YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: At least 10 Port Authority police officers will lose their jobs today as a result of an alcohol-fueled, post-graduation bash in Hoboken this past summer, sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.
“People will be dismissed — or, at the very least, separated from the department,” one source told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
The quasi-public agency can terminate probationary officers without the usual due process or union representation.
Videotaped evidence that is “of good quality and quite devastating” led to the dismissals, as well as to departmental charges against an authority police academy lieutenant for his behavior during the Aug. 22 incident at Texas Arizona Bar and Grill near the NJ Transit Hoboken Terminal and PATH station.
The lieutenant was “suspected of being badly inebriated and guilty, as a result, of failure to supervise the rookies who are seen on video stealing beer and damaging the bathroom area of the bar,” one Port Authority source told CLIFFVIEW PILOT in September.
Internal affairs investigators interviewed a sergeant who was up for a promotion and no fewer than 90 rookie officers — including “those who were already identified and suspected of misconduct,” the source said — in the probe.
The Port Authority already confirmed that it was reviewing the actions of a dozen rookies and the lieutenant.
Those gathered were celebrating the graduation earlier that day of the Port Authority Police Academy’s 113th class — its largest ever, with 249 graduates — at the Dunn Center in Elizabeth.
Sources at the time said the officers were rowdy and ignored bouncers who tried to quiet them — with some “flashing their new badges,” one said — after which Hoboken police were called. They, in turn, contacted authority supervisors.
The Internal Affairs Bureau “has tapes of the night and they are of good quality and quite devastating,” a source told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
“Some of it is so good they were able to get badge numbers,” said another.
A Port Authority Police Benevolent Association representative said the union won’t comment because the officers are probationary.
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