The appeals were filed after the judge blocked the release of footage from Spotswood's bodycam

Two appeals have been filed of Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Michael Toto’s ruling that body camera footage of Spotswood Mayor Jackie Palmer allegedly making racist comments to police during a meeting at her office will not be made public.

Appeals of May 29 judgment was filed by Gannett, the parent company of the Home News Tribune and MyCentralJersey.com, and Spotswood resident Steven Wronko.

Gannett and Wronko had requested the footage through the state’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA) after Spotswood Police Officer Richard Sasso, president of the Spotswood PBA, filed a lawsuit in Superior Court on Jan. 15 against Palmer and the borough, alleging violations of the state’s Whistleblower Law and other allegations.

The recordings, Sasso claims in her lawsuit, illustrate Palmer’s “antagonism” toward police and any inappropriate “racially charged” comments she made at the April 28, 2022 meeting.

“Transparency is important here,” CJ Griffin, Gannett’s attorney, said after Superior Court Judge Michael Toto released the ruling. “We maintained throughout that the public deserves to see the exact words and context of what the mayor said, as opposed to the allegations in Sasso’s complaint, as well as how the police conducted themselves and any violations they committed.”

In the 53-page decision, Toto ruled that the film was not a government record as defined in OPRA or a public record under the common law right of access.

At the heart of the case is a recording made over the course of two incidents in April 2022 when police were called to deal with a black resident who was allegedly causing a disturbance at the town hall.

While all parties agree that the officials violated policy by not informing the mayor that she was being recorded, the legal battle over the 30-minute recording centers on whether it met exemptions for release under OPRA.

In a hearing in May, Toto said the public’s right to access a document is “not absolute” and that a legal analysis is necessary before a decision is made on whether the material can be released.

In the ruling, Toto wrote that “it is also reasonable to believe that the mayor (Palmer) relied on the confidentiality of statements made between her and police management personnel during a meeting requested by the chief and held by her office.”

But Griffin argued that Palmer “had no reasonable expectation that anything she told them would be confidential.”

Toto ruled that while he agreed there is a “diminished expectation of privacy given to public officials, but that doesn’t mean the mayor has no expectation of privacy.”

Griffin had also argued that the footage should be made public because it was a continuation of the investigation into previous events on April 22, 2022 and earlier on April 28, 2022.

But Toto did not find that “the meeting in the mayor’s office was a continuation of previous events, nor does a meeting with management staff qualify as a call for service.”

The footage, the judge wrote, “contains more than the mayor’s alleged inappropriate comments” and includes “confidential information, police procedures and other security concerns.”

Toto wrote that the film “could damage more than just the mayor’s reputation.”

Although Toto stated that the relationship between Palmer and the police is “problematic”, the argument that the release of the footage “does not negate privacy concerns.”

“It is clear that transparency is not a substitute for other well-established privacy concerns,” Toto wrote.

“It is objectively reasonable that the mayor, who has members of the police command in his office, expected the contests of that meeting to remain private,” the judge wrote.

Even if the videos were to be released, Toto wrote, the discussion of attorney-client privilege, police protocol and procedure would be redacted, leaving “only a limited amount of the video available for public release, greatly impairing the accuracy of the actual nature and context of the recordings.”

That, Toto wrote, “could chill agency decision-making and conceivably affect future policies and department policies.”

Toto also noted that the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office Bias Unit had investigated the allegations against Palmer and no charges were filed.

The judge wrote that after reviewing the unedited footage and other material, he “is satisfied that the investigation was adequate.”

While the public has a right to know what happened between the mayor and the police so that residents can form their opinions based on “a complete record,” Toto wrote, “at the end of the day, this is not about the relationship between the mayor and the police. The issue is about the BWC -the recording (body-worn camera) is a public record.”

Although the judge found “there is a pattern of contentious litigation between the mayor and the Spotswood Police Department, this court does not believe these allegations are sufficient to overcome the privacy concerns.”

The judge also wrote that the videos are being retained because of an internal affairs investigation, “which triggers its own privacy exemptions.”

The judge noted that “most of the information is likely to emerge throughout the civil process” in Sasso’s trial.

What triggered the chain of events that led to this decision is the April 22, 2022 incident in which Sasso claims Palmer became angry when police did not remove a black man from City Hall.

In the lawsuit, Sasso claims that in his investigation into the “racially charged” incident on April 22, 2022, he interviewed the black resident who said he was approached several times by “a clearly aggravated” Palmer.

Sasso claims that during the surveillance he reviewed, he saw Palmer “being extremely antagonistic” and told the resident he had to listen to her because she “is the mayor.”

The surveillance also shows Palmer ignoring a police captain’s advice to stay in her office instead of approaching the man, Sasso claims.

When the resident returned to City Hall six days later, police were sent to the building because unnamed city employees felt unsafe because the resident was there, the suit alleges, and they requested a police escort to their offices.

But during that time, according to the suit, Palmer went on a “verbal tirade” because the man was not removed from the building.

The mayor allegedly said, “everybody’s going to get a (expletive) bite because I (expletive) call down and say get this (expletive) guy out of here,” according to the lawsuit.

“I don’t give a (expletive) if (expletive) Spotswood’s on fire, there’s got to be someone downstairs who knows two feet of this (expletive) staircase to find out what’s going on,” the lawsuit quotes the mayor as saying.

After police called the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office to confirm that the resident could not be ejected from the building because it would violate his civil rights if he did not commit a criminal act, Palmer was informed of the instructions from the agency that oversees all police. departments in the county, the lawsuit states.

But Palmer became “immediately hostile” and made “inappropriate comments,” Sasso claims, including “we have to control the perception of what’s going on” and “I don’t need BLM and the KKK fighting on our front steps about this.”

The suit alleges that Palmer allowed the municipal administration to open an internal investigation into the officers who were present because their body cameras recorded Palmer’s comments.

That was done, Sasso said, as a legal strategy to block any OPRA requests for video footage of the incident. One of the case managers has left the department.

The lawsuit over the body camera footage is part of a thicket of legal action involving the Spotswood Police Department and the borough.

In March, Palmer suspended Chief Phillip Corbisiero and acting Capt. Nicholas Mayo Jr., the two highest-ranking officers in the Spotswood Police Department, and has threatened to fire them. Both officials have in turn filed a lawsuit against the municipality.

Corbisiero and Mayo went to Superior Court to have those charges overturned. Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Christopher Rafano ruled on July 19 that the charges should be dropped because the “appropriate authority” to issue the disciplinary action should have been the county attorney’s office or the state’s attorney.

In January, Corbisiero filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against the borough, claims he has been subjected to a hostile work environment, harassment, retaliation, age discrimination and defamation by Palmer, Business Administrator Brandon Umba and Assistant Business Administrator John Scrivanica retired Tinton Falls police chief.

Corbisiero claims he has been targeted for filing a lawsuit in 2020 with former Police Chief Michael Zarro, claiming they were victims of age discrimination and whistleblowing retaliation against former Mayor Ed Seely and former business administrator Dawn McDonald. Zarro received an out-of-court settlement for $350,000 and Corbisiero received $120,000.

In 2020, Mayo, along with fellow officers John Fedak and Edward Schapley, sued the borough of Seeley and McDonald alleging civil rights violations, harassment and retaliation. That case is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 15 in Middlesex County Superior Court.

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Mike Deak is a reporter for mycentraljersey.com. To get unlimited access to his articles on Somerset and Hunterdon counties, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

The appeals were filed after the judge blocked the release of footage from Spotswood’s bodycam

The appeals were filed after the judge blocked the release of footage from Spotswood’s bodycam