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EDISON — From the outside, nothing betrays the image of normalcy. Rows of gleaming squad cars line a gated lot. Flags snap at attention near the front door. Uniformed officers come and go, shift after shift.

But behind the facade, the officers of the Edison Police Department pursue two missions: fighting crime and tearing each other apart. And it’s not always clear which comes first.

Office politics have become a black art: of backstabbing and dirty tricks, of spying on comrades and of trolling for dirt on civic officials and their relatives. Lawsuits have become a weapon and a way of life.

A Star-Ledger investigation encompassing dozens of interviews and thousands of pages of documents — including legal papers, interoffice memos and internal affairs files — reveals an agency in the grip of a grinding civil war that has dragged on for more than three years, shattering morale, eroding the department’s integrity and saddling taxpayers with millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements.

"Because of what’s been going on, it’s hard for the men to function," said John Vaticano, a sergeant who retired in disgust last December. "It’s time for people to realize what’s going on in this town. It’s out of control. It’s totally out of control."

Among The Star-Ledger’s findings:

• The internal affairs division conducted investigations far outside the boundaries permitted by state guidelines, gathering intelligence and building dossiers on officers’ relatives and other civilians, including Mayor Antonia Ricigliano and her top adviser.

The off-the-grid probes represent an "intolerable" breach of public trust and demonstrate an urgent need for outside monitoring, said Wayne Fisher, who wrote the state’s IA guidelines when he served as deputy director of the Division of Criminal Justice.

"Action must be taken," Fisher said.

• At least 15 officers and supervisors — nearly 10 percent of the force — have filed suit against the chief, the mayor, the township or all three, claiming age discrimination, retaliation, harassment or political influence over promotions and demotions. All but two of the suits have been filed in the past three years.

Rampant infighting in the Edison Police Department is costing taxpayers millions of dollars. 23 Gallery: Rampant infighting in the Edison Police Department is costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

Legal fees associated with those cases already have surpassed $1.6 million and continue to mount, burdening residents in Edison and hundreds of other New Jersey communities that take part in a taxpayer-funded insurance pool.

Wayne Mascola, vice president of the township council, expressed disgust at the number of officers filing suit, calling it "an abuse of the system."

"They know how to play the game through the legal system," Mascola said. "They’re like a bunch of little kids. They always want it their way. ‘This guy got it. I gotta get it, too.’ They want it all."

• Officers and commanders alike describe an atmosphere of treachery and intimidation. Chief Thomas Bryan, for one, contends disgruntled subordinates arranged for a "crack whore" to call his home and speak to his wife and children in a failed bid to sow turmoil and thwart his reform efforts.

• Paid stress leaves, once typically associated with the aftermath of violent or dangerous duty calls, have spiked with the departmental drama over the past two years. In the most high-profile case, Deputy Chief Mel Vaticano, the brother of retired Sgt. John Vaticano, was out for eight months on a stress-related medical leave after mounting an unsuccessful campaign to have Bryan arrested. Mel Vaticano makes $182,500, or $7,500 more than Gov. Chris Christie.

Former Councilwoman Melissa Perilstein, an advocate for reform of the police department, called stress leaves related to the internal turmoil an "unconscionable" waste of tax dollars. The Star-Ledger found the township has paid at least $300,000 in salary to officers too stressed to work in 2011 and 2012.

The upheaval rages on even as the department continues to struggle with inappropriate or illegal behavior by officers, undermining efforts to mend a reputation tattered by high-profile crimes, ranging from theft and assault to bank robbery and rape.

In the past four years alone, six officers were criminally charged or abruptly retired or resigned while under investigation, contributing to a record of misconduct that far outstrips departments of similar size across New Jersey.

Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan, the county’s chief law enforcement officer, said the 168-member force, by and large, "does its job and enforces the law." But given the department’s checkered history and ongoing strife, he said, it warrants continued scrutiny.

"Real or perceived, the problems reported in Edison that affect the police department should not and cannot be tolerated," Kaplan said. "Anything that affects the public trust is an impediment to that department being able to do its job."

REFORM OR RETRIBUTION?

The battle of Edison blazes with righteousness. There are few shades of gray here. There is little desire for compromise.

To Chief Bryan and his supporters, the mission is as straightforward as it is vital. If the police department is to rise above its inglorious past, they say, it must be instilled with professionalism, accountability and discipline.

