the sheehan affair

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Thursday, March 12, 2015 Page 13 Ramblings From The Editor Ideas, idle gossip, and occasionally important odds ’n’ ends... by Jack Wright last summer, and his department introduced a lauded community outreach campaign called Operation Reassurance). So why was he given the old heave-ho? According to the 3Ms, the chief is caught up in a criminal investigation being con- ducted by Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office, and he should not get the job on a permanent basis until the outcome of that investigation is complete. Who are the 3Ms? That’s City Manager Bruce MacLeod, Mayor Ed Mahaney and City Solicitor Tony Monzo. Why the nickname? For a start, all three names begin with an M (in case you hadn’t noticed). Secondly, these three run the city as a cabal that no doubt has brought some positive results for Cape May, but which also has acted, at times, as a tight-knit trio that employs intimidation and/or — let’s call it truth suppression, usually under the guise of “we can’t release this information for legal reasons.” The most blatant example of this (up until now) is Floodgate, the fiasco of how the new Convention Hall didn’t have f lood insurance while Hurricane Sandy was bat- tering the Jersey Shore. Watching MacLeod and Mahaney trying to wriggle out of that responsibility, while protected by a Monzo smokescreen, was not an edifying sight. And now we have the sordid takedown of Chief Sheehan. Let’s cut to the chase — there never WAS an investigation into the chief. The 3Ms were aware of this. Nevertheless, they cynically dragged the chief’s name into an investigation that was launched into CMPD’s number two, Lieutenant Chuck Lear , over his use of compensatory time. But don’t take my word for it. Last Friday, three days after that infamous vote, Robert U ntil the events of Tuesday, March 3, the most-asked question in these parts was… when will this godforsaken Arctic weather end?! Following a tumultuous meeting of Cape May City Council that afternoon, just about the only question being asked around town was… what the hell happened to our police chief?! For those of you who missed the news- paper stories and a resulting Facebook blitz, the council voted 3-2 to demote Chief of Police Rob Sheehan to the rank of Captain (provoking the furious resignation of newly appointed council member Jerry Inderwies ). The city was able to do this because the chief was one day away from completing a one- year probation contract he received when he succeeded Chief Diane Sorantino. It’s fair to assume that the population (along with quite a few people in City Hall) were blindsided by this development, given that Chief Sheehan has always been a popu- lar police officer and had marked his first year in the top job with a number of notable achievements (a series of arrests were made after a spree of alleged shoplifting incidents BIRD IS THE WORD A CAPE MAY CARTOON CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

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A special issue of Exit Zero

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Thursday, March 12, 2015 Page 13

Ramblings From The EditorIdeas, idle gossip, and occasionally important odds ’n’ ends... by Jack Wright

last summer, and his department introduced a lauded community outreach campaign called Operation Reassurance).

So why was he given the old heave-ho?According to the 3Ms, the chief is caught

up in a criminal investigation being con-ducted by Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office, and he should not get the job on a permanent basis until the outcome of that investigation is complete. Who are the 3Ms? That’s City Manager Bruce MacLeod, Mayor Ed Mahaney and City Solicitor Tony Monzo. Why the nickname? For a start, all three names begin with an M (in case you hadn’t

noticed). Secondly, these three run the city as a cabal that no doubt has brought some positive results for Cape May, but which also has acted, at times, as a tight-knit trio that employs intimidation and/or — let’s call it truth suppression, usually under the guise of “we can’t release this information for legal reasons.” The most blatant example of this (up until now) is Floodgate, the fiasco of how the new Convention Hall didn’t have f lood insurance while Hurricane Sandy was bat-tering the Jersey Shore. Watching MacLeod and Mahaney trying to wriggle out of that responsibility, while protected by a Monzo smokescreen, was not an edifying sight.

And now we have the sordid takedown of Chief Sheehan. Let’s cut to the chase — there never WAS an investigation into the chief. The 3Ms were aware of this. Nevertheless, they cynically dragged the chief ’s name into an investigation that was launched into CMPD’s number two, Lieutenant Chuck Lear, over his use of compensatory time.

