Cops Gone Wild: Round up of Mercer County misconduct
Editor’s Note: Police accountability has been an issue that The Trentonian has covered for years before the death of George Floyd. Here’s a roundup of 15 examples involving allegations of excessive force, cop abuse or general misdeeds:
• Randall Hanson, a Trenton cop with a troubled past of steroid abuse and allegations of domestic violence, quietly reached a settlement with Trenton in June 2018 in a disciplinary case that could have led to his firing. Hanson, a 25year veteran, received an $87,204 payout after bringing an “administrative action civil suit” against the city as part of an appeal of the push to fire him for being unable to perform his duties. The exact nature of the allegations was never clear as the state Civil Service Commission refused a Trentonian public records request to turn over what it contended were “appeal files” in the case. The city served Hanson with a disciplinary notice in May 2017, months after The Trentonian exposed a domestic violence incident involving Hanson and his then-wife Melissa. Mercer County prosecutors did not charge Hanson and refused to provide information to the newspaper about what happened. The Trentonian sued to acquire a 911 tape that revealed the caller saying Hanson threatened to pull out a gun on his then-wife at their Hamilton home Aug. 23, 2016. Hanson admitted in a Facebook post to checking himself into crisis but denied harming or threatening to harm his wife, which was contradicted by the 911 tape. Melissa Hanson asked a judge to lift a restraining order, saying she didn’t fear her then-husband, and the couple eventually reconciled. Hanson retired four months after reaching a settlement with the city. He earns $5,835 in monthly pension benefits.
• State Police Detective Doug Muraglia and Mercer County Sheriff’s Detective James Udijohn were cleared by a state grand jury after they shot Trenton teenager Radazz Hearns several times in August 2015. The officers claimed Hearns, then 14, pointed a handgun at them while fleeing from them in Prospect Village. The Trentonian obtained the statements the cops provided to AG investigators who probed the propriety of the shooting. The statements showed the officers did not find a gun when they searched Hearns after shooting him. “I remember going into his waistband area and checking to see if he put the gun back in there, checking the immediate surrounding,” Muraglia told investigators. “I remember that his pants were really tight around his waist, so I was trying to like rip them off, like almost forward to try to see if the gun was down his pants or what he did with his gun. But you know we couldn’t find it.”
A Trentonian investigation determined the gun was 151 feet, or half a football field away from where Hearns collapsed. It was found 12 hours later, as investigators claimed a lighting truck was parked over it. Hearns, who maintained he was unarmed, pleaded guilty in juvenile court to having a defaced firearm and was placed on probation.
• The blue line appears intact. Donald Ryland, the union boss for Mercer County corrections officers, is no stranger to controversy. He was accused, and later cleared, of sexual assault charges from two women who claimed he raped them in 2017. He found himself back in the headlines last year, after The Trentonian sued Hamilton Township to turn over body-camera footage of Hamilton cops pulling over Ryland’s Chevrolet Equinox last August with a woman suspected of being a prostitute. The woman, Jenna Markee, admitted that she wasn’t wearing a bra or panties and was found with heroin, a condom and knife. Ryland repeatedly lied about the Aug. 13 stop when confronted by The Trentonian, claiming he was stopped for having a headlight out or a broken taillight. He denied having a woman in his car, until The Trentonian finally beat it out of him that he was with a woman named “Jenna.” He claimed she was a friend who he was giving a ride home. Hamilton cops Thomas DeVictoria and Russell Newborn didn’t question Ryland’s story, allowing him to leave after a drug sweep of his vehicle turned up clean. Markee was charged with drug offenses. Ryland was pulled over by TPD three days later in a seedy part of the city known as “prostitution alley.” A police accountability expert who reviewed the body-camera footage came away convinced that Hamilton cops extended Ryland “professional courtesy.” Mercer County prosecutors investigated the cops’ actions but did not charge them, and referred the matter back to the department “to handle administratively,” a spokeswoman from the prosecutor’s office said. It’s unclear what discipline, if any, DeVictoria and Newborn faced. Meanwhile, Ryland is still president of PBA Local 167.
• Trenton Police Lt. John Breece was charged last year with simple assault after he and a woman argued over a remote controller at his home in Ewing. The charge was dismissed just days after being brought, for the victim decided she didn’t want to pursue it. Beyond that, Breece has been named as a defendant in two lawsuits brought by female colleagues who alleged they were sexually harassed and discriminated against. One of them ended in a sixfigure payout. Apparently not one to keep a low-profile, Breece and Lt. Jason Astbury were reassigned months after Breece’s arrest from street crimes to patrol after a sexist exchange during a training seminar about a “firecracker” female prosecutor. Breece stupidly relayed Astbury’s text to the woman.