"This department was decades behind," said Bryan, 52, who was appointed to the top post nearly four years ago. "We were open for liability with the way police practices were being conducted on numerous fronts, so the place really needed an overhaul, and it needed to be reformed in a short amount of time."

Bryan’s determination has been forged, in part, by experience. When he came on the job in the 1980s, he said, it wasn’t uncommon for officers to don their uniforms on days off to score free food from restaurants, a practice Bryan said amounted to theft.

Later, as an internal affairs investigator and commander — a period spanning 14 years — he oversaw or aided in the removal of two dozen officers who Bryan says committed crimes or engaged in inappropriate behavior.

"Those statistics are horrible," he said. "It’s the culture here. That’s why we put reforms in place, to change the culture."

Bryan, a 27-year veteran who makes $185,000, said most officers today act appropriately and approve of the steps he’s taken. It is the minority — an entrenched, vociferous, politically powerful minority — that has resisted reform and plotted his ouster, he said.

"There’s a lot of push-back from this old mentality, the old guard," Bryan said. "They’ve said, ‘We want our police department back the way it was.’ Well, it’s never going back to the way it was, because this is the 21st century."

To the chief’s detractors, Bryan’s claim of reform is a smoke screen.

They contend he rewards and protects personal friends on the force while gunning for those who helped oust his benefactor, former Mayor Jun Choi, in the Democratic primary three years ago. It was Choi who engineered Bryan’s rapid ascent, supporting his promotion from lieutenant to chief in less than a year and bypassing more senior commanders.

Isolated in his third-floor office in Edison’s hulking municipal building, Bryan rarely interacts with officers and routinely hands down orders that violate labor contracts, the critics say. Those misguided directives, union officials contend, lead to grievances, unnecessary legal fees and, ultimately, reversals by the Public Employment Relations Commission, the state agency that oversees labor relations.

"In private industry, if you made as many mistakes as him, it would probably get you fired," said Lt. Bruce Polkowitz, 55, president of the Superior Officers Association, the union that represents sergeants, lieutenants and captains. "Tommy Bryan has been very consistent as chief of police. He’s been consistently incorrect."

Each side in the fray has formidable backers.

Bryan has the support of most members of the township council, the president of the state police chiefs association and Kaplan, the prosecutor, who calls him "hardworking, professional and honest."

In addition, several of Bryan’s top commanders — also onetime supporters of Choi — remain fiercely loyal to him.

On the other side of the divide, according to interviews and lawsuits, is a mix of current and retired officers committed to pushing for a leadership change. Some of the former officers have relatives in the department. Others still burn with resentment over what they view as unequal or unfair treatment.

"Two officers do the same thing. One gets punished. The other one doesn’t. Guys are relating to this," said Al Sabo, 66, who retired in 2008 but who still has friends patrolling the streets.

The highest-ranking member of the anti-Bryan faction, Deputy Chief Vaticano, declined to comment. His opinions about Bryan’s leadership, however, are already on record in a lawsuit against the township.

Vaticano claims he was improperly passed over for promotion to chief and that Bryan humiliated him by giving him assignments beneath his rank, by taking away his township vehicle and by moving him into a basement office.

In what some viewed as a flagrant coup attempt, Vaticano also repeatedly urged Kaplan to criminally charge Bryan for allegedly trying to take internal affairs files out of headquarters last year. The prosecutor, in his interview with The Star-Ledger, called Vaticano’s contention baseless.

Bryan’s critics might have no greater ally than Mayor Ricigliano, a woman for whom they campaigned relentlessly and spent tens of thousands of dollars to help elect.

Ricigliano, who as mayor holds the title of public safety director, demoted Bryan’s favored commanders during her first week in office, calling it a cost-cutting measure. Later, she rolled back his key initiatives, including the CompStat crime-mapping program.

Then in March of last year, she suspended Bryan with pay, saying he failed to heed her order to provide training to civilian dispatchers, a move designed to put more officers on the streets.

The suspension was to last two weeks. Instead, it stretched to three months while Bryan fought it legally. In the end, the chief surrendered a week’s vacation to break the impasse.

The dispute cost taxpayers $36,000 in legal fees, according to invoices obtained under the Open Public Records Act. And Bryan, for those three months, was paid more than $46,000 not to work.

