The Attorney General should take over IA functions for a PD out of control.
The Edison Police Department has established itself as a moral dead zone, so it's no surprise that its latest caper involves a cop getting his job back - two years after Internal Affairs said that he coerced a young woman into modeling lingerie in a motel room while wearing his uniform and sidearm, and helped her flush her marijuana down the toilet.
That's life in New Jersey's fifth largest city, where criminal behavior is just a gateway to redemption.
It would be easy to blame this bizarre twist on the judge who followed the law, but he had little choice giving Officer Anthony Sarni his badge back: The Edison's Internal Affairs unit butchered the investigation of the 2013 incident, blew a 45-day deadline to bring administrative charges (it only missed by two months), and didn't even interview the officer until 30 days after the Middlesex Prosecutor concluded its own probe.
So Sarni is back on the job after being fired last October, which followed two years in the penalty box at full six-figure salary.
And we go on pretending that this Lord of the Flies frat house is a paragon of justice.
The Sarni fiasco serves as another reminder that even when the Edison PD wants to do the right thing - which is often mere coincidence - you wonder how it can be trusted in the first place.
For that reason, the Legislature - regardless of the nonsensical barriers - needs to refocus its efforts on taking internal affairs authority away from the EPD and turning it over to the Attorney General of New Jersey.
It's not hard to do. A smart bill (S-1236), authored by Sen. Peter Barnes (D-Middlesex), was already debated a year ago: It establishes a two-year pilot program in which the Attorney General performs IA functions for Edison, and then submits a report to the Governor that recommends whether the program should be expanded.
MORE: End police impunity in Edison | Editorial
That isn't an onerous task, but once the bill got to the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee, the AG was "extremely negative about it," committee chair Sen. Linda Greenstein (D-Mercer) recalled.
Indeed, assistant AG Stephan Finkel testified that county prosecutors already monitor local IA units, and "when there are problems," the prosecutor applies "greater scrutiny" and the Attorney General "can monitor that progress."
It doesn't seem as though the AG adequate served that function in the Sarni case, leading us to conclude it is either bungling its priorities or asleep at its desk.
Because the dysfunction of the Edison PD continues, with or without this conditional "monitoring."
It was only seven months ago that another upright servant, David Pedana, was reinstated from a suspension for having racist text messages on his phone because the mayor didn't have the clout to fire him. Pedana's bigotry was uncovered after investigators probed the fire-bombing of one cop's home by another cop. Meanwhile, four others are in court on misconduct charges.
Now come Sarni. If he were investigated by the state, "papers would be filed on time, the best investigators would work it, and the AG would make sure procedures are met," Barnes points out. "And that guy would be gone."
Instead, we're learning again that cops cannot objectively process complaints against other cops, and neither can the local prosecutor. That job should be left up to a state-level authority.
The Legislature has two choices: Bring S-1236 up for a vote in the next session, or expect the Edison PD to remain the serial farce that it is.
More: Recent Star-Ledger editorials.
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