• From sexist remarks to having relations with a police partner’s wife, it seems little has kept controversial Trenton Police Lt. Jason Astbury from getting promoted. An attorney has tried to portray the bad-boy cop as Trenton’s Frank Serpico, a New York cop who fought corruption in his department, alluding to his 2011 officer of the year accolades. But Astbury’s conduct has also generated negative headlines. In 2017, investigators found alcohol in Astbury’s patrol vehicle after he was one of two officers who shot and wounded Bahin Lynch. It’s unclear whether Astbury faced discipline over the discovery of the booze. In the police sex prowl case, Astbury tried suing Trenton to force a $70K settlement after he was stripped of his gun for having a fullblown affair with a fellow officer’s wife. The woman filed a temporary restraining order against Astbury after he “continued to contact her and demand they continue their relationship,” according to court records. Astbury was without his piece for eight and a half months.
• This one took two years before it was exposed, a testament to the secretive nature of police discipline now targeted for reform by AG Gurbir Grewal. Trenton Police Sgt. Sheila Tatarek, now acting lieutenant of the criminal investigation bureau, was accused of calling Sgt. Bethesda Stokes a “f**king n***er” during target practice at Fort Dix in 2018. Stokes filed a complaint with internal affairs documenting the alleged exchange. The records came to light only in a court motion filed by the city in the course of its fight against a separate lawsuit brought by Tatarek,
who is a lesbian, contending she was discriminated against because of her sexual orientation and because she’s a woman. When confronted by The Trentonian, Tatarek would not say whether she called Stokes the N-word. Her attorneys have since claimed Stokes “falsely accused” Tatarek. Attorney Michael Morris said an internal affairs investigation showed Stokes’ accusation was “completely false and defamatory,” reportedly debunked by a witness who overheard the conversation. “We are in possession of the Internal Affairs documents which show conclusively that our client was exonerated after the Internal Affairs investigation,” he said. “You can also make a request for the file.” The attorney’s suggestion was disingenuous at best, because IA records aren’t available under the state Open Public Records Act. The Trentonian asked Morris, who demanded a retraction (we’ve refused), to provide the records, and the name of the witness who allegedly refuted Stokes’ claim, but he hasn’t responded.
• Accountability starts at the top, and Trenton Police Director Sheilah Coley is finding that out firsthand. Her decision to tell officers to stand down during a May 31 riot in downtown Trenton, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, is being examined by Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri. A spokeswoman said this week the probe, triggered by complaints from an ex-TPD cop William Osterman and Tony Arias — the owner of Tony Liquor — is ongoing. It’s unclear what, if anything, Onofri could do to Coley, who was captured on body camera footage telling a group of officers outside City Hall to stand down as they prepared to respond to a reported arson call at the downtown liquor store. Her decision drew the ire of current and former cops who claim her order jeopardized life, as at least a dozen people live in apartments above the liquor store. Arias said looters caused more than $300,000 worth of damage.
• Officers across the country have been disciplined and fired for making all kinds of social media posts about the Black Lives Matter movement, some of them in support and others inflammatory, following the death of George Floyd. Hopewell Township, a predominantly white suburb in Mercer County, has been no exception. The police force has faced a reckoning after a white cop, Sara Erwin, called BLM “terrorists” in a Facebook posts. Other police and township employees who liked or endorsed her post were also suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation, Hopewell Police Chief Lance Maloney has said. As for Maloney, he’s been criticized by demonstrators over his handling of a department that has been accused of mistreating minority cops. Michael Sherman, a biracial sergeant on the force, filed a discrimination lawsuit last year chock with of claims of the racism he faced on the force, mostly from now-retired Lt. Christopher Kascik.
• Michael Palinczar, a former city cop, was fired from the Trenton Police Department last year for posting racist commentary on social media, among other baggage. “Trentonians rather sit on their asses and wait for the first of the month and max that family first card out by the fifth day of the month and are broke for another 25 days, sad but true,” he said in a comment, adding, “Now for people that disagree, I never said all the people of Trenton are like that, but most of them are. I am not painting with a broad brush.” In addition to his social media commentary, Palinczar proudly referred to himself as Trenton’s “overseer,” a slavery-era term for plantation managers. In 2018, Ewing Police responded to Palinczar’s township home on a report of a woman overdosing on drugs inside his Heritage Court property. TPD canned Palinczar on April 18, 2019, following an internal affairs investigation into his troubling character.