But don’t take my word for it. Last Friday, three days after that infamous vote, Robert

Until the events of Tuesday, March 3, the most-asked question in these parts was… when will this godforsaken Arctic weather end?! Following a tumultuous meeting

of Cape May City Council that afternoon, just about the only question being asked around town was… what the hell happened to our police chief?!

For those of you who missed the news-paper stories and a resulting Facebook blitz, the council voted 3-2 to demote Chief of Police Rob Sheehan to the rank of Captain (provoking the furious resignation of newly appointed council member Jerry Inderwies). The city was able to do this because the chief was one day away from completing a one-year probation contract he received when he succeeded Chief Diane Sorantino.

It’s fair to assume that the population (along with quite a few people in City Hall) were blindsided by this development, given that Chief Sheehan has always been a popu-lar police officer and had marked his first year in the top job with a number of notable achievements (a series of arrests were made after a spree of alleged shoplifting incidents

BIRD IS THE WORDA CAPE MAY CARTOON

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

Page 14 Thursday, March 12, 2015

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Taylor, the Cape May County Prosecutor, administered an epic bitch slap to Tony Monzo. Taylor was furious at how Monzo selectively read, during the council meeting, from a letter faxed to the city by the prosecu-tor’s office the night before the meeting.

The 3Ms used that letter to sway the council vote against Sheehan.

Monzo read this excerpt at the council meeting, “The investigation will include a review of Chief Sheehan’s actions as well as a review of the initial information provided to this office in order to evaluate whether any witness or party willfully provided false information during a criminal investigation.”

And here is what Taylor said about Monzo in a statement to the media three days later: “He ignored two important sentences before the one he read at the public meeting which clearly shows Sheehan is not the target of any investigation and certainly not the target of a criminal investigation.”

Taylor called Monzo’s stunt “a blatant attempt” to shift blame for Tuesday’s action from the city “to my office.”

So, what IS the investigation and what

the hell is going on here?Last summer, retired CMPD Sergeant

Rusty Chew made a complaint to the Attorney General’s office about Lieutenant Lear’s comp time practices. Around the same time, John Campbell, the local representative of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, also registered a complaint, via the PBA’s attorney, reportedly without the knowledge of his colleagues on the force. Their com-plaints were based on the fact that Lear had signed a contract in January of 2013 which forbade him to take comp time.

So what exactly IS comp time? “Chuck is the guy who runs operations for every festi-val, every road race, every event that needs roads closed and diverted,” former Chief Sorantino told me this week. “He has a tre-mendous attention to detail and he loves this stuff. I would go to bed the night before these events and I wouldn’t be worrying about a thing, because I knew Chuck was in control.”

Lear was asked to be available for the long hours (sometimes from 4am till late evening) required to coordinate these events. In return for working these extra hours, Lear was never paid overtime. As an officer above the rank of sergeant, he isn’t entitled to it. Instead, the CMPD gave him time back (hour for hour) in the winter. “We really needed Chuck to do

this extra work in the summer months,” said Sorantino, “then in January and February, when we didn’t need him, we allowed him to take the time off. It’s standard practice in many police departments in resort towns.”

I asked Sorantino if she had ever heard any grumblings from other officers who resented Lear being handed these assign-ments. “Not once, and believe me, I would hear it if officers were unhappy.”

Solicitor Monzo told the Press of Atlantic City last week that the Lear arrangement had cost the city $11,000 in an 18-month period from January of 2013. I’m not sure where that number comes from. Lear wasn’t paid for his comp time. And while he was taking time off in deepest winter, the CMPD was not having to draft extra officers to cover him. Assuming that Lear will no longer be participating in this arrangement from now on, the CMPD will instead have to pay a sergeant to run the operations. That will cost $70 per hour, or around $3,000 per week during the summer season. For something that Lear did in return for time back in winter. Does this make sense to Cape May taxpayers?

