Palisades Park on Friday indefinitely suspended a program in which nine former police officers had been serving as armed guards in the borough's public schools after an investigation by NorthJersey.com and USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey found they had been hired without submitting résumés or undergoing background checks or psychological exams.

David Lorenzo, the borough administrator, made the announcement a day after the school board, in a special meeting, pulled two of the security guards from their posts. The borough and the school board each called for an investigation into the origins of the shared-services agreement under which the security program was created.

Borough police officers will be assigned to guard the district's three public schools starting Monday, and until further notice, Lorenzo said.

"We believe in light of all the newspaper articles that were written in the past weeks, we wanted to find out more answers for ourselves and do some digging," Jeff Woo, the school board president, said at the special board meeting on Thursday night.

Previously:No background checks meant accusations against Palisades Park school guards were missed

Background checks:Palisades Park skipped background checks on school armed guards, records show

The moves followed the online publication on Thursday afternoon of an investigation by the Network that delved into the backgrounds of some of the guards, all of whom are retired police officers.

The probe found that some of the guards had been accused in the past of serious indiscretions, including aggravated assault, police brutality, lying to authorities and threatening public officials with retaliation. In addition, records show that two of the guards were carrying handguns after their permits had expired.

None of the guards have been convicted of a crime.

The review of those documents showed:

Laurence Ruh, brother of Councilman Henry Ruh, faced a litany of administrative charges following his testimony at the federal trial of a borough police lieutenant who was convicted of taking part in a stunning police-led burglary ring that terrorized Palisades Park in the mid-1990s.

Richard Sopelsa, another guard, was forced to retire from the borough Police Department after he was accused of threatening a councilman.

Joseph Mourao, formerly of the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police, was charged with assault in 1993.

John Pinzone, a retired chief of the Fairview police, was chastised by a prosecutor in federal court after writing a letter to a judge in 2009 supporting an alleged mobster.

School board members, who met Thursday, just hours after those details were published on NorthJersey.com, said that two of the security guards, Ruh and Mourao, would not be returning to the schools until an investigation is complete. Two others, Sopelsa and Pinzone, had not been assigned to work in the district's three public schools "for a while" and have not worked in the schools since the current academic year began on Sept. 6, said Louis Flora, the board attorney.

The guards' spotty history gave pause to one expert, who questioned whether borough officials had even scanned the names of those being hired.

"The question is, did they even look at the list?" said Diana Falkenbach, a psychology professor at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "Maybe if somebody had looked at it, they would have said, 'Oh yes, these were people involved in problems.' Someone wouldn't get hired as a teacher with a background like that."

One councilwoman said she relied solely on Councilman Henry Ruh's assurances that the retired cops had been checked out.

"I based my vote on what we were being told by the person who is the head of the police committee, Henry Ruh," said Councilwoman Cynthia Pirrera. "If he told us that, then we believed that was true and accurate information. If it wasn’t, well that’s a whole different story.”

Background checks

In addition to Councilman Ruh's brother, the guards also include a cousin of Mayor James Rotundo, Thomas Juliano. Ruh voted in favor of hiring both.

“I never told you I saw any list of officers because I stay away from that," Rotundo, who does not vote on most council actions, said earlier this week. "You're talking a long time ago. I don't remember who did what or what was found or who was accused of anything."

Ruh's brother has so far earned more than $8,000 for his work.

The state Department of Education is reviewing the matter, a spokesman said. Henry Ruh did not respond to requests for comment. Schools Superintendent Joseph Cirillo also declined to comment.

Several borough and school officials have said Councilman Ruh, who leads the council's police committee, assured them that the borough ran background checks on the guards. But neither the borough nor the school administration has provided documentation of background checks to the Network, despite multiple public records requests.

One school board member said earlier this week that the trustees were in the same boat. "From the beginning, board members asked about background checks, and the [borough] didn't give them to us," Barnabas Woo said. "We still don’t have them in our hands yet.

Police Chief Mark Jackson said in an email earlier this month that each guard had a valid weapons permit, and that the New Jersey State Police conducts background and mental health checks as part of the permitting process. Jackson, who became a borough officer in 1985, did not respond to follow-up emails and phone calls.

But the state police guidelines for issuing gun permits do not mention background checks, psychological exams or physicals. The borough, which requires school guards to be in "good physical and mental condition," responded to multiple requests for details of background checks or examinations that were conducted on the guards by saying that no such records exist.

Detective Jack Furman of the New Jersey State Police firearms unit confirmed that the process to apply for a carry permit is to fill out a form.

