Settlements galore
The Sakoutis payout is nothing new.
Over the last 10 years, Hightstown settled a malicious prosecution lawsuit for $200,000, Lawrence Township settled a bodily injury lawsuit for $30,450, Princeton settled a racial profiling case for $25,000, New Jersey State Police settled a civil rights lawsuit for $100,000, and another malicious prosecution case for $25,967, according to data compiled by the Asbury Park Press.
APP’s statewide “Protecting the Shield” special report in 2018 uncovered tens of millions in municipal payouts in police mis
conduct cases between 2010 through 2017.
The $610,000 in Mercer County revealed as part of the massive news investigation involved seven police agencies in Mercer County — a fraction of the overall settlement pie in the capital county region.
APP’s database mentioned just one settlement involving Trenton Police, a $175,000 payout to resident Lael Queen for a July 2014 arrest that occurred outside of a laundromat on the 900 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
In the lawsuit, Queen claimed he was assaulted by police at the laundromat where he went to wash clothes. Cops sicced a K-9 dog on him after he filmed officers arresting a woman. Store surveillance video, obtained through discovery, showed Queen filming the cops from a distance.
“I got beat up because I videotaped them doing wrong,” Queen previously told The Trentonian. “If cops were doing their job the right way, they shouldn’t have been concerned about me videotaping it. It’s just ridiculous what they do to us out here.”
Pictures provided by Queen following the 2014 arrest showed large chunks of his leg and thigh missing as a result of the police-dog attack.
Trenton in August 2016 settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $690,000 after the family of Kenneth Howard sued following Howard’s untimely death in police lockup.
The capital city in March 2017 settled another wrongful death lawsuit for $350,000 after the family of Loretta Klank sued following her death. Klank hung herself from the bars of a cell at the Trenton Police Department’s North Clinton Avenue headquarters in March 2008.
In Hamilton, Michael A. Lionelli sued the township in 2018 on allegations Hamilton Police improperly arrested him based upon fabricated evidence. Authorities arrested him in January 2016 in connection with a robbery that occurred at CVS on the 200 block of Route 33 in Hamilton.
An attorney for Lionelli said Hamilton Police “fabricated evidence to support their complaint and made Lionelli’s life miserable for 25 months until the charges were finally dismissed.”
The township settled Lionelli’s federal lawsuit earlier this year for $950,000, The Trentonian previously reported.
In September 2017, Hamilton Township settled Victoria Esquivel’s civil-action complaint for $425,000.
Esquivel filed a lawsuit accusing Hamilton Police of excessive force and violating her civil rights, alleging officers knocked her unconscious and forcibly removed her outer garments and bra when she refused to strip naked inside a township holding cell. She was arrested in January 2013 for alleged criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.
The township’s Joint Insurance Fund settled Esquivel’s lawsuit on Sept. 26, 2017, for $425,000, The Trentonian previously reported. Some of the smaller municipalities in the county have also shelled out to settle rogue cop claims.
In May 2018, Robbinsville settled a police abuse lawsuit for $200,000 stemming from the incident when ex-cop Mark Lee assaulted a wheelchair-bound mom and her 4-year-old son at the Project Freedom residential community in September 2012. Another lawsuit related to that incident was settled for $100,000.
Lee was a longtime Robbinsville policeman who suffered from a neurological disorder. He resigned from the force and sued Robbinsville on allegations the township had failed to accommodate his disability. Robbinsville settled that litigation for $117,500.
Lord called the frequent settlement of police abuse lawsuits in Mercer County the county’s “best kept secret.”
“As I watch people march all over the country for equality and justice,” she said, “I just say, ‘Welcome to my fight. Where the heck have you been all these years?’ As a white woman quoting Ben Franklin, ‘Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.’” that could end in additional settlements.
Meanwhile, Hamilton Township has agreed to submit another high-profile police brutality lawsuit to mediation in an attempt to resolve litigation filed by Nicholas “Nick” Cecala, the Hamilton grandfather who had accused Hamilton Police of excessive force and malicious prosecution following an incident in September 2014 at Hamilton Police headquarters.
Cecala in his civil action claims he suffered broken ribs and other injuries at the hands of Hamilton Police, and he demands punitive damages and injunctive relief for the arrest that left him “humiliated” and “disgraced.”
Overall, Trenton and Hamilton spent a combined $324 million on general budget items in 2019, covering everything from police operations to park maintenance.
For a municipal government, $1 million represents elusive money that could be better spent on library operations or animal shelter improvements.
Trenton collects approximately $800,000 from its municipal library tax levy and spends more than $100,000 each year to operate a summer food program, while Hamilton Township, which invested $1.1 million to upgrade its animal shelter in 2015, spends more than $500,000 annually for animal control services, according to budget documents.
Trenton used to operate a comprehensive library system comprising a main facility and four neighborhood reading centers, but the capital city fell into money problems and hasn’t reopened the branch libraries since closing them under former Mayor Tony Mack.
Mayor Reed Gusciora, who hoped to add 100 cops and firefighters to the ranks in fiscal year 2020, said the money for cop payouts could have gone to make the city safer by adding dozens of officers to the streets, or been disbursed among underfunded services in the capital city.
“At the end of the day, it takes away from public safety dollars,” he said. “Cities have to get better at weeding out bad cops. Municipalities are forced to defend bad police actions.”
South Ward councilman George Muschal, a former cop, in the past has thrown around the idea of making cops financially responsible for part of the payouts.
Such a measure would likely have to be legislated, locally or at the state level, and would surely face pushback from the unions.
It could also inspire “more of a code blue,” Gusciora said.