In a lengthy interview, Ricigliano said she likes Bryan personally and stressed that he has always been polite to her. But asked if she had confidence in her chief, the mayor paused.

Eight seconds passed.

"Is the silence deafening?" she asked.

A few seconds later, Ricigliano continued, her tone a sigh of disappointment.

"My maternal instinct tells me in my heart of hearts that he would probably like to do the right thing, but I don’t know that he has the will," she said.

To Mascola, the council vice president, the ongoing strife is beyond an embarrassment. It’s a financial sinkhole, one that grows wider and deeper with each new lawsuit, each grievance and each personnel move driven by politics or spite.

Edison’s officers are already among the better paid in the state, earning $116,000 after eight years on the job. Promotions bring salary bumps of 12.5 percent.

Mascola questions whether the contracts doled out over the years have bred a sense of entitlement.

"Now that the economy has tanked, people are noticing these guys are getting a great salary, great benefits, and they’re doing this?" Mascola said. "People are getting angry, and rightfully so."

Fisher, the former deputy director in the Division of Criminal Justice and now a professor at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Criminal Justice, argues the constant discord has another negative consequence.

"All this energy that goes into these internal squabbles and disputes detracts from the most important objective of a police agency, which is protecting the public," he said. "That’s the real harm to the public here. That’s the real shame."

ROGUE OPERATION

The internal affairs unit in any law enforcement agency is a sanctum and a symbol.

Locked 24 hours a day, with just a handful of keys issued, it has been described by New Jersey’s courts as a critical counterweight to misbehavior and a guardian of constitutional and civil rights for officers and the public.

So vital is the IA function that guidelines issued by the state Attorney General’s Office run to 119 pages, dictating in exacting detail how investigations should be run and how reports should be compiled.

In Edison, a trove of files discovered on a spring day last year suggests those guidelines became an afterthought.

The discovery came in late March, shortly after Bryan’s suspension. Deputy Chief Vaticano, placed in operational control of the force, immediately transferred Bryan’s men out of IA and installed his own, Prosecutor Kaplan confirmed.

On the desk used by Lt. Gregory Formica, widely seen in the department as a Bryan loyalist, lay a poster-size chart containing dozens of names. And below each name, bullet points denoted scraps of intelligence that had nothing to do with police work, according to four officers with detailed knowledge of the documents.

The four spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared reprisals. Kaplan, without describing the documents, confirmed their existence.

The chart showed which officers made political contributions to Ricigliano and how much they gave. It noted if they or their relatives volunteered or campaigned for the mayor.

It also delved into the personal, tracking friendships among the officers and the workplaces of their family members.

"They were running a very J. Edgar Hoover operation in there," said one of the officers with knowledge of the papers. The officer said he believes anyone who supported the mayor was an "enemy" of internal affairs.

Perhaps more significantly, the chart contained entries on Ricigliano and other civilians, noting political affiliations, friendships, professional connections and campaign donations. A union attorney, James Mets, made the list. So did a former assistant prosecutor, Frank Graves, who called the investigation a waste of time and taxpayer money.

"I cannot imagine what these screwballs would be doing looking at me," said Graves, now in private practice. "It’s stupid. There have got to be better things for them to do, and they should be doing them."

Separately, piled atop Formica’s desk were dossiers on various township officials, among them the business administrator at the time, a former assistant public safety director and Ricigliano’s chief adviser, former council President Bill Stephens.

The folders contained financial disclosure forms, copies of public statements and, in at least one case, a printout of a confidential e-mail apparently pulled from the township’s computer system.

Ricigliano and Stephens said they had heard rumors of a secret intelligence-gathering operation in internal affairs but did not know its extent or focus.

"If such a document or documents exist, it’s extremely inappropriate," Ricigliano said. "I would say it’s probably more than unethical."

The final document discovered that day has come to be known among some members of the department as "the wagon wheel of death." Others refer to it as a "hit list."

Reminiscent of a Mafia organizational chart, it had two circled names at the center, with lines, or spokes, leading to other circled names at the edges.

The men in the middle: Bruce Polkowitz, the outspoken union president, and Patrolman Joseph Kenney, a veteran officer who had filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Bryan and the township. Edison would later settle with Kenney for $250,000.

