Ocean County Prosecutor survives attempt to kill his reappointment in NJ Senate

TRENTON - A last-minute effort by critics of Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer to torpedo his reappointment before the state Senate Judiciary Committee has failed, with the panel voting unanimously on Monday to release his nomination to the full upper chamber of the Legislature.

On Nov. 30, Gov. Phil Murphy nominated Billhimer, 53, a Democrat from Berkeley, to a second five-year term as the county’s chief law enforcement officer. Under state law, a new term requires Senate confirmation.

On Monday, Lavallette Borough Administrator John O. Bennett III (the former state senator and acting governor for four days in January 2002 when he was co-president of the Senate), Toms River Regional Board of Education member Ashley Lamb and local attorney Larry Loigman of Lakewood, testified against Billhimer’s reappointment.

Each had their own issues with the incumbent prosecutor: Bennett objected to the takeover of the Lavallette Police Department; Lamb claimed Billhimer was stalking her on social media, and Loigman charged that Billhimer hadn’t done enough to support the Jewish community after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel.

After the three outlined their arguments against the prosecutor, Billhimer refuted their claims.

“There seems to be some political undertones as to what’s happening here,” he said.

In his testimony before the committee, Bennett complained about the manner in which the Prosecutor’s Office under Billhimer had taken over the Lavallette force from May 2022 to March 2023.

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“In his letter, it says that they — certain people — have been poorly screened, poorly trained and poorly managed, and yet not one example to this day was ever given to us,” Bennett told the committee.

Bennett also recounted how during one particularly tense meeting over the matter, Billhimer had pointed his finger at him as if his hand was a gun.

“I advised he should not threaten me, which he denied,” Bennett said. “I told him I did not appreciate his finger being pointed in my face. At that point, he smashed his papers together and said, ‘This meeting is over.’”

Bennett explained that he was left troubled by the encounter.

“I was unable to be productive at work as the actions of the prosecutor had me concerned as to how he was going to go after me for not doing exactly what he wanted,” Bennett said.

On Lavallette, Billhimer said that the Prosecutor’s Office needed “to get the ship sailing in the right direction” after the police department was left without the appropriate level of direction and supervision following the 2022 retirement of Chief Colin Grant, whose departure had exposed a number of issues.

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No background checks or proper psychological screening had been done on at least four police employees. There was a faulty communications system that led officers to rely on their personal phones. Both officers and supervisors lacked sufficient training. There were no detectives on the force nor an executive command staff of lieutenants and captains. Additionally, the officers lacked proper equipment such as stun guns, according to a report from the Prosecutor’s Office, which also had described Bennett and Borough Attorney William Burns as engaging in a “meddlesome pattern of behavior” related to the day-to-day operation of the department.

“What didn’t help during our supervision of that police department, which probably had us stay in there a little longer than we planned, is that the mayor appointed his son as police chief while we were in charge of the police department,” Billhimer explained.

Nevertheless, Chief Christian LaCicero was now doing “a great job,” the prosecutor said. If reappointed to office and if a similar situation arose again in any police department in Ocean County, Billhimer said he was “duty bound to go in and assume command and control … That’s what the job entails. We’re here to call balls and strikes,” he said.

In her testimony, Lamb alleged that her husband — Republican Toms River Councilman Justin Lamb, who accompanied her to the hearing Monday — had been the target of a politically-motivated witch hunt that came when she challenged the Republican incumbents on the county Board of Commissioners in the June 2022 GOP primary.

At the time, questions had been raised by Councilman Lamb’s opponents about where he was living full-time after marrying his wife, who continued to maintain a home in Toms River but outside of the ward Lamb represents on the Township Council. The matter was later referred to the Prosecutor’s Office for criminal investigation.

Ashley Lamb accused Billhimer of “stalking” her on Facebook, using an account that only identified him as “Bradley Daniel” (the latter his middle name), by periodically looking at content she posted there.

“On Oct. 6, 2022, detectives from the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office came to our home to interview our roommate,” Lamb said. “On this very morning, Prosecutor Billhimer was on my Facebook page.”

Lamb said that the alleged activity occurred even after the state Attorney General’s Office had directed Billhimer to be “walled off” from the investigation into her husband, due to the fact that Billhimer had previously represented Councilman Lamb in court when Billhimer was a defense attorney in private practice before he became prosecutor in 2018.