Lear has been participating in the comp time agreement ever since he became a lieu-

RAMBLINGS FROM THE EDITORFrom Page 13

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

Thursday, March 12, 2015 Page 15

Beware the ides of March... Rob Sheehan is sworn in as Chief of Police a year ago. He was back at City Hall last Tuesday, in very different circumstances.

Page 16 Thursday, March 12, 2015

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tenant, 10 years ago, but the con-text changed after he signed a contract in January of 2013. That contract outlawed the practice of comp time. But it continued to happen, during the last year of Sorantino’s time as chief, and into the first year of Sheehan’s.

I asked Sorantino why she allowed the practice to continue. “I’m not in the habit of violating contracts,” she said. “I was with this police department for 26 years and always worked in the best interests of the city. I view comp time as time that is paid back in cash. This didn’t happen with Chuck Lear.”

But could she see how it could technically be viewed as a breach of contract? “Looking at what happened last week, I guess if people want to twist it, they can. But I think it’s an outrage. This is an officer who has had a stellar career, 36 years or so. And this is how they’re choosing to treat him towards the end of that career? That man is an asset to this police force and this com-munity.”

I asked Sorantino if there was any way that Bruce MacLeod could NOT have known that Lear was continuing to mark up his comp time on time sheets after signing his contract. “No, it’s ridiculous to imagine that Bruce didn’t know.”

Police time sheets pass through CMPD administra-tion and are then handed to the payroll clerk, Stacy Halbrunner, who either signs off on them and produces the paychecks, or sends them to MacLeod if there is a problem. I’ve been told by several people, including Sorantino, that Halbrunner is a stickler for accu-racy and was never a fan of Lear’s arrangement. So do you imagine that during the two years since Lear signed his contract that she never once went to MacLeod to inform him that this practice was ongoing?

Back to last summer. After receiving Rusty Chew’s com-

plaint, the Attorney General investigated and decided that there was no criminal case to answer, handing the report over to Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office. They also decided there was no criminal basis and handed it back to the city to see if they wanted to deal with it as an admin matter.

That’s where it should have ended. If the city thought that Lear’s arrangement was no longer appropriate, then Bruce MacLeod should have discussed this with Sheehan and Lear. And that would have been that. Lear could have chosen to continue working those extra hours, with-out comp time. Or the city could have turned to another officer, though bear in mind they would have had to pay that officer over-time at the rate of time and a half.

Instead, what happened next is that the city chose to hire an independent investigator to look into Lear’s arrangement. They hired former NJ State Major James Fallon, who now runs an investigation business. I sent a freedom-of-information request to the city to find out how much they paid Major Fallon, but I haven’t received that informa-tion yet.

Major Fallon interviewed various staff inside City Hall, including MacLeod. He tried to interview Lear and Sheehan, but both declined, on the advice of their lawyers. Why? Because Major Fallon had no right to conduct an investigation of the CMPD because he is no longer a “sworn” (that is, active) officer.

After Sheehan protested to the county about the legitimacy of the investigation, it advised Major Fallon and the city that the investigation had to be done in participation with Chief Sheehan, and that the results had to be sent to him first. But this never happened.

Instead, Major Fallon con-cluded his report and sent it to the city, copying Sheehan.

Concerned by what he con-

RAMBLINGS FROM THE EDITORFrom Page 14

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

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sidered to be dubious findings in the report, Sheehan sent his own conclusions to the County Prosecutor. During the city council meeting that decided his fate, Sheehan told the audi-ence that it was HIS report to the county that prompted them to send the March 2 letter that the 3Ms used to persuade city council members that there was an investigation into him.

To remind you of an extract from that March 2 letter — “to evaluate whether any witness or party willfully provided false information during a criminal investigation.”

Let me remind you that nei-ther Sheehan nor Lear provided ANY testimony to that inves-tigation, so they could hardly be the ones accused of provid-ing false testimony, as CMPD Administrative Assistant Dorann Heminway pointed out during the public portion of the city council meeting.

So who IS being investigated for providing false testimony (aka lying) to the Fallon report? Obviously, I don’t know that, but it can’t possibly be Sheehan or Lear.

