(From an alternative Journal)
Who is using who remains a question I can’t answer.
Going back, RR was one of her first stories, and it is so full of disinformation that it is likely that she met him prior to coming to our office.
But the story shows she had already consumed the Kool aid and brought into his bullshit.
The fact that she was still enamored with him a year later either shows how gullible she is or that she views him as a long-term investment.
In her lead, she wrote that RR called the feds in to deal with racketeering which resulted in the conviction of 30 members of the department and the eventual resignation of the chief of police.
Depending on who you talk to, RR wasn’t a hero at all, but a dirty cop who got caught and then agreed to work with the FBI to keep from going to jail. Most of those he turned in were his friends, with whom he had been doing bad things in the first place and the racketeering charges stemmed from a common practice in the department in which police officers got a small kick back when they called cars to get towed.
“This wasn’t right,” said the Small Man, “but everybody was doing it. We had to beg the FBI to stop charging the officers when we took over because we would have had no police officers left in the department.”
According to the Freeholder, RR has the nickname “the rat” for these activities and other activities since, following police officers around in an attempt to get them into trouble.
“He’s always suing someone for something,” The Small Man said. “I don’t see anything heroic in anything he’s done.”
A former Police Captain from nearby town called him “crazy,” and “out there.”
She in one of her first stories for us said “RR volunteers over 30 hours a week as chairman of (Civil rights group), New Jersey’s largest advocacy group for the Latino community – and runs his own self-titled personal consulting firm. The firm advocates for and investigates the issues of community members, police officers and departments across N.J.”
RR used the organization as a platform for his activities, and claims he knows his town blindfolded, which is why had became a cop when he turned 20 in 1990, at which point he claimed he found a corrupt police department, something she glorified in her story, saying he had to do something about it.
“At age 24, he took matters into his own hands and called the FBI.,” she wrote. “The officers were accused of receiving payoffs to look the other way while gambling, loan sharking, and prostitution ran rampant in the city.
RR’s call and subsequent undercover investigation resulted in guilty pleas from 30 police officers – including the chief – to racketeering charges. RR soon found that a leader’s path is not an easy one. He was fired from the department in 1996 based on what he called frivolous charges (which were later dismissed in litigation). It is extremely rare for a police officer to be fired; it only happens about 100 times per year statewide, he said.”
The Small Man and others said RR didn’t get fired exactly. He failed a psychological test after he was caught drawing a swastika on the back of a police exam sheet. He was offered a chance to retake the psych test and he refused with disqualified him from the force.
He blamed The Congressman for the mess, when the Congressman was the one who arranged for the retesting after having finally become mayor,
“He took on several of what he called odd jobs,” she wrote. “He taught vocational criminal justice classes, volunteered for a plethora of local organizations, and consulted for the
The Congressman (when still mayor), in effort to keep RR from being stigmatized, allowed him to retire, citing PTSD as the excuse.
“He didn’t have PTSD,” said a former PR person for the County, who saw him at numerous political functions over the decade following his forced resignation from the police department.
“The process – one which lasted 10 years – took its toll,” her story went on to praise RR. “He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by psychiatrists from the state and the pension board, which forced him to retire on disability only one day after he was officially reinstated to the police force in 2004. Characteristically, he used his misfortune to help others by becoming a peer counselor for fellow police officers with PTSD.”
His retirement came with a huge pay out: just shy of $700,000 which he has said to have blown and why he started manipulating more recently, perhaps hoping to get more money to stop causing trouble as he used her to help blackmail some of the players. It is hard to tell.
The other stipulation of the settlement – which he agreed to – said he could not seek his job back on the police department.
Despite his signing of the agreement and his effort to polish up his image, he lost a suit in 2009 to get his job back and was in the middle of an appeal when she wrote her story in October 2011.
“For him it is strictly a matter of duty and morality,” she wrote. “RR still collects a disability retirement pension even though his PTSD has been effectively treated, he says: `I can’t consciously accept disability benefits if I’m no longer disabled.’ He’s confident he will win the case and is eager to finish the police officer career he began over 20 years ago.”
His efforts were rejected in February 2012, fitting in with a time line of her more aggressive moves inside our officed, suggesting that he was going to use her to