About a dozen officers — all Ricigliano supporters like Polkowitz and Kenney — formed the wagon wheel’s outer ring. They included Sgt. Edward Wheeler, who also had filed suit against the department, Deputy Chief Vaticano and Vaticano’s brother John, the sergeant who retired last December.

Kenney, who retired in April, called the papers evidence of a "conspiracy."

"I would really love to know why Bruce and myself were the center-point of the Gambino crime family," he said. "Do I think they were targeting me? Absolutely they were targeting me. Internal affairs conspired to get a couple of guys who stood up for what was right in the police department and who supported Mayor Ricigliano."

Polkowitz, a deputy mayor in Franklin Township, Hunterdon County, and a former president of the Edison Board of Education, referred to the collection of papers as "somebody’s dirty work."

"I have to question the mental stability of the person who did this," he said. "I couldn’t imagine spending the taxpayers’ money — thousands of hours — wasting time to create a flow chart of officers and who they’re associated with when those officers have done nothing but come to work and do their jobs."

Kaplan said the internal affairs activity was brought to his attention shortly after it was discovered and that he swiftly put a stop to it.

"Internal affairs investigates cops," the prosecutor said. "It does not investigate family members. It does not investigate politicians. It investigates cops."

Two weeks after learning about the files, Kaplan instituted a three-month county takeover of Edison’s IA unit, in part because of the investigations into civilians and in part because of Vaticano’s abrupt personnel changes, which the prosecutor called disruptive.

Formica, now a watch commander, declined to comment for this story. He never returned to internal affairs.

He also never faced discipline. Kaplan cleared him of wrongdoing after his inquiry into the intelligence-gathering operation.

"The matter was reviewed, and the matter was closed with remedial instruction," Kaplan said, adding his office reiterated to every department in Middlesex County that IA investigations must be confined to police officers.

Ricigliano questioned whether that’s enough, saying the IA unit’s activities should be "investigated fully."

Fisher, the Rutgers professor, went a step further, saying the unit’s actions merit oversight by the prosecutor or the Attorney General’s Office "for an extended period of time."

"This cannot be ignored," he said. "It seems to me there’s a need for broader oversight of the Edison Police Department, and the place to start is internal affairs."

Polkowitz, too, said he wants answers, contending Bryan must have known one of his IA officers was snooping on civilians.

Bryan flatly denied the claim, saying he learned of the allegation from Kaplan only after he began serving his suspension and that he never saw the documents in question.

Asked if there should be consequences for the IA unit’s civilian probes, the chief responded: "Any and all allegations of police misconduct are investigated to their logical conclusion. If there is a violation, then the appropriate discipline is administered."

CYCLE OF LAWSUITS

Politics course through the Edison Police Department like a contagion, coloring perceptions about duty assignments, discipline and, more than anything, coveted promotions.

Come election time, those who harbor hope of advancement open their checkbooks and volunteer their time and their voices, officers say. A failure to campaign, they say, suggests a lack of ambition.

"You can’t get promoted unless you play politics," Polkowitz said, his tone a verbal shrug. "It’s no different in the corporate world."

Though political activism among police officers isn’t unusual, members of the department say that over the past few years, it has intensified to the point of obsession, turning meaner and more dangerous. Pick the wrong side, they say, and you could destroy your career.

Nowhere is that sentiment spelled out more clearly than in the many lawsuits filed by members of the force. In court case after court case, officers on both sides say they were punished, harassed, demoted or denied promotion because of political considerations.

In one flurry of suits, six commanders who supported Choi’s re-election effort say Ricigliano exacted payback by reversing the promotions they received under the former mayor. Four others who were demoted did not file suit.

"As a result of this round of demotions, effectively all Choi supporters within the police department have been demoted at least once," according to a suit filed by Lt. Matthew Freeman, who was knocked down from captain.

Ricigliano called the demotions an economic decision, saying they have saved Edison taxpayers well over a half million dollars and climbing.

"If somebody thinks they’re politically motivated, then somebody doesn’t know me," she said.

Two more lawsuits argue the demoted officers never should have been promoted in the first place.

Choi elevated many of them in the final days of his administration, bypassing more senior members who had received higher ratings from top commanders. The personnel moves reeked of politics, critics say.

"It was a sham," said Polkowitz, who, in one of the suits, challenged the promotions of three fellow lieutenants to captain. "They slaughtered the process."

