Prosecutor's Report - Egg Harbor City Police Dept Is Dysfunctional

MICHELLE BRUNETTI POST, Staff Writer
After monitoring the Egg Harbor City Police Department for about eight months, Atlantic County Prosecutor Jim McClain issued a report calling the command of the department dysfunctional, with weapons improperly stored and officers left to supervise themselves.

The report said Egg Harbor City Police Chief John McColgan has never prepared a budget, is often absent without notifying subordinates and manages shifts in a way that maximizes overtime and leave the least-experienced officers “often working by themselves without support and supervision.”

McColgan makes $110,782 a year to run the department of 13 officers, according to city records. He did not return calls for comment.

Also according to the report, panic buttons in the cellblock area were not activated, there was no alarm system in the one-story building with windows often left open, and weapons and evidence were not properly secured.

The prosecutor said changes already made, demanded or suggested will increase safety while saving the city money. The report contained 27 specific recommendations for changes in the way the department is run, as well as suggested new policies and procedures.

McClain described severe deficiencies in the department’s Internal Affairs program, saying McColgan “has been ignoring the department’s internal affairs obligations.”

Complaints were received alleging excessive use of force and other wrongdoing, but in some cases no active investigations were conducted, according to the report. At other times officers conducted internal affairs investigations before being trained to do so, and a PBA shop steward was an internal affairs investigator.

The report said the prosecutor would leave a part-time monitor in place through June, to “evaluate whether the department has implemented all of the directives and at least some of the recommendations contained in this report.”

McClain wrote in the report, which the Press received Tuesday in response to an Open Public Records Act request, that he sent a monitor to survey the department’s policies and procedures, command structure and deployment of manpower.

But the command “proved to be so dysfunctional,” McClain wrote, that he directed the monitor “to take a more active role in the day to day operation of the department,” and to audit and repair its evidence retention and internal affairs functions.

Mayor Lisa Jiampetti, who has often clashed with McColgan over the running of the department, said Tuesday she could not comment on the report this time.

In June when the prosecutor’s monitoring of the department was announced, Jiampetti said the department's morale had been very low when she first came into office in 2013. She had a four-year plan for the department, but it wasn't well received, she said then.

City Solicitor Jim Carroll was not available, according to his office.

In the last few years the city has faced several lawsuits over issues in the police department. There was also a criminal case against Officer Steven Hadley, of Port Republic, who admitted using his position to have a sexual relationship with a confidential informant.

Hadley was charged in 2013 and received a five-year suspended sentence in 2014, after a guilty plea. The 10-year veteran officer, who was injured in a motor vehicle crash in 2013 and uses a wheelchair, also forfeited his right to public service and to his pension.

The department and unnamed other officers are facing a lawsuit from one of four women allegedly pressured into having sex with him. The suit alleges other officers knew of the abuse but did nothing to stop it.

In spite of that experience, the police department had no policy in place regarding the use and supervision of informants and confidential sources, the prosecutor’s report said.

“Consultation with the chief revealed that he had no intention to develop or implement such a policy,” according to the report. The prosecutor has directed McColgan to develop such a policy.

The report was finished last week and sent to the city solicitor, according to the prosecutor’s spokesman Jay McKeen.

26 page letter plus attachments at
 ACPO OPRA 16-05 EHC Letter+Attachments

Contact: 609-272-7219

MPost@pressofac.com

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 http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/egg-harbor-city-police-department-dysfunctional-prosecutor-says/article_fd8a3f10-eadd-11e5-a962-83d7f42c097c.html

4/29/16  Update
http://gadfly01.blogspot.com/2016/04/ehc-police-dept-update.html

http://gadfly01.blogspot.com/2016/05/teen-suing-ehc-officerpolice-and-others.html

http://gadfly01.blogspot.com/2016/05/ehc-mayors-letter-and-rebuttal.html

http://gadfly01.blogspot.com/2016/05/ehc-police-chief-to-retire-91.html