A parent, Maria Pesantes, asked the school board on Thursday night if the guards had submitted to proper background checks or whether they had simply filled out the state police permit form.

Cirillo, the superintendent, said he had seen background reports on five of the guards and had shared them with Jeff Woo, the board president, and Flora, the board attorney.

"We don't have all nine, but we saw five of them," Woo said at the meeting.

Pesantes asked what the background checks involved but wasn't given an answer. Instead, Flora asked her if she knew what goes into getting a firearm permit and if she had faith in the state police system.

"A firearm permit and a background check are two different things," Pesantes said. "The permit form is checking off boxes. It's not the scrutiny that educators go under that gets sent to the state and run through a database."

A murky history

One of the guards, Laurence Ruh, a broad-shouldered former Palisades Park police sergeant, had a reputation for letting his fists settle what his badge could not, according to several complaints and charges filed against him.

According to one account from an FBI agent, collected during a 1998 federal civil rights trial, Ruh even managed to hurt himself.

“I threw the guy such a beating, I hurt my biceps,” Ruh said, according to the agent, Michael O’Reilly.

It was Laurence Ruh’s alleged involvement in a police-led burglary ring that led to his departure from the department. The crime ring committed more than 100 burglaries between 1991 and 1995, stealing more than $250,000 in cash and goods from residents and merchants.

However, Ruh was never charged with a crime, and a judge dismissed the administrative charges that the borough brought against him on a technicality, according to news accounts. Officials wanted to appeal, but backed off when Ruh moved to retire.

At the trial for three of the accused, Ruh testified under oath that he tried to blow the whistle on the operation after one of the ringleaders, former Patrolman Michael Anderson, tried to recruit him in 1993.

But Anderson, testifying as a government witness, had a far different recollection.

Ruh stole $10,000 from an elderly resident who called police under the mistaken belief that the money was missing from its hiding place in a ceiling, Anderson testified. And he accused Ruh, then a 24-year veteran, of stealing cash from cars during traffic stops on Route 46, planning a push-in robbery in an elderly woman's home in Ridgefield Park and discussing other potential burglary targets, according to news reports at the time.

Ruh flatly denied all the allegations. But he did admit that he had lied to investigators about his knowledge of Anderson’s crimes, news reports said.

“I said I knew nothing … because [higher ranking] people in front of me did not say anything,” Ruh told the prosecutor. “I stayed with the blue wall of silence and did not cooperate.”

The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office eventually offered Ruh immunity from prosecution on obstruction of justice charges in return for information about Anderson’s crimes, according to news reports.

Although federal officials said Ruh continued to lie to the FBI, he was never charged with a crime.

Seven people, including five borough police officers, were eventually convicted for their roles in the ring.

"The Palisades Park Police Department has been a disgrace to itself, the Borough, to the honest members of the department, to the people of Palisades Park, and indeed to every honest cop who day to day performs his duties," Joseph Mariniello, the borough attorney, wrote in a scathing 1998 report to the mayor and council.

The Network obtained Mariniello’s report from Warren Neumann, an Englewood private investigator whom the borough hired to assist its hearing officer. The report recommended disciplinary charges against Ruh following his testimony.

But Albert Wunsch, the Englewood Cliffs attorney who represented Ruh, said last week that his former client led a clean career and retired in good standing.

"They were all [expletive] charges," Wunsch said. "They brought up these ridiculous charges ... it was a political thing. He was the one that was instrumental in bringing down the burglars."

But the trial was not Ruh's first brush with trouble.

Accusations of violence

In May 1985, a North Bergen man, Frank Lombardi, claimed that Ruh and another officer savagely beat him during a domestic violence call at his girlfriend's Palisades Park apartment. The officers broke two of his teeth, swelled his lip and eye, and bruised his nose and torso, Lombardi said.

The police said that Lombardi had grabbed his girlfriend, Elisa Giannone, and that they were simply trying to free her. Giannone said the officers began beating Lombardi for no reason.

"I said, 'Just don't hurt him,'" Giannone was quoted as saying in contemporaneous news accounts. "They said, 'We'll show you how we're not going to hurt him,' and they picked him up from the ground by his throat ... and blood started coming out of his mouth.'"

It's unclear how Lombardi's complaint was resolved. Neither he nor Giannone could be found, and court records were not available because of the time that has elapsed since the incident.

Ruh was again accused of assault two years later, this time by a man who worked for a trucking company that Ruh was running on the side.

The man, John Petrus, said Ruh came to his borough apartment, accused him of stealing money from the company and beat him in front of his wife and baby. Petrus filed assault charges, but it is unclear how the case was resolved.