Are you following me?Again, there never was an

investigation into Sheehan. There was only an investigation into Lear. An investigation into a practice that likely everyone in the CMPD and in City Hall knew about.

Meaning... this city spent what likely amounted to many thousands of dollars of your money on investigating an arrangement that they had full knowledge of. Understand this — although allegedly in breach of his contract, Lear continued to openly file his comp claims, and the city continued to rub-ber stamp that comp time. This only changed when Rusty Chew took the matter to the Attorney General’s office last summer.

I don’t know why Chew decided to make the complaint.

When I called him on Monday to ask, he said he wouldn’t com-ment. “I don’t think this issue should ever have been discussed in public,” he said.

You could make a good argu-ment that Chew is simply being a whistleblower. Frustrated by the continuance of a practice that seemed to be a breach of contract, he decided to take the matter fur-ther. And, if common sense had prevailed, the city would have realized that both the Attorney General and County Prosecutor’s Office poking into their busi-ness was a situation that needed immediate attention.

Don’t you think that the simple solution was for Bruce MacLeod to call a meeting between Sheehan and Lear to discuss whether the arrange-ment should continue? Maybe Lear would have finally satis-fied the mayor’s ambition and headed off into the sunset. (At a city budget meeting in March, 2011, Mayor Mahaney said, “I am proposing that the position of police lieutenant be abolished, and the current incumbent could retire or could go back to police sergeant.” He failed to gather enough support for this move.)

Chief Sheehan would have been allowed to get on with the business of running a police department. And Cape May would have been spared the embarrassment of being a laugh-ing stock this past week.

Instead, and I’m saying this again because I think it beggars

RAMBLINGS FROM THE EDITORFrom Page 16

CONTINUED ON PAGE 20

Lieutenant Chuck Lear... the target of a comp time investigation

Page 20 Thursday, March 12, 2015

belief, the city spent thousands of dollars of YOUR money to dis-cover what they already knew — that Lieutenant Lear was con-tinuing to claim comp time.

Why did they do this? Maybe you’re more imaginative than I am, but the only reason I can come up with is that they wanted to sully the name of Lear by attaching the stigma of an inves-tigation to his name instead of simply handling the issue inter-nally. This, presumably, would hasten the retirement that Mayor Mahaney had called for four years ago.

And, by association, the investigation would sully the name of his commanding offi-cer, who oversaw this breach of contract. And when you consider that his probationary period was coming to an end, Chief Sheehan could be put in a very vulnerable position. Which he was.

Now, again, you must be asking why did the city want to get Sheehan out of office?

For a couple years now, Mayor Mahaney has let it be known that he wants a Director of Public Safety, a civil servant to rule over the police and fire departments. And, presumably, the beach patrol, too.

I’m guessing he was prob-ably salivating over the pros-pect of the 2013 retirement of Chief Sorantino, Fire Chief Jerry Inderwies (who was consider-ing retiring at the same time as Sorantino but waited another year) and Buzz Mogck, who is nearing the end of his long tenure as Captain of Cape May Beach Patrol.

Why would Mayor Mahaney want a Director of Public Safety? Well, he may consider it finan-cially prudent. The pensions of police and fire chiefs are expen-sive, given that they are able to retire with potentially 30-odd years of salary awaiting them. And maybe he thinks there are inefficiencies within the public safety departments that could be

tackled under one manager. But mostly I think it’s

because he wants control over everything he can get his hands on. Regular readers of my col-umn, and people who pay atten-tion to what happens in City Hall, know that Bruce MacLeod has been in the mayor’s pocket since his first day on the job, more than six years ago. According to the Faulkner Act, which Cape May signed into law in 2004, the city is supposed to be run by the City Manager. The mayor is simply another member of coun-cil, albeit the one who sets the agenda, runs meetings and rep-resents the city at civic events. (He also gets to wield a gavel at meetings, something in which Mahaney seems to take particu-lar delight.) In blatant contra-vention of the Faulkner Act, Cape May is run the old-fashioned way, by a strong-armed mayor who uses bullying tactics to get his way.

This column would run to about twice this length if I was to make a list of those bullying tactics (many have appeared in previous columns). Instead, I can give you a fresh example of where the mayor has tried to get involved in police business.

Last August, he turned up outside of Carney’s at 1:30am after there had been a fight inside of the bar (I guess he monitors the police scanner). Mahaney asked a police officer to close Carney’s down. The officer relayed this news to owner Joe Carney, who came to a compromise with the mayor. He agreed to close five minutes early, at 1:55am. In return (Carney told me this week), the mayor would keep the Division of Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) off his back.

“On Monday morning, the ABC were at my door, doing a spot-check of my business,” Carney said. “Honestly, I used to take offence at what Exit Zero wrote about the mayor. I thought it was harsh. But now I get it. I live in fear of my liquor license

RAMBLINGS FROM THE EDITORFrom Page 18

CONTINUED ON PAGE 22

Page 22 Thursday, March 12, 2015

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being revoked by this guy. He tells me when I see him, ‘Joe, I’ve been keeping you in busi-ness for years!’”

Kudos to Carney for speaking out. Other business owners who have been intimidated by the mayor don’t want to speak up because they fear he will hurt their business.

As for other motivations behind this “witch hunt,” as Inderwies called it, there have been some suggestions that Tony Monzo should have recused himself from this affair since he was reportedly angry with how the CMPD handled the arrest of his son following an alleged burglary at Collier’s Liquor Store in Cape May on Christmas Eve. I don’t have enough information to comment on that, but I do know that the actions of Mayor Mahaney have been very good for Monzo’s law firm. A look through council records show that Monzo was paid more than $730,000 from 2009 through the summer of 2014. Not bad for what should, in ordinary circumstances, be a fairly simple, part-time gig.

I don’t know if Monzo charges the city every time he goes on a mission with the mayor — when I asked him, a few years ago, to disclose how much he would charge

RAMBLINGS FROM THE EDITORFrom Page 20

the city for sending me a letter threatening legal action following a column I wrote about the mayor, he refused, saying it was “attor-ney-client privilege”. But I do know he pops up on business that really shouldn’t require any legal representation. In 2011, the 3Ms turned up at the offices of the Cape May County Herald to tell the editor they were unhappy with reporter Jack Fichter’s coverage of the Convention Hall opening.

Nothing came of that... but guess what happened a few months after Fichter took over as Managing Editor of the Cape May Star and Wave last year? The city pulled its public notice ads from what has been the paper of record on this island since the 1850s. Now there’s a dish of revenge served cold!

Speaking of Convention Hall, during a walk-through for some city employees before the 2011 opening, Monzo was there, too. One witness told me, “He was commenting on missing tiles and missing lightbulbs. I thought to myself — ‘why on earth do we need the lawyer here for this?’”

Last summer, one of our writers was working on a straightforward story about parking. She made appointments to speak with Sheehan, then MacLeod and Mahaney. When she turned up at City Hall, Monzo was also there. Your taxpayers’ dollars at work.

And off the top of my head, I know of six instances where local businessmen were subjected to The 3M Experience — being put through a ringer by Messrs MacLeod, Mahaney and Monzo — when all it would have taken to resolve the business at hand was a quick meeting (or phone call) with the City Manager who is, remember, supposed to make the day-to-day decisions in town.

That’s not the way government of a thriv-ing, happy little beach town is supposed to function. I believe the public face of Cape May is being blighted by the actions of Mayor Mahaney and his cohorts.

There have been rumblings in the street about forcing a recall election with the inten-tion of booting the mayor — I’ve heard a petition has already begun (it would need the signature of 25% of voters). But recalls cost money, and I think Mahaney has already shown he’s too willing to waste taxpayer dol-lars on personal crusades. If this wretched affair plays out the way I expect it to, the most dignified thing for the mayor to do would be to take a walk… and maybe bring the other 2Ms with him.

If you have suffered any unfortunate treatment from City Hall, email me at [email protected] or call my direct line at (609) 600-1418. If requested, I will honor your anonymity.