Edward Wheeler — the sergeant on the outer ring of the "wagon wheel of death" — filed the other suit, challenging the elevation of sergeants to lieutenants.

This summer, two Superior Court judges ruled in favor of Polkowitz and Wheeler, invalidating the promotions on the premise they were "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable."

While the decisions have no immediate practical impact because Choi’s promotions had already been rolled back, the field has now been reset for future promotions, meaning everyone will be required to start the application process from scratch.

Equally significant to Polkowitz and others on the force, they say the rulings validated complaints about politics and favoritism.

A BALLOONING EXPENSE

Vendettas. Rivalries. Retaliation.

Those themes are at the core of most of the 15 lawsuits filed by current and former officers. Taken together, they represent a repeating cycle of attack and counterattack.

Robert Urbanski, who retired in 2010, contends Bryan and two other officers were so intent on punishing him for a previous complaint he filed against another superior that they toyed with his health, waiting nearly a month to secure a warrant to obtain blood from a burglary suspect who claimed to have AIDS. Urbanski exchanged blood with the man while arresting him.

The former officer didn’t contract the disease, but he contends the powerful anti-AIDS medication he was required to take left him ill for months and caused permanent damage to his health.

"I don’t want to see anyone else go through what I went through," Urbanski, 44, said in an interview. "They think they can get away with anything."

In July, he took the rare step of filing criminal complaints against Bryan and the other officers. A municipal court judge dismissed the official misconduct counts three weeks later, ruling Urbanski’s "raw, unsupported suspicions" did not amount to proof.

Urbanski’s long-running civil case met a similar fate late last month, when it was dismissed by a judge in Superior Court. By then, the cost of fighting the suit had climbed above $230,000, according to billing summaries obtained under the Open Public Records Act. Urbanski says he plans to appeal.

Bryan and the other officers have denied any retaliation against Urbanski. Bryan calls him part of the cabal looking to force him out.

Valid or not, the lawsuits tearing at the department pose a steady and growing burden on the public.

Collectively, legal bills and settlements for all 15 suits have topped $1.6 million, the billing records show. And with many of the cases yet to go to trial, that figure is sure to balloon in the years ahead.

But it is not just township residents who will bear the cost. Indeed, the partisanship in Edison casts financial ripples across the state.

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Edison is one of 380 New Jersey municipalities that take part in the Municipal Excess Liability Joint Insurance Fund, a taxpayer-supported agency commonly known as the MEL.

Communities pay premiums, which are in turn used to make good on legal bills and settlements. In the case of Edison’s police lawsuits, the MEL has picked up more than three-quarters of the cost, the records show.

PERSONAL ATTACKS

Intimidation can be subtle or overt.

In Edison, officers say, it’s often the equivalent of a hammer blow.

Thomas Bryan had been chief of police for only six months when he got a taste of what lay ahead. It was June 2009, and Ricigliano had just defeated Choi in the Democratic primary, making her a near-lock for the general election in the largely Democratic community.

On a chalkboard in police headquarters, someone had scrawled a message that left little to the imagination.

"When you have the enemy on the run, you never let up. You chase them down," it said, according to the suit filed by Freeman. "When you corner them, you attack them so savagely that they are annihalated (sic) and all others who support them are paralyzed with fear of retaliation!"

Bryan said he was unable to prove who wrote the message. All the same, he said he knew it was meant for every officer or commander who supported Choi’s effort to remake the police department. "Choi Boys," they were called derisively.

Soon things became more personal.

Bryan said people began prank-calling his home, engaging his children in conversation. In one case, a female caller suggested he’d been involved in a dalliance.

Bryan said he learned from other officers the woman was a drug-addicted prostitute — a "crack whore" — whom he said had ties to several of his critics.

He said he never developed enough evidence to make a criminal or administrative case, but his suspicions are firm.

"There’s no doubt in my mind my detractors were behind it," he said.

If Bryan sounds a touch paranoid, perhaps he has reason to be.

A former officer who wants the chief ousted told The Star-Ledger Bryan had been followed in the hope of catching him in some act of wrongdoing, whether an extramarital affair or on-the-job shirking.

The former officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue, said the chief’s car had been photographed during at least one of the surveillance missions, which apparently turned up no useful ammunition.

Bryan said he was aware of the monitoring. His response: "Bring it. I have nothing to hide."

