Local police chiefs react to new NJ rules on drug-testing officers, monitoring complaints

Robert Kronyak, the Wanaque police chief, has never had a formal early-warning system to spot troubled officers in his department.

Sure, the brass keeps an eye on each of Wanaque’s 27 cops. And the department has on file a library of index cards, on which each officer’s name and the number of complaints against them are printed.

But the small department in northern Passaic County has never had the software that flags officers’ indiscretions and triggers investigations.

That’s about to change, thanks to new guidelines from Gurbir S. Grewal, the state attorney general. Grewal’s mandates, issued last week, require departments to set up an early-warning system to flag officers with more than three performance issues or complaints against them in a 12-month span. Departments must also begin randomly drug-testing their officers, a tenth at a time, twice a year, the mandates say.

The two orders are “directly aimed at identifying problematic behavior in law enforcement officers before that behavior escalates to the point where there might be potential litigation, where an officer engages in some sort of problematic behavior with a civilian,” Grewal said last week.

The directives come after an investigation by the Asbury Park Press into the lack of local oversight of rogue cops, which sometimes led to deadly consequences.

Many North Jersey police chiefs said they’ll have little trouble complying with Grewal’s guidelines. But some say the rules will place further strain on their departments, whose budgets have already bowed beneath the weight of other state mandates.

A matter of routine

In Paterson, the city Police Department already has in place an electronic early-warning system that alerts the administration to errant officers, said Jerry Speziale, the city’s police director. And it has been randomly drug-testing its 430 officers for several years.

Still, Grewal’s guidelines will likely force Paterson to boost the number of officers it tests on each occasion, as well as the frequency with which they are checked.

Testing is labor-intensive and somewhat expensive — each costs about $50, Speziale said.

Still, the director supports Grewal’s measure as something that builds trust between police and the citizens they shield.

“If you don’t see me as legitimate, and you don’t see me as trustworthy, you’re not going to heed my authority,” Speziale said. “Police departments that police themselves … and build that trust and legitimacy, are the ones that have the best relationships with the community.”

Farther west, in Denville, Chief Christopher Wagner said his department has randomly tested officers for more than a decade. To him, it’s just another job requirement.

“If our police officers can’t subject themselves to random drug testing, then I don’t think they deserve to be police officers,” Wagner said. “We’ve got to ensure that our police officers that are carrying guns and making dangerous decisions have a clear head.”

POLICE: NJ police brutality: State targets bad cops after Press investigation

POLICE: No drug testing for cops puts more than 1M New Jerseyans at risk

MISCONDUCT: Bad cops are built. Here's how.

Wagner said his internal standards are more stringent than Grewal’s — he randomly tests two of the department’s 32 officers every month.

The department also has an early-warning system, Wagner said, which tips off Internal Affairs after three complaints have been filed against a given officer.

So does the Nutley police, which uses software to alert investigators to issues with any of its 69 officers, Chief Thomas Strumolo said in an email.

The Nutley department also randomly drug-tests its officers twice annually, and has done so for the last two decades, he said.

Steven Rogers, who retired from the township police in 2011 as a detective lieutenant, said the random testing was particularly effective.

“You could actually get to work at 8 o’clock in the morning, and your supervisor could come up to you and tell you your Social Security number was pulled,” Rogers said.

But it works differently in Woodcliff Lake, where drug testing is not mandatory for the borough’s 18 officers.

"I’ve always had the ability to do it with a reason,” said Chief Anthony Jannicelli. “If I feel somebody is under the influence I’ll send them for drug testing — I’m not going to let them carry a gun.”

Woodcliff Lake also has no computerized early-warning system, outside of the standard Internal Affairs process, he said.

An added expense

For the departments with policies already in place, Grewal’s twin directives won't mean big changes, said John Zebrowski, a vice president of the New Jersey Association of Chiefs of Police and the chief of the Sayreville Police Department.

But it will for departments that lack such policies. And that’s a good thing, Zebrowski said.

“Will it preclude every situation where you have an errant officer? Probably not,” Zebrowski said. “But you’re going to have an opportunity where certain cues are going to come up, where it’s going to force you to look at these situations.”

Kronyak, the Wanaque chief, said that although his department has a random drug-testing program, it’s not mandatory. He couldn’t remember the last time he gave one.

“You would only do it if there was an issue,” the chief said. “If you saw someone having a problem or you had some information about an officer.”

Grewal’s directives will lead to about a dozen changes in the borough police, he said. And the department may have to buy new software to track the required information.

That could be tough for a department already wrestling with the state’s 2 percent budget cap on most tax-supported spending.

“We’re strapped,” Kronyak said. “We’re struggling to get it done, then they wonder why you didn’t get it done. It’s hard.”

Email: janoski@northjersey.com