Fire/Rescue News - Judge throws out internal charges against Atlantic City firefighters in alleged firehouse sex
By ERIC CAMPBELL and MICHAEL CLARK Staff Writers | Posted: Thursday, December 24, 2009 | 15 comments
ATLANTIC CITY — Superior Court Judge Valerie Armstrong concluded the city has “seriously violated” the due-process rights of three firefighters, and she dismissed administrative charges against them in the wake of an alleged firehouse sex incident....Continue Reading
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“This is not how the process was intended to work,” Armstrong said in a decision Wednesday.
Fire Capts. Kevin Munn and Elwood Faunce III and firefighter Andrew J. Lubaczewski were accused of failing to intervene when firefighter Richard Williams Jr. invited a 19-year-old woman and two 16-year-old girls into Fire Station 2 at Indiana and Baltic avenues in May. The 16-year-olds claimed in a lawsuit that they touched Williams’ genitals and he sexually gratified himself in front of them.
Armstrong chastised the city administration for mishandling the case in several ways, including pursuing internal interviews with the employees before their departmental hearings and refusing to release discovery documents at the appropriate times. She suggested the city had filed the administrative charges hastily after the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office declined to pursue criminal charges.
Mayor Lorenzo Langford’s spokesman and Business Administrator Michael Scott referred questions to city Solicitor Robert Tarver. He said the city filed more detailed charges after the judge had decried the original charges as vague, but Armstrong said the changes made the documents “remarkably different.”
Tarver said Armstrong predicated her decision on “technicalities,” such as the city changing the date of the alleged offense from May 15 to May 16. Armstrong noted none of the three plaintiffs was working May 15.
“We will undoubtedly appeal,” Tarver said. “This (ruling) really turns case law on its head.”
Bill Subin, Lubaczewski’s attorney, said, “We would hope that the city would not further waste the taxpayers’ money. This young man and these two captains have suffered immensely, living under a cloud of false accusations.”
Michael Mackler, Munn’s attorney, said he has already notified the city to expect a lawsuit from his client.
“Sadly, this is yet another example of this administration’s penchant for disregarding the law and doing whatever it wants, all at the peril and expense of the taxpayers of Atlantic City,” Mackler said. He called the charges “a politically motivated public spectacle ... an example of election-cycle politics at its worst.”
Michelle Douglass, Faunce’s attorney, said, “My client wasn’t even aware of the incident until after he was charged.”
Armstrong also questioned the process used to transfer police reports of the incident to the Langford administration.
”What is going on here with regard to the Atlantic City Police Department reports?” she asked, noting that the city claimed it had not obtained the reports and the fire officials’ attorneys had to obtain them through the county prosecutor. “It’s just an unacceptable situation. I’m not going to belabor the point.”
Police Chief John J. Mooney III said he is unaware of any problems with the records, claiming the prosecutor had asked that police reports transferred to the city should go through him.
“As far as I know, all of the requests for information were satisfied,” Mooney said.
Langford’s administration suspended Williams in September. He will remain off-duty until an internal hearing can be held. Munn, Faunce and Lubaczewski have been working while their cases proceeded in Superior Court.
The local chapter of the National Action Network has held several rallies and news conferences protesting the handling of the incident and the lack of criminal charges.
“We’ve been very peaceful and humble about all this,” said Steven Young, the group’s president. “The more peaceful we’ve been, the worse it has gotten.”
Young said he and his group plan to rally in front of Station 2 again at noon Wednesday, when “we will be taking other actions that haven’t been taken in the past.” Young declined to elaborate.
“I don’t want to put race in it, but they have put race in it,” Young said. “Everyone who has been involved with this selective punishment have been white. And all of those who want to see peaceful justice have been black.”
The accused firefighters are all white, and the teenagers invited into the station are black.
Fire Chief Dennis Brooks could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Contact Eric Scott Campbell: 609-272-7227 ECampbell@pressofac.com
Contact Michael Clark: 609-272-7204 Michael.Clark@pressofac.com
Posted in Atlantic_city, Top_three on Thursday, December 24, 2009 10:25 am Updated: 5:02 pm.
