A 14-year veteran of the Hoboken Police Department has filed a motion to order the firing of Hoboken Police Chief Carmen LaBruno. The new motion is an amendment to a lawsuit filed in February that claims that LaBruno has allegedly harassed and held a personal "vendetta" against Lt. Mark Competello ever since a flap over a 1996 sergeant’s exam.
The original suit seeks a day shift, legal costs, and $5 million in compensation for Competello. The amended complaint calls for LaBruno’s termination in addition to those other damages. According to Robert Griffin, Competello’s Randolph-based attorney, the amended complaint, which was filed on Monday, asserts that since the filing of the first suit, LaBruno "retaliated against Competello for filing the federal court action."
LaBruno said Thursday that all of the charges are "totally fabricated" and that Competello is "demanding money that he is not entitled to." LaBruno said he is and is seeking to get "a steady day shift with weekends off." LaBruno also said that he can produce several documents that he says prove that Competello’s newest charges are unfounded.
"I look forward to a public hearing," said LaBruno Thursday, "so that I can prove that [Competello’s charges] have no merit, and are not based in law or fact."
LaBruno claims that the lieutenant told him that if LaBruno were to give him a spot on the highly desirable motorcycle squad, he would drop his suit.
‘Just ridiculous’
Jennifer Alexander, an associate at Griffin and Griffin, said that LaBruno’s accusations of quid pro quo offers are not true. "This is just ridiculous," she said. "[Competello] would never say anything like that. This comment [by LaBruno] is just another example of the continuing pattern of harassment."
Competello’s newest allegation asserts that on June 18, 2002, LaBruno demanded Competello’s personal copy of an agreement, which had deferred Competello’s lieutenant’s pay for one year. This agreement provided for raises for Competello and four other Hoboken officers.
According to Griffin, LaBruno’s order for the personal document was made through Walter Wehrhahn, the police superior officers’ union president, and a sergeant with the Hoboken police force.
Competello wrote to Wehrhahn asking why the chief needed a copy of the agreement. Competello contends that a copy of the agreement should be on file with the chief, the city’s Payroll Department and the union. Competello added that the memo was not needed last year when the five lieutenants received their raises. He contends that by checking with the city’s Payroll Department, the chief could verify that the facts asserted in the original agreement were true, and that the raises were due.
LaBruno said Friday that neither he nor the union had a copy of the agreement and that the only copy of the agreement was at the city’s Payroll Department. He added that Competello’s agreement was not needed the year before because the Public Safety Director George Crimmins knew where the document was filed. Since that time, Mayor David Roberts, administration has come into office. According to LaBruno, inconsistencies in the filing practices between the two administrations caused the agreement to be misplaced. That, he said, is why the city needed a copy off the agreement this year and not the previous one.
According to Griffin, once Competello’s reluctance to turn over the document became evident, Wehrhahn, after conferring with LaBruno, sought out Competello and told him that the chief was ordering him to immediately produce the memo or he would be suspended.
Thursday, LaBruno confirmed that he did threaten disciplinary action if the agreement was not produced. "At that point he was resisting a direct order," he said.
Competello did produce the memo. Competello contends that no other lieutenant was ordered to produce his memorandum of agreement under threat of suspension.
LaBruno refutes that charge. He said that all four of the other lieutenants produced the document without confrontation or argument. Thursday, Wehrhahn confirmed that the other four lieutenants did in fact produce their forms without argument.
According to Competello, the continued alleged harassment by the chief is motivated by a desire to retaliate against Competello for filing his federal lawsuit, and according to him, constitutes a continuation of the six year history of harassment he endured, stemming from Competello’s exercise of his "first amendment rights in connection with a sergeant’s exam, in 1996."
Competello’s suit, filed Feb. 13, states that in October of 1995, a member of the police department told LaBruno that he had seen a possible cheating incident on a promotional exam to the rank of sergeant. (The alleged cheating incident did not involve Competello.) LaBruno began an internal affairs investigation into the incident. The chief also lobbied the state’s Department of Personnel to discard the sergeant’s list resulting from the exam. The list is compiled in descending order of score and states who should be promoted first. Since the promotion list was in jeopardy, none of the candidates were promoted to sergeant at that time. According to the suit, Competello wrote to the state in 1995 seeking for the investigation to be expedited. That was when the trouble started, according to the suit.
Competello charges that LaBruno got angry that Competello took matters into his own hands. Competello alleges in the suit that LaBruno found out about Competello’s letter in June of 1996 and told him that he had "screwed up" and that LaBruno could not trust him anymore.
Competello said that the same day, he was transferred from the Department of Planning, "a desirable post," to the evidence vault, "a far less desirable post." Competello said this was "arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable, based upon Defendant LaBruno’s vendetta."
LaBruno said Thursday that Competello’s transfer was not part of some "vendetta." He said that calling the office an "evidence vault" is a misnomer. He added that working in the "records area" is one of the "most coveted assignments." He added that the area is in a carpeted, air-conditioned area, with individual computer terminals.
The suit details numerous subsequent instances of shift changes and alleged harassment over the next five years.
The new demand to terminate LaBruno comes just one month after the decision in Morris County Superior Court case in which Judge Catherine Langlois ordered the removal of the Parsippany police chief following a finding that the chief engaged in harassment of a Parsippany sergeant, said Griffin.
In that case, the sergeant claimed he was threatened and assaulted by the officer after voicing suspicions about corruption in the department. LaBruno said Thursday that the Parsippany case and his case have very little in common and should not even be compared.
Meanwhile, Competello is still working for the Hoboken Police Department, and his case has not yet been heard.