In both instances, Alan Lustmann, the police chief at the time who is now deceased, disputed the victims' accounts and declined to suspend Ruh.

Ruh's career with the department ended with his retirement on New Year's Eve 1998.

The Borough Council's police committee, made up of Rotundo, who is now the mayor; Lorenzo, now the borough administrator; and Yolanda Iacobino, who is still on the council, filed a dozen administrative charges against him that year stemming from Ruh's testimony at the burglary trial.

Ruh, in turn, successfully sued the borough to derail the disciplinary action, arguing that officials had leaked confidential information about his charges to the media and violated requirements of the state's Open Public Meetings Act on other occasions.

In the end, the borough agreed not to appeal the judge's decision if Ruh retired as he planned.

“As long as he leaves, I’m happy,” Sandy Farber, the now-deceased mayor, said in November 1998.

Iacobino declined to comment this week when asked why she voted to hire Ruh despite knowing his history with the borough.

“I’m not answering any of your questions, so please leave me alone," Iacobino said.

Other guards, other issues

Another guard, Richard Sopelsa, was suspended from the Palisades Park Police Department in December 2007 after Lorenzo, then a councilman and now the borough administrator, said Sopelsa tried to intimidate him into a promotion by threatening to plant contraband on him.

"Basically, it was, 'Someday you'll be riding into town and get stopped, and who knows what they might find on you,'" Mariniello, then the borough attorney, said at the time.

When asked about the charges last week, Sopelsa said he and Lorenzo were once friends, but that the friendship ended after Lorenzo switched political parties.

"When they wanted to do promotions they went with all the Democrats," Sopelsa said. "So there was some bad blood."

The borough brought administrative charges against Sopelsa, including conduct unbecoming an officer, trying to influence a councilman with voting power over promotions and violations of departmental regulations. It dropped them when Sopelsa agreed to retire in 2008.

Sopelsa was also accused in 1987 of beating a borough woman during an arrest two years earlier. The woman, Mary Sperlazzo, filed suit in Superior Court after a grand jury declined to indict him and another officer.

It is now clear how the case was resolved. Sperlazzo has since died and attempts to reach her family were unsuccessful. John Pickel, a former borough officer who is also named in Sperlazzo's suit, declined to comment when contacted last week. Sopelsa, whom the district has paid about $2,000 for his security guard work, said last week that the charges were politically driven.

"They wanted to sign a complaint, but nothing came of it," Sopelsa said. "I forget what she was doing but I was in the process of arresting her. I forgot about that."

Another guard, Joseph Mourao, was charged with assault and attempt to cause or purposely, knowingly or recklessly cause bodily injury to another in 1993, when he was an officer with the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police, according to court records.

The charges were referred to Municipal Court in Wayne, but records could not be found either in Wayne or in state Superior Court.

When asked about the charges, Mourao said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

The district has paid Mourao about $2,300 for his work in the schools.

And John Pinzone was chastised in court by a federal prosecutor after writing a letter supporting an alleged mobster, Giovanni DeMaio, during DeMaio's 2009 sentencing hearing.

In the letter, Pinzone, who was then the police chief in Fairview, attested to DeMaio's kindness and charitable nature. But Pinzone declined to mention he was dating DeMaio's daughter.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa M. Colone said it was "absolutely astonishing" and "an insult to the law-abiding people" of Fairview that the police chief would support DeMaio, who was being sentenced to 51 months in prison after investigators found in his home blasting caps, four handguns, a shotgun, two silencers, hollow-point bullets, handcuffs, a wig attached to a hat and maps of Long Island.

“These are the tools of an assassin,” Colone said at the time.

Pinzone, who reportedly later apologized for the letter, has earned about $1,800 from the school district so far, records show.

Calls to Pinzone seeking comment were not returned.

'Who dropped the ball?'

The school board on Thursday asked its special counsel to investigate the school security program and to deliver a report at its meeting on Sept. 19.

Reached by phone on Thursday night, Councilman Chris Chung said it is imperative that the borough conduct its own probe into the program.

"The mayor and council have the same questions," Chung said. "We passed this resolution in April with the qualifications and the training skills required in there, so why wasn't it followed? Who dropped the ball?"

Chung said he hopes the borough will have some kind of investigation in place by the next council meeting on Sept. 25.

Despite the controversy, Mayor James Rotundo said the borough is committed to the school security program.

"But we need to look into the process of how [the guards] were hired and how to hire in the future," he said. “My next step is to sit down with the council and borough attorney to discuss what happened and where it failed and what to do next. We’ll look into where the process failed and find out.”