• Detective Edward Lugo of the Hamilton Township Police Division smelled like alcohol, seemed drunk and confessed he had consumed “maybe one drink” after crashing his work car into the stone wall facade of Bill’s Olde Tavern about 1 a.m. Oct. 19, 2018, according to public records. Lugo eventually pleaded guilty in municipal court, had his driver’s license suspended and recently returned to full duty after a six-month disciplinary suspension from work, The Trentonian has learned. Lugo felt entitled to a promotion before the DUI incident and accused former Hamilton Mayor Kelly Yaede of improperly preventing him from becoming a sergeant due to an “apparent animus.” After Lugo crashed his unmarked police car while boozed, a Hamilton Police officer responded to the crash scene and quickly deactivated his body-worn camera, according to evidence obtained by The Trentonian. A directive from the state Attorney General’s Office states that an officer’s body-worn camera “must remain activated throughout the entire encounter/event/episode and shall not be de-activated until it is concluded.”
• Officers Hector Nieves, Liubove Bjorklund and Timothy Wallace of the Lawrence Township Police Department have each been charged with falsifying government records on allegations they pursued personal interests and lied about their whereabouts instead of serving as upstanding frontline workers during the COVID-19 public health emergency. The trio engaged in “intentional misrepresentations of their actual locations, which included falsifying reports and records,” the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office said. “These officers allowed their purely personal interests to infect the proper performance of their legal obligations as police officers.” Lawrence Township’s municipal manager, Kevin Nerwinski, in an October 2019 blog post suggested his community has a number of bad apple cops on the force. After authorities filed criminal charges in May, defense attorneys for Nieves, Bjorklund and Wallace said their clients were not guilty and predicted they would be vindicated. Six members of PBA Local 119, including Nieves, filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Lawrence Police Chief Brian Caloiaro last year.
• Former Trenton cops Paul Marinelli and William
L. Sanchez-Monllor will never again wear the uniform. Sanchez-Monllor sexually assaulted two minors on multiple occasions and pleaded guilty in the case last year. Marinelli possessed child porn and pleaded guilty to knowingly possessing or viewing less than 1,000 items of child sexual exploitation and abuse. The Trenton Police Department fired Marinelli in 2018, and SanchezMonllor was expected to be terminated after pleading guilty last November to two counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault in exchange for a 30-year prison sentence. A judge in January 2019 sentenced Marinelli to three years of probation and also ordered him to serve 180 days of jail time at the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center. He was also fined $750 for his computer crimes under the negotiated plea deal, according to the judgment of conviction.
• Daniel Bannister Jr., a suspended Ewing cop, was charged with first-degree murder on allegations he killed his 3-month-old child. After several days of hospitalization, Hailey Bannister died on Dec. 11, 2018, from injury complications and blunt impact trauma of the head. A grand jury in October 2019 indicted Daniel Bannister on one count of murder and one count of child endangerment on allegations he caused the serious bodily injuries that eventually killed his daughter Hailey. The indictment also charged the cop’s wife and victim’s mom Catherine Bannister with one count of second-degree reckless manslaughter and one count of child endangerment on allegations she knew about the ongoing child abuse but never reported it to the doctors or other authorities. Daniel Bannister has a troubled past; he was apparently involved in a scuffle with a former supervisor and was rejected for jobs by two police departments prior to being hired by Ewing in 2017,
The Trentonian previously reported.
• Lt. Scott Schoellkopf of the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office was previously charged with assaulting his wife at their Chesterfield home on April 28, 2017. The simple assault charge was dismissed, and Schoellkopf later returned to work following the tragic death of his wife Regina Schoellkopf, whose body was found hanging in the couple’s home on July 2, 2017, an apparent suicide. Regina and husband Scott Schoellkopf were experiencing marital discord at the time of her unnatural death, officially ruled a suicide. The parents of the late Regina Schoellkopf had questions following the release of the autopsy results. “She was murdered,” Regina Baker said in a previous interview about her deceased daughter Regina Schoellkopf. “I was in the room where she was. I saw the situation. I made my deductions. I know my daughter.”
• Employees at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Union Township, Hunterdon County, have contributed to the prison’s widespread culture of rape. The U.S. Department of Justice in April released a 29-page report saying that sexual abuse of female prisoners by Edna Mahan correction officers and staff is “severe and prevalent throughout the prison,” adding that a “culture of acceptance” of sexual abuse has “persisted for many years and continues to the present.” From October 2016 to November 2019, five Edna Mahan correction officers and one civilian employee were convicted or pled guilty to charges related to sexual abuse of more than 10 women under their watch, according to the federal report.
Compiled by staff reporters Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman and Isaac Avilucea