Claims of misconduct at police academy probed
Future classes of the Bergen County Police Academy — where hundreds of future law enforcement officers are trained every six months — are suspended until further notice pending an investigation.
The New Jersey Police Training Commission received information regarding alleged rule violations occurring at the Bergen academy. It's unclear when, and what the rule violations include, but an item under “academy issues” in a Bergen County Police Academy Administrative Report appeared on the training commission's Dec. 6 meeting agenda.
A copy of the report obtained by NorthJersey.com, dated Nov. 21, 2023, noted that the agency received two anonymous letters in the previous week indicating that “possible serious rule infractions and Instructor Code of Conduct violations have been committed” by several academy command staff and other instructors. The document did not specify what those offenses were.
“These allegations will be fully investigated with the findings being fully recorded and reported to the Police Training Commission,” said the report, signed by field investigator Donald Robertella.
The academy is a unit of the county's Law and Public Safety Institute and operates as a partnership among Bergen County, its Prosecutor's Office and its Sheriff's Office.
“We take all allegations of misconduct seriously, and we immediately began an investigation into those allegations,” Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said in a statement Thursday.
“We have been working collaboratively with the PTC, the County of Bergen, the Bergen County Sheriff's Office, and the Bergen County Police Chiefs Association to ensure that the Academy provides all police cadets with the highest standards of professional training possible, and we are committed to implementing all reforms recommended by the PTC.”
Robertella noted in the training commission report that he was assigned to monitor and inspect operations daily at the police academy beginning Oct. 16, 2023. The report said the investigator made a series of procedural recommendations to academy administrators, but “no unusual incidents were observed or reported” through Nov. 17.
Any delay in the next police academy class will have a “significant impact” on small police departments throughout the county, said Brian Higgins, a former chief of the Bergen County police and an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.
Most towns will hire when cops have already retired, creating staffing issues if there are academy delays. It leaves questions such as whether towns will have to hire and pay them while they're waiting to go through the academy, Higgins said.
Higgins used to run the academy and said serious allegations would cause New Jersey's Police Training Commission to temporarily suspend certification.
“This would be a significant time to start at the beginning of the BCPO and dig deep,” Higgins said. “For the academy to open up in a couple of weeks, that means they didn't really fix the issues.”
In the meantime, the delay will hurt police departments in the county and the county's reputation, Higgins said.
“This will hurt budgets, hiring cycles and many layers of a police department,” he said.
Bergen County Executive James Tedesco said he would attempt to get the academy open soon.
“While the county currently has no direct oversight, I was deeply concerned by the New Jersey Police Training Commission's findings,” Tedesco said in a statement. “My office has been in contact with the Prosecutor and the Sheriff's Office and we are working collectively to implement reforms that will rectify these issues and provide future safeguards.”
Tedesco said he is “confident” that with the implementation of reforms, a new academy class will be allowed to begin soon to ensure that the police officers receive the highest quality of training.
“We are confident that in cooperation with the PTC, the Bergen County Police Academy will be authorized to continue police recruit training in the future,” Musella said.