He added that he wasn’t surprised some of his officers would go so far as to arrange the covert missions, likening them to "homegrown terrorists."

"They’re ruthless," Bryan said. "People have told me, ‘Watch your back, because what these guys will do to get you out of office is unimaginable.’ÂÂ"

Their motivation, Bryan said, stems not from a desire to improve the department but from naked self-interest.

"It’s all about power and control and ego and greed," he said.

ALLEGATIONS OF HARASSMENT

The chief isn’t alone in describing acts of intimidation.

Lt. Anthony Marcantuono and Sgt. Frank Todd, Bryan supporters, filed workplace harassment complaints with Edison’s human resources department in 2010 after seeing a flurry of online posts they called threatening. Many of the posts identified Marcantuono and Todd by name.

"If you think I’m afraid of the likes of you, let’s take it outside, Big Man," one read, according to Marcantuono’s complaint, which was obtained by The Star-Ledger.

"I hope you’re protected by the saints and the lord," another read.

Some comments made it clear the writers were Edison cops, mentioning work schedules, the time of day Todd dropped his daughter at school and an old disciplinary case against Marcantuono, who served a yearlong suspension in the 1990s for creating a vulgar underground newsletter.

"It is very disturbing and troubling to me that an individual or group of individuals would spend so much energy thinking about me and my family," Marcantuono wrote in his harassment complaint.

The comments were left in the Edison forum on NJ.com, the online home of The Star-Ledger. The prosecutor’s office issued a subpoena to obtain the commenters’ internet protocol addresses, unique identifiers that can be traced to a particular computer or network.

Investigators then contacted internet service providers to learn the names of those whose IP addresses were used to post the comments.

One name sent shock waves through the department: Michael Palko.

Palko, 58, a captain who earns $180,000 per year, allegedly used the screen name "urajoke" to make some of the comments, including one that carried the subject line "Weapons sharpened."

On June 21, after a lengthy investigation, he was slapped with seven administrative charges, among them insubordination and disloyalty. He remains on the job pending a disciplinary hearing.

In an interview, Palko said he was framed.

"I adamantly deny anything to do with any kind of posting," he said. "This is a character job they’re doing on me."

Palko said his home computer network at the time was not secured by a password and that anyone could have parked outside his house and piggybacked on his IP address.

Asked about the motivation for a frame-up, Palko said he believed it was retaliation for testifying against the chief in the whistleblower trial of Joseph Kenney, the retired patrolman who was at the center of the "wagon wheel of death." Palko was among those on the wagon wheel’s outer ring.

He also said he was the officer who uncovered Marcantuono’s underground newsletter in the 1990s, leading to the lengthy suspension.

The Superior Officers Association has filed a grievance over the charges brought against Palko. Polkowitz called the case evidence of continuing harassment by Bryan.

"This is more of the same ridiculous, fabricated charges that other officers have been subjected to in the past," he said.

Palko’s lawyer, Theodore Campbell, said he expects to file a lawsuit against Bryan and the township as early as this week. It would mark the 16th suit by a member of the department in recent years.

STRESS LEAVES

In police departments across the state, officers who suffer a "major" or "catastrophic" injury or illness are typically granted up to a year of sick time at full pay, said Raymond Hayducka, president of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police.

While contract language does not always define which conditions qualify as catastrophic, the contingency is generally associated with serious ailments such as cancer or recovery from major surgeries or motor vehicle accidents, Hayducka said.

The question burning in Edison is how stress derived from infighting translated into lengthy sick leaves at full pay. And Palko and Deputy Chief Vaticano are at the center of the debate.

Palko was out for a full year on a stress-related medical leave while under investigation for the online postings. The internal charges against him were filed the day he returned in June.

Vaticano, 63, went out on a stress-related leave in June 2011, immediately after Bryan returned from the suspension imposed by Ricigliano.

Vaticano came back to work in January, after eight months, but soon went out again because he was required to use vacation he had accrued during his sick leave.

Perilstein, the former councilwoman, said the stress leaves reflect a sense of entitlement in the department.

"At the end of the day, it’s incredibly unfortunate that it doesn’t become about a certain level of allegiance to your profession," said Perilstein, who chose not to run for re-election last year. "They should be held to a higher expectation. There should be a level of accountability."

