One more police officer sues Hackensack, police director alleging retaliation
HACKENSACK — A police officer is suing the city and its police director, claiming he faced retaliation for his work with the police union and his association with others who opposed the director’s appointment.
Reuven Lyak, a 10-year veteran of the city's Police Department who serves as vice president of the local police union, says in the federal suit that his rights to free speech and the freedom to associate under the First and 14th amendments were violated.
Lyak names the city, Police Director Raymond Guidetti and Lt. Benny Marino, Guidetti’s administrative aide, as defendants in his suit.
The complaint is the fifth lawsuit filed by a police officer against Hackensack and Guidetti since he was named the department’s leader in August of last year. The previous complaints allege Guidetti has acted outside the bounds of his appointed civilian position and that the officers were targeted and harassed for speaking out against his actions.
Lyak says in his suit that he is a close associate of Lt. Anthony DiPersia, the president of Policemen's Benevolent Association Local 9A, the supervisory officers' association, who filed his lawsuit against Hackensack in November.
After Guidetti came to the department, he changed the policy governing extra-duty details and overtime. DiPersia was advocating for shift schedules to allow supervising officers to perform extra-duty traffic details, the lawsuit says. Lyak spoke in support of this idea, according to the suit.
Lyak asked Guidetti to change his schedule so he would work Monday and Wednesday nights from 4 p.m. to midnight. Instead, the director changed it to Mondays and Wednesdays from noon to 8 p.m., which Lyak claims was “in direct retaliation” for engaging in “protected association and speech.”
The traffic detail policy was amended so an officer’s extra duty needed to be completed at least one hour before the start of their shift.
Lyak was working extra-duty details until 11 a.m., when another officer would take over. But then another policy change took away his ability to split the shift, according to the suit.
Lyak claims this rule change was “an intentional act to prevent” him from working overtime. The policy was changed again after Lyak complained, the suit says.
In January, Lyak was reassigned to the detective bureau without interviewing for the assignment. Around that time, he was told by another officer that Guidetti had said: “Officer Lyak says he’s very busy but he spends a lot of time in the School Threat Assessment Bureau.” The comment referred to Lyak's spending time with DiPersia, the leader of the bureau, the lawsuit says.
Other officers who had put in for the detective bureau assignment called and texted Lyak, upset that he was assigned there when he had not interviewed for it, according to the lawsuit. The assignment was “an intentional act to create discord and animosity” between Lyak and other officers, the suit says.
But the night after Lyak was reassigned, he was told not to take any cases, and the next morning Lyak “was forced to move all of his belongings back to his original desk in the Records and Evidence Management Unit,” the lawsuit says.
He was later reassigned to the patrol bureau, which Lyak claims was retaliatory. He was then written up for a violation of the traffic detail policy, stemming from an October incident he claims had not been properly investigated.
In February, Lyak emailed the union membership saying some members were “being singled out.” The union president, who Lyak claims is in Guidetti’s “inner circle,” responded to the email saying he would have handled it in a “more diplomatic fashion.”
Later, Lyak says, he was advised by the union president that should the union choose to “move forward with an attorney,” it would be an “uphill battle” and the department would “start looking into ‘theft’ of hours worked on details.”
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In May, an ally of Guidetti’s approached Lyak, called him a “rat,” and had to be physically restrained from assaulting him, the lawsuit says.
The suit claims Guidetti’s actions have “had a dramatic and chilling effect” on the Police Department and that many are afraid to speak out.
When asked for a comment, a city spokesman referred to previous statements from the city on the other related suits, which characterized those behind the litigation as a few “disgruntled” individuals and noted that while police reform is difficult and some will oppose change, the city remains committed to improving the department, which has faced a recent history of turmoil.
Robert Tandy, Lyak’s attorney, who also represents the other officers suing the city and Guidetti, said the suits share a common thread.
“If you object to or speak out against inappropriate, unlawful, discriminatory, and/or retaliatory conduct on the part of this administration, you are retaliated against through reassignments, undesirable shift changes, demotions, skipped promotions, increased disciplinary action, false IA [Internal Affairs] investigations and labeled a ‘rat’ in the department,” he said.
The officers have been left with no other recourse than to file the suits when “repeated complaints of disparate treatment, retaliation and unlawful activity are completely ignored by the same individuals who boast about ‘transparency’ in the department at City Council meetings to the citizens of Hackensack,” Tandy said.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Hackensack police officer files suit against city, police director
