(As reported by Josh Margolin in The Star-Ledger on June 27, 2008)
NEWARK, NJ – Five New Jersey Transit police officers, including the agency’s first female lieutenant, have filed separate lawsuits over the past year accusing NJ Transit’s top cop of harassment, discrimination and retaliation based on race, sex and physical disability.
One officer said the police chief, Joseph Bober, punched him in public, putting him in the hospital. Another said he was denied a promotion because he was on active duty in Iraq. A third alleged that Bober has been intentionally trying to “weed out” minority officers since taking the reins of the police force responsible for the rails, trains and stations statewide.
“Police are entrusted to enforce and uphold the law. Here you have the highest-ranking police official at NJ Transit violating the laws,” said Claudia Reis, the attorney representing Lt. Theresa Frizalone, the first woman in the department to reach that rank. “To make matters worse, those who complain about his conduct are then retaliated against and all of this illegal conduct is covered up — so much so that even officers’ (internal affairs) files are tampered with.”
Bober’s office referred calls to NJ Transit’s public relations department, where spokesman Dan Stessel said: “As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on active litigation.” Stessel said, “We have well-established processes for handling discrimination claims.”
In court papers filed by the Attorney General’s Office, NJ Transit and Bober “deny that they have engaged in any unlawful conduct.”
Bober, 56, has been with NJ Transit for 34 years and has run the nearly 300-person police force since 2002. He earns $155,000.
The first of the lawsuits was filed in March 2007 by Frizalone, a 20-year veteran of the force who has, among other assignments, held the top police post at Newark’s Penn Station. She alleged Bober denied her a promotion, criticized her appearance and, at one point, “told her to ‘stop being so emotional.'”
Frizalone said she complained formally about the treatment but the matter was not pursued.
What did happen, she said, was that Bober retaliated against her by changing her assignments, taking away her authority and then putting her in command of the so-called “radio desk” communications center — “a punishment detail.”
In 1992, Frizalone received wide attention when she became the first woman promoted to sergeant at the police force. Five years later, she again broke a glass ceiling by becoming NJ Transit’s first woman lieutenant.
Lt. Charles Thomas accused Bober and the transit agency of violating federal law when they “failed to promote” him in 2005 because he could not attend an interview while serving on active duty as an Army reservist in the Iraq war. Thomas complained to the federal government and alleged he suffered further retaliation for blowing the whistle.
“There really is a common thread,” said Thomas’ attorney, David Zatuchni. “If you really look at this, what you really see is people that complain about unlawful conduct or harassment get targeted with retaliatory discipline and suspensions. Unfortunately, these kinds of things are still very, very common. This does seem to be an environment where people are intimidated and essentially they try to control them through fear.”
In January, Capt. Nicholas Lucarelli, one of the highest-ranking officers at NJ Transit, filed a 43-page complaint that accuses Bober of being “an outrageous tyrannical bully” who uses “constant threats, abusive flare-ups and he would even throw objects” during tirades.
Lucarelli declined to comment, citing a directive from his superiors. According to his court papers, Lucarelli said Bober treated him unfairly and threatened him repeatedly, but the problem reached a new level in August 2005, shortly after the captain — who has been diagnosed with depression — returned to work following abdominal surgery.
At the Summit train station, Lucarelli said, Bober punched him in the gut in front of witnesses, causing him to be rushed to the hospital. Lucarelli was later diagnosed with a hernia. At the hospital, Lucarelli’s lawsuit said, Bober screamed at him, directed that reports of the incident be falsified and “threatened his career would be over if he filed charges and the other officers (present) were similarly threatened that they had to cover up the incident.”
“There was a definite and intentional cover up scheme, which produced false and incomplete reports,” the suit said.