WAR OF WORDS
Mercer County Sheriff and Trenton Mayor disagree over handling of acting director, officer deployment in city
TRENTON >> Jack Kemler and Pedro Medina, both former Trenton cops, had a lot to say about Mayor Reed Gusciora.
But when the topic turned the mayor’s new pick for city police director, the Mercer County sheriff and undersheriff didn’t have much to say at all.
“I worked with Carol. I like Carol,” said Kemler, who started off as a patrol officer with Trenton Police in 1983 rising through the ranks to sergeant – the same position as Russell. “I wish her the best. She’s gonna have her hands full the first couple months getting the place situated. She’s been out of the business a little, but I wish her the best.”
Russell, who retired from TPD in 2010 following 20 years of service, was nominated by the mayor last month to replace acting police directors Lt. Chris Doyle and Pedro Medina.
Doyle was only in the position a matter of days while Medina was there for more than three months, on borrowed free time from the county.
Medina, a retired 29-year TPD cop who was a detective sergeant and spent time as the department’s spokesman, must have taken to heart that lesson about “if you don’t have anything nice to say.”
“Good luck,” Medina offered.
He was in a tough position after getting shoved aside so quickly by the mayor after shaking things up at the department.
Medina, who knows was it’s like to have snippy detractors in the department, is now back on the other end of the scuttlebutt since he exited at TPD director.
He did offer that he’s gotten calls from others expressing opinions about the mayor’s decisions about the police director position. He knows firsthand what Russell’s in for.
“I have to say this: AfricanAmerican, Caucasian, a lot of Latinos, they’re the ones calling me, ‘What the hell’s he [Gusciora] doing? What happened there? That’s not the way you handle that.’ And you know what? I stepped back. I agree with them it was not right. That’s not the professional and moral way of handling this,” Medina said of his ouster. “Because let me tell you, it was stressful. If you go in there. and you sit back in that director office, and you have your captains, your lieutenants, your supervisors, you let them do what they want, it’s easy.”
Medina felt he made enemies because he had a “firm hand” on the department.
Speaking of hands, Kemler wondered if someone else’s prints were all over Russell’s hiring.
The sheriff intimated something may have been hinky with the way the mayor found Medina’s replacement, which may come across to some as sour grapes because of the way his partner-in-arms was treated by Gusciora.
Kemler said he was caught off guard when he read the mayor planned to pay to use a search firm through the U.S. Conference of Mayors, an organization former Mayor Doug Palmer once served as president, to find Medina’s replacement.
“We told him we’d help him do it for free. It’s not hard,” Kemler said. “Someone he’s gotta be comfortable with. We got a whole background. You look at someone’s resume, get an idea who’s fit for the job. But he didn’t choose that path. He decided to go with the path with Mayor Palmer, and then when the newspaper got ahold of it, he squashed it. Someone was going to get paid to do it. You put a pile of resumes here and pick one out and [say], ‘Hey gimme my check for whatever [amount].”
Gusciora previously told The Trentonian the city decided it didn’t make financial sense to use the firm since it had only head-hunted one candidate matching the city’s criteria.
“Wow, that is completely erroneous,” the mayor said about Kemler’s comments. “Completely false. A false narrative.”
Gusciora denied floating the hiring of Russell by Palmer before announcing it at his State of the City address.
“There’s absolutely no truth to that,” the mayor said, while acknowledging Palmer supports Russell. “But so do plenty of people. It doesn’t mean he’s the one who brought her to my attention. I can honestly say, no, I didn’t run the pick by Doug Palmer. And I don’t lie. Or I don’t try to lie.”
Palmer seemed to suggest he had talked to Gusciora about Russell prior to the mayor’s big announcement.
“First, let me say that this is a bold move on Reed’s part,” Palmer told Trentonian columnist L.A. Parker last month. “We have had discussions about this and I can say that the Mayor gave this a lot of thought.”
Whatever the case may be, the Mercer County dynamic duo felt Gusciora must wise up as his four-year term stretches onward.
“He’s new at this, so we have to give him some time,” Kemler said. “He was an assemblyman for 22 years. Now he’s the CEO of the capital city of the state of New Jersey. He’s got a lot to learn.”