Campbell, Palko’s lawyer, said his client’s yearlong absence, like all extended sick leaves in the department, was approved by a doctor of Edison’s choosing.

He called the stress-related leaves a consequence of Bryan’s management style, contending the chief has used transfers, shift changes and unnecessary discipline to "run roughshod" over officers who aren’t with him politically.

"For many of them, it is a hostile environment," Campbell said. "Hopefully, the citizens of Edison will understand that. They have to take a break. Better that than go back to work and have a heart attack."

Bryan, citing federal law, said he could not discuss health issues involving individual officers. In general, he said, stress leaves have increased over the past few years, coinciding with the insurrection against his reform efforts.

If he had a choice, Bryan said, he would do more to ensure medical leaves were legitimate. But the authority to do so has been taken away from him by Ricigliano, who ordered that all sick-time issues be routed through Edison’s human resources department.

Hayducka, the head of the chiefs association and the police chief in South Brunswick, said the arrangement was unique.

"He is the only chief in the state I’m aware of who is not allowed to check on people when they’re sick," Hayducka said. "Any chief has a duty and an obligation to make sure people are using sick time properly."

Ricigliano and Stephens, the mayor’s adviser, said they had no choice because Bryan was overzealous to the point of abuse.

"He had someone in police administration calling doctors for diagnoses," Ricigliano said. "You can’t do that."

Stephens said Bryan "destroyed" the privacy rights under HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

"We could have been in court for the next six years," Stephens said. "It had gotten insane. We had to say, ‘Wait a minute. Let someone in personnel handle it because they understand the HIPAA rules.’"

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Stephens and the mayor offered a sympathetic view of Vaticano, saying Bryan assigned him to duties not befitting a deputy chief, including a stint on overnights in the communications division.

"There was a pretty good history indicating why he could have been under a great deal of stress," Stephens said.

Added Ricigliano: "Sometimes you can have an anger built up inside you because you feel that things perhaps are not fair, and that’s part of the problem we have here."

In early August of this year, Vaticano went on extended leave with a knee injury. He returned to work Monday. Two days later, he began a vacation that is expected to last until January.

CAN IT BE FIXED?

As the Edison Police Department lurches ahead, crisis to crisis and drama to drama, the question is whether the chaos can be tamped down.

Kaplan, the prosecutor, and Hayducka, the head of the state chiefs association, say an important first step would be to strip away the politics and minimize outside interference.

It’s a message, in part, aimed at Ricigliano.

Kaplan specifically cited the mayor’s decision to roll back the promotions made by her predecessor.

"You can take rank for discipline or malfeasance, but you should not take rank and disassemble a police department based on political considerations," he said, adding that such a move "creates havoc."

Ricigliano’s active stewardship of the agency, coupled with the department’s activist union, further add to the turmoil, Kaplan said.

"When you start injecting unions and politics into the mix, it makes it all the more difficult to manage," he said.

Promotional tests across the board might help cut down on the squabbling, said Mascola, the councilman, but Edison now requires a written test only for the rank of sergeant, resulting in a mad scrum for promotion to lieutenant and captain.

"No wonder it’s so politicized," he said.

To Wayne Fisher, the Rutgers professor, the department needs an inoculation of transparency, particularly in a promotional process so clearly colored by political support.

"Police officers have First Amendment rights like everybody else, but there’s a price to be paid when command-level police officers become openly involved in backing candidates," he said. "It inevitably results in the identification of a politically ‘in’ group and a politically ‘out’ group, and politics being as it is, the inclination is to reward those who are ‘in’ and bring negative consequences to those who are ‘out.’"

While discretion should play a part in promotions, officers must come to expect they will be treated fairly, Fisher said.

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Edison might benefit by opting into the civil service system, which has a more structured testing program administered by the state. About half of New Jersey’s municipal police departments are civil service agencies.

But many police departments manage just fine without civil service, Fisher said. What’s more, a transition to civil service would take time, he said, and Edison’s problems appear to be pressing.

"The signals here are that action needs to be taken immediately," he said.

Should the rancor continue to fester, John Vaticano, the retired sergeant, has a prediction for the years ahead.

"These lawsuits are gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger," he said. "And when all is said and done, it’s going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money."

Star-Ledger staff writer Tom Haydon contributed to this report.

MONDAY: The Edison Police Department's remarkable record of misconduct.

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