widespread encouragement from their residents to continue efforts to rid the police department of officers whose behavior is not in the best interest of the community. We also want to protect the integrity of our sworn police officers who work hard to ensure public safety."
http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/08/anthony_sarni_internal_affairs_documents.html
The decision from Mayor Thomas Lankey's administration to appeal the ruling to the Appellate Division comes just a day after Superior Court Judge Douglas K. Wolfson signed an order requiring the town to reinstate Sarni, give him back salary and possibly pay his attorney fees.
Sarni was fired in October after the September 2012 incident, in which he went back to a woman's hotel room after an emergency call while he was off duty but still in uniform, with his service weapon. The woman later claimed that Sarni, using marijuana he'd found in the room as leverage, pressured her to try on lingerie outfits, and then showed her that he had an erection and propositioned her for sex. She accused him of telling her that he had her "fate in my hands."
Sarni acknowledged that he'd asked the woman to try on "outfits," and that she'd modeled a few for him. But he denied that marijuana was involved in any way, and maintained that what happened between them was consensual.
The town's efforts to fire Sarni were stymied in part because the town missed a deadline to file disciplinary charges. In 2013, the prosecutor's office sent the town a letter saying that it would not pursue criminal charges, and that it had 45 days to file Internal Affairs charges of its own. The town waited 99 days, a delay that Judge Wolfson called "inexplicable."
Before the town's statement that it would appeal the case, Sarni sounded optimistic that the situation was soon to conclude.
"I want an end to this case and just want to get back to work," Sarni, who earned a salary of about $120,000, said in a written statement relayed by his attorney. "Hopefully the township will allow this to happen quickly."
Township officials did not explain whether they would seek a stay to preclude Sarni from returning to work, or whether they would suspend him with pay. Sarni sued almost immediately after he got fired.
"These events have cost the taxpayers enough," Sarni's lawyer, Steven D. Cahn, said in an email. "It is time for this case to come to a conclusion."
The judge's order also complicates county-wide efforts to police the police. The Middlesex County prosecutor's office sent a letter to the township saying that Sarni, as well as a police officer who sent racist text messages on his personal cellphone, would not be eligible to serve as a state witness -- barring them from doing many of the basic functions of police work. In Sarni's case, it was because he'd been untruthful.
But Wolfson said that the letter was "violative of N.J. Attorney General guidelines," because it was written before any court or judicial body had deemed Sarni untruthful. James O'Neill, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, would not comment about the judge's ruling.
The town claimed Sarni lied 23 times during his Internal Affairs interview over what Wolfson called the "lingerie episode," but Wolfson, along with an internal hearing officer, ruled that Sarni only lied because he didn't fully understand the nature of the investigation. Once that had been cleared up, Wolfson ruled, Sarni was honest about what transpired.
Sarni had been suspended with pay for two years before he was fired.
Brian Amaral may be reached at bamaral@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44. Find NJ.com on Facebook.