A lawyer for two Water Works employees said they were targeted after speaking to the prosecutor's office about illegal activities by Mack's half-brother Stanley "Muscles" Davis in 2010.
TRENTON — The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating allegations of witness tampering and document falsification by Mayor Tony Mack’s administration brought by an attorney representing two Trenton Water Works employees.
The attorney, Jack Butler, said the new probe focuses on job reassignments and perceived threats made to Water Works employees who were believed to have cooperated with the prosecutor’s office during a 2010 investigation that led to the arrest of Mack’s half-brother Stanley “Muscles” Davis, a Water Works foreman at the time.
Davis pleaded guilty to doing private jobs on Water Works time. Butler argues that even after Davis’ indictment in January 2011, reprisals against employees of the utility were carried out through one of Mack’s top lieutenants, then-acting Public Works Director Harold Hall.
Butler’s clients Edmund Johnson and Tim London, who both gave information to the prosecutor’s office, were demoted and eventually fired as Water Works technicians, though they have since been reappointed. Butler alleges Mack’s administration committed felonies to have them demoted and dismissed.
Stanley Davis, the half-brother of mayor Tony Mack, listens to Assistant Prosecutor James Scott at Davis' sentencing on misconduct charges on Tuesday, September 25, 2012, in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Mark J. Fleming. Davis pleaded guilty to using city crews to perform work on private homes for which he was paid. In a statement today, prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Casey DeBlasio confirmed that members of her office met with Butler Tuesday afternoon and received information about the employment actions, including copies of documents.
“Mr. Butler made serious allegations and we will certainly be looking into them,” DeBlasio said.
At the heart of the matter are the time sheets and memos used as evidence to fire Johnson and London in October 2011. Butler says time sheets that retroactively mark Johnson and London off for four days despite earlier records showing they were at work were intentionally falsified, and violate state law against tampering with public records.
Assistant Prosecutor James Scott and a prosecutor’s office investigator arrived at the law firm Katz & Dougherty in Hamilton Tuesday afternoon and had a lengthy talk with Butler about the documents.
“We discussed it at length,” Butler wrote in an e-mail today, “and while we have different opinions as to the strength of the proofs we offered, they seemed genuinely interested in looking further into the documents we presented.”
Johnson and London were rehired in April. They are attempting to have their records cleared and receive back pay through the Office of Administrative Law. The latest hearing in the saga is scheduled for this morning and will include testimony by former city Public Works Director Eric Jackson, a candidate for mayor.
Last week Water Works employee John Patten Jr. testified an ally of Davis’ swung around a stuffed toy rat with tape across its mouth and said, ‘This is what happens to rats,’” as part of alleged intimidation of Water Works employees in 2010.
The state law on witness tampering says the person charged need only believe that an investigation is afoot and “knowingly engage in conduct which a reasonable person would believe” would cause an informant or witness to speak falsely or stop cooperating.
Trenton Mayor Tony Mack..
Butler said the rat episode was just the tip of the iceberg of the effort to strike back against Johnson and London, both of whom went to the prosecutor’s office with complaints against Davis.
During earlier hearings, Delipe Patel, former acting general superintendent at the Water Works, testified that the utility was run as if by “remote control” from City Hall, Butler said. Butler argues that Hall, who usually gave directives with some version of the statement, “This is what the mayor wants,” was acting on Mack’s behalf.
A memo that spoke of Johnson’s and London’s alleged insubordination is a case in point. In the memo, Hall states the two men objected to doing work when told to perform jobs outside their Civil Service title. But the memo from Hall to Johnson and London’s supervisor is the opposite of how disciplinary matters are supposed to work, Butler said.
“Here you have the director reaching down and reporting to himself the misconduct of employees,” Butler said.
He called their termination hearing a “kangaroo court.”
As department director, Hall initially stepped in as the hearing officer for Johnson and London’s case.
“When we opposed his appearing as hearing officer, he proposed his secretary,” Butler said.
Eventually, then-acting Business Administrator Anthony Roberts served as hearing officer and decided Johnson and London should be terminated.
Reached by phone tonight, Hall denied targeting Johnson and London because they cooperated with the prosecutor, and said the documents he signed were accurate.
“I don’t know anything about falsification, but I let the lawyers figure all that stuff out,” he said.
The allegedly altered documents and threats were not a part of the initial Water Works investigation that sent Davis to prison.
“The allegations brought to our attention yesterday occurred at least nine months after the grand jury returned the indictment in the (Davis/Trenton Water Works) case,” DeBlasio said in her statement today.
That grand jury considered indicting Mack but was advised against it by Scott.
George Dougherty, partner at Katz & Dougherty, had urged the county prosecutor to take on the case of the two dismissed Water Works employees.
Dougherty has had a tense relationship with the prosecutor’s office and has clashed with Prosecutor Joseph Bocchini on more than one occasion during Bocchini’s decade atop the prosecutor’s office.
“My frustration with the county prosecutor is I see things starkly, and I think it’s important to bring down the heavy hammer of the law,” Dougherty said. “If only to deter these things from happening.”
A former city attorney and state prosecutor, Dougherty said he appreciates the hesitancy of a prosecutor to dive into a large-scale investigation.
“The fact of the matter is, I was gratified that after speaking to Jim Scott about the Water Works issues that he got it, and that he did something about it,” Dougherty said.
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