COPS SUSPENDED
Rally set after Hopewell Township employees suspended for liking cop’s post calling BLM ‘terrorists’ »
HOPEWELL » Protesters plan to rally this week outside police headquarters after at least six township employees, including five members of the police department, were placed on leave after appearing to support an officer’s Facebook post calling the Black Lives Matter movement “terrorists.”
Separately, township cops are investigating the Zoom-bombing of Monday’s township committee meeting.
One participant of the call told The Trentonian township officials canceled the virtual meeting following three racist and disturbing occurrences.
They included someone shouting “what’s up my, n***as,” someone logging in to the meeting with the user name George Floyd, the black man who died in police custody, and another instance of a naked man appearing to masturbate on camera.
Hopewell Township Police Chief Lance Maloney confirmed his department is investigating the “unrelated” lewd incident that occurred during the meeting.
He said in a statement that an “unidentified male acted inappropriately just prior to the start of a Hopewell Township Committee meeting via Zoom causing the meeting to be canceled.”
The chief also confirmed police personnel are being investigated by internal affairs after the department learned “multiple police officers and township employees had been accused of improper conduct involving social media.”
Maloney didn’t identify the police and township personnel placed on leave or describe the post that led to the suspensions.
A source, however, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified them as Sgt. Mandy Grey, Detective Mark Panzano, patrol officers Sara Erwin and John “Sandy” Ferner, dispatcher Gregory Peck and public works truck driver Steve Harbat.
Erwin was the officer who disparaged the Black Lives Matter group as “terrorists” in a Facebook post.
In the post, a screenshot which was shared with The Trentonian, Erwin, writing under the pen name Sara Elizabeth, discussed how she and colleagues were impacted by protests following the death of Floyd, a Minneapolis man who died after white police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“Last night as I left for work, I held my 2 kids crying for me not to go to work. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the way I did last night. And then I watched people I know and others I care about going into harm’s way. I love my police family like my own,” Erwin, who is white, wrote in the post. “So when you share posts and things on Facebook, I’d really appreciate if you THINK before doing so. I’ve seen so many black lives matter hashtags in these posts. Just to let you know — they are terrorists. They hate me. They hate my uniform. They don’t care if I die.”
Erwin encouraged BLM supporters to delete or unfriend her, “and I will do the same. I’m done with it.”
Screenshots anonymously mailed to The Trentonian showed that Panzano, Grey, Ferner, Peck and Harbat appeared to express emoticon “like,” “love” or “care” support for Erwin’s post. Ferner appeared on Facebook under the name “Sandy Ferner,” which sources confirmed is his nickname in the department.
Maloney said the department would wait to take further action against the police employees until “thorough internal investigations” are completed.
Erwin’s post came in the aftermath of grim video footage that showed Floyd repeatedly telling officers he couldn’t breath.
Chauvin, 44, initially charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, was hit with an additional count of second-degree murder. A judge set an unconditional bail of $1.25 million or $1 million with conditions, according to news reports.
The three other officers involved in Floyd’s arrests, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, have been charged with aiding and abetting seconddegree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.
Floyd’s death has sparked protests and civil unrest across the globe, including in Mercer County. Rioting and looting broke out in Trenton on May 31, following days of peaceful protests.
Officials in Trenton, Hamilton, Lawrence and Ewing responded with a “regional” 7 p.m. curfew. The townships have since rescinded the curfew, while Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora continues to impose a 10 p.m. curfew on residents.
An ex-council member and the Trenton NAACP suggested they may take Gussciora to court to get the “unconstitutional” lockdown lifted as state officials move to slowly re-open the state, still hunkered down from the coroanvirus.
In Hopewell Township, which has had its share of racial follies in the past, the relative of a black township cop who is suing the department for discrimination is organizing a protest at department headquarters to encourage police accountability.
Paul Pierson, 46, Bordentown, is the brother-in-law of Michael Sherman.
Sherman is the mixedrace sergeant who filed an explosive lawsuit last year accusing high-ranking members of his department of engaging in a pattern of racism and harassment that he says put him on the out with colleagues he regarded as friends.
Much of the complaint focused on retired Lt. Christopher Kascik’s treatment of Sherman. Kascik was accused of carrying around a baseball bat around and claiming he was “Crazy Joe” from the movie “Lean on Me”; telling colleagues he wanted to get into a “shootout” with a mentally disturbed resident and “slit his throat, gut him like a deer and wear his blood as war paint”; and cracking racist jokes about Sherman.
The lawsuit also recounted an incident in January 2017, when Kascik was discussing protests over the police shooting of black Trenton teenage Radazz Hearns in August 2015.
Kascik reportedly 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.”
Pierson, a black 15-year Air Force veteran, said he could no longer sit silently after seeing what happened to Floyd and knowing what his brother-in-law has experienced working in Hopewell.
“I was really torn internally because I wore the flag on my shoulder for 15 years, and I would have died for this country,” he said.
Pierson recalled experiencing “micro-aggression and “indirect” racism firsthand, in the military and as recently as last year, when a bartender at a Ewing restaurant refused to serve him and supporters following a fundraiser for a local charity his wife’s involved in.
“It was very clear that it was because of the color of our skin,” he said.
Pierson felt a flood of emotions watching Floyd beg for his life on video, given his military background and connections to law enforcement.
He said the cops who were charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin had a higher responsibility to intervene because of the oath they swore to serve and protect.
He didn’t buy some of the argument’s advances by the rookie cops’ lawyers who suggested they owed deference to Chauvin, their training officer, and the veteran on the scene.
“Whether a rookie or not, something should have take. [They] should have snatched hiss a** up, and it should have been a done deal. There’s a very distinct difference between following orders and following an unlawful order . ... You still have a responsibility when you lace up your boots ... it is your responsibility to do the right thing.”
Pierson and his son joined peaceful protests in Philadelphia and Pennington, he said, and decided to hold one in Hopewell on Saturday, starting at 1 p.m., feeling now was the time to act in light of Erwin’s comments.
Sherman also plans to attend and protest alongside the organizers, his brotherin-law said.
“Marching and making a sign is just not enough,” he said. “We know what Michael went through. We decided, ‘Let’s make our voices heard outside the Hopewell Police department . ... I’m sorry I haven’t stood up for [Sherman] sooner. I should have had your back a long time ago.”
“We want to see the result of those investigations,” Pierson added. “We want [Chief Maloney] to look in the mirror and say, ‘Systemic racism starts at the top.’”