“However, Bradley Billhimer was continuing to stalk my Facebook page,” she told the committee.

In his rebuttal to Lamb, Billhimer said: “I don’t even know what that means, ‘stalking’ somebody on social media. I’ve never stalked anyone in person or on social media, in my life. Apparently, we are friends on social media. I’m sure we won’t be after today, and that’s fine.”

Rhetorically, Billhimer questioned how simply seeing content posted publicly on social media could be considered stalking in the first place.

“But if somebody has looked at her page, I don’t know how any of that actually works,” he said. “I mean, it’s social media. I don’t know. You’re putting things out there for the public to see. I do have a Facebook page. It’s probably not a good idea as the chief law enforcement officer in the county. But it’s a personal page. It has nothing to do with my professional life. I don’t mix the two. That’s mostly pictures of my kids and my wife.”

Billhimer said he was as prosecutor indeed “walled off from everything that happens with Justin Lamb,” and there was no truth to any allegation that he was in control of an investigation into him, nor was he supervising any internal affairs probe.

Loigman had a list of items he felt disqualified Billhimer from a second term as prosecutor, including his belief that under the prosecutor’s leadership “there has been an abdication of law enforcement as criminal and traffic laws are routinely ignored.”

He went on to express the opinion that Billhimer had “completely failed to provide a sense of safety and security to the Jewish religious community” in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel that left at least 1,200 dead.

“This neglect of the legitimate concerns of the Lakewood community is merely the latest in a pattern of such inattention,” Loigman said. “Whenever a threat to the Jewish community arises, the Prosecutor’s Office fails to act in a timely or professional manner to keep the citizens aware of the nature or existence of that threat. As a result, it has engendered distrust of that office as well as a widespread sense of fear, apprehension, and anxiety. Sadly, many people are now afraid, if not terrified, to practice their religious beliefs in public.”

In defense of Billhimer on that point, Shlomo Schorr, associate director of the New Jersey Office of Agudath Israel of America, pushed back on Loigman’s criticism in his own remarks before the committee.

“In my position as someone who works with the community a lot and many leaders of the community, I can say that the prosecutor over the last five years has been not just a friend who’s there for us, but someone who has been reaching out, someone who has been working aggressively to counter hate crime across the county on all levels, all religions, and all faiths — who’s been attending every single meeting on interfaith across the county,” Schorr said.

In responding to Loigman’s contention that the Prosecutor’s Office had not done enough to support Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community, Billhimer said: “I do not believe that he represents the community in Lakewood.”

“Everything that Mr. Loigman said we didn’t do in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, we actually did do,” in concert with the Lakewood Police Department and the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office, the prosecutor said.

State Sen. Michael L. Testa Jr., R-Vineland, said he wanted to know if the three state senators from Ocean County who “signed off” on the nomination — state Sen. Christopher J. Connors, James W. Holzapfel and Robert W. Singer, all Republicans — as State House protocol dictates, were all aware of the allegations made at the hearing on Monday.

While no direct answer was provided, the committee returned after a brief recess and gave Billhimer the opportunity to respond to the witnesses.

Billhimer, who enjoys bipartisan support in Ocean County, has been serving as a holdover in the office since his term expired in October.

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Despite being the appointee of a Democratic governor, the all-Republican Ocean County Board of Commissioners — who disagree with the Murphy administration on almost every law enforcement policy matter — unanimously adopted a resolution earlier this year, encouraging the governor to reappoint Billhimer to another five years in the post.

Billhimer also received support for reappointment from the Republican-controlled governing bodies in Seaside Heights, Jackson and his hometown of Berkeley — all which he insists he did not solicit.

The prosecutor began his law career in Ocean County almost 24 years ago, as a clerk to state Superior Court Judge Barbara Ann Villano, who is now retired. From there, Billhimer went into private practice, becoming a partner in the law offices of what would become Mohel and Billhimer in Toms River, before he opened his own practice in 2010.

If confirmed by the state Senate, Billhimer’s second term would expire at the end of 2028 or at the beginning of 2029, depending on when the Senate votes on the appointment.

Contact Asbury Park Press reporter Erik Larsen at elarsen@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: NJ Senate Judiciary Committee releases nomination of county prosecutor