SUIT: ‘CULTURE OF BIAS’
Hopewell officer files lawsuit naming department and officials alleging rampant racism and retaliation >>
HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP >> An explosive lawsuit brought by one of their own accuses the township police force of being “embedded with a culture of bias and racial animus,” a crippling allegation for a community that has long struggled with prominent examples of racial discord.
Michael Sherman, a mixed-race sergeant who has worked for the township force for the last 19 years, accuses high-ranking members of his own department of a pervasive pattern of racism and harassment that he says has now put him on the out with colleagues he once thought of as friends.
The lawsuit, filed this month in state court in Mercer County, was filed just three months after the police department charged a white township high school student with sending Snapchat messages in which he discussed wanting to lynch another black student and called the student the Nword and a “monkey.”
Sherman’s lawsuit, focused primarily on the alleged discriminatory actions and words used by now-retired Lt. Christopher Kascik, alleges the police department isn’t much better.
Kascik is referred to in the suit as Sherman’s “harasser.”
Sherman says he was forced to undergo a fitness duty exam, had his department-issued weapon seized, his police pass access card disabled, was instructed not to attend staff meetings, and was ostracized after he repeatedly complained to township police brass about Kascik.
The lawsuit faults Chief Lance Maloney, who is a named defendant, for being “too nice” and not doing more to protect Sherman from Kascik’s wrath.
Maloney allegedly didn’t know how to stop Kascik and hoped the “issues would just go away on their own,” the lawsuit said, after he warned employees to act professional and avoid using inappropriate language.
The township and Lt. William Springer are also defendants in the suit, which seeks a jury trial to award damages and attorney fees.
According to the lawsuit, Kascik for a time remained Sherman’s direct supervisor even after Sherman complained to the chief, the township’s administrator and human resources about Kascik’s alleged racist, erratic and offensive antics.
His “complaints and requests for help were dismissed, mishandled, and not properly investigate, beginning with his own superiors,” the cop’s attorneys, Christina Reger and Richard Bazelon wrote in the complaint. “Defendants have done nothing but pay lip-service to their own policies, responding by announcing generically in a staff meeting that everyone should get along and be nice to each other.” Bazelon declined to comment beyond what was contained in the 47-page complaint, which recapped a veritable parade of horribles, most of them allegedly perpetuated by Kascik. Township attorney Steve Goodell of the law firm Parker McCay declined to comment on the lawsuit. A township-tapped law firm investigated Sherman’s, and others’, claims, but was only able to substantiate an allegation that Kascik viewed porn at work, the lawsuit said. Earlier this year, Sherman met with the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office about opening an internal affairs investigation into Kascik. But it apparently never happened before Kascik retired in February, the lawsuit said.
‘Crazy Joe’ Spews Hate
Sherman says he grew to fear Kascik, an imposing figure who is portrayed in the complaint as a stonecold racist and a hot head who bullied subordinates with fear tactics.
Once, Kascik allegedly scolded Sherman during a staff meeting for sitting at the head of the table to “put him in his place,” the lawsuit says.
Kascik also allegedly carried a baseball bat around, the lawsuit stated, claiming he was “Crazy Joe” from the movie “Lean on Me.”
Kascik reportedly told colleagues he yearned to get into a “shootout” with a township resident who was known to suffer from mental health issues, and wanted to “slit his throat, gut him like a deer and wear his blood as war paint,” according to the lawsuit.
Kascik, apparently thinking he was above the law, also allegedly claimed he wanted to grow and sell marijuana on his 10-acre property, using a nearby pond to water the pot crops, the lawsuit stated.
Sherman remembered hearing Kascik make racist and offensive remarks to him as far back as 2006, while they were coming up the ranks, according to the lawsuit.
Kascik was riding in a cruiser with Sherman, who is half black and half white, and another office when Sherman claimed that Kascik joked about him having to make child support payments.
Kascik allegedly told Sherman that Father’s Day was confusing for him because he must “get 10 cards with all of the kids he has,” the lawsuit stated.
Sherman had one child at the time, the lawsuit said.
Those comments were nothing compared to some of the other things Kascik is accused of saying years later.
In January 2017, Kascik was in the lunchroom discussing a potential protest involving the NAACP and ACLU over the shooting of a Trenton teenager.
The complaint doesn’t name the teenager but Radazz Hearns, who once attended Titusville Academy and had a couple of encounters with Hopewell Township Police, was shot by police in August 2015, stirring outrage in the capital city.
Kascik, in the presence of Sherman, Detective Frank Tulko and Detective Louis Vastola, allegedly said, “When Al Sharpton and all of the other protesters show up, the only thing they need to do is call all the K9s from the other departments because black people don’t like dogs, and it’ll be like the sixties in the parking lot.”
Upon hearing those comments, Sherman, who was the only black cop in the department, said he “feared for his own well-being, but more importantly, feared for the well-being of any minority who might come into contact with Kascik,” the complaint said.
Sherman said he and other cops were in the lunchroom with Kascik again on Feb. 24, 2017, when he asked Detective Joseph Maccaquano how “things were” at Hopewell Valley Central High School.
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