Trenton has a new acting police director replacing Parrey
TRENTON » In his first bold move in office, Mayor Reed Gusciora kicked police director Ernest Parrey Jr. to the curb right outside City Hall.
The move was expected, as Gusciora hinted on the campaign trail he would replace Parrey “with a lag.”
Gusciora formally announced the reins have been turned over to Mercer County undersheriff Pedro Medina, a former Trenton Police detective sergeant, at his swearing-in.
“It starts now,” Gusciora told The Trentonian , in a mob of supporters inside City Hall.
Medina will be on loan to the city which won’t have to pay a dime for his six-figure salary, Gusciora said.
The new mayor worked out a deal with Mercer County — the same Democratic machine that backed him in the runoff — to get Medina for free for up to three months.
That gives Gusciora time to conduct a national search for a permanent replacement. The mayor stressed this is not a tryout for Medina, who will not be considered for the permanent gig.
Asked how he worked out the freebie, Gusciora joked: “Don’t you worry. Don’t look too closely.”
Medina, a prominent voice in the city’s Puerto Rican community, spent nearly 30 years on the city police force, some of those years as the department’s public information officer.
He even took a leave of absence to run for mayor in 1990, and retired from TPD in 2011 following 29 years on the force.
Later that year, he took a position with the county as Jack Kemler’s undersheriff where has remained since.
Medina agreed to take up the daunting mantle of interim police director though it comes months after the death of his namesake son, who was affectionately known as
“Petey,” from a drug overdose.
Medina credited Kemler and Mercer County prosecutor Angelo Onofri for giving him a vote of confidence as the ideal candidate to temporarily fill the position.
“Although I know it’s an interim position, I’m going in as if I’m gonna be there forever,” Medina told The Trentonian. “I can’t go in thinking, ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’ You’re dealing with how to change the perception that Trenton is a
war zone. We do have some problems.”
Two undersheriffs will take over Medina’s responsibilities while he’s at TPD.
Medina has built up a reservoir of goodwill in a department that faced morale issues during Parrey’s tenure, though Medina wasn’t about to point fingers at his “dear friend” Parrey for shortcomings in the department.
“My plate is going to be full, but I fully believe it’s doable,” Medina said. “You’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with. I’m not looking to point the finger at anyone.
You can only do as much as you can with what they give you.”
Lucky for Medina, he inherits a department he knows well.
“The only advantage I have is I was there before,” he said. “I’m not going to a department that’s new to me, to a city that I do not know.”
Since he is taking over on an interim basis, Medina doesn’t expect to come in and implement wholesale change. He’ll get with the command staff about retooling some issues but will observe more than he talks as the post-Parrey glue guy.
“I can tell you as a good manager, no one goes into an organization and starts making change in an irresponsible way,” he said.
While he admits he may still have friends in the department, Medina promised those relationships won’t influence his decisions.
“You’re not going to make everybody happy,” he said. “One thing that I can assure you … there’s no personal agenda. You have to go in there with an open mind for what is the mayor looking for and what does the city really need. I have my own ideas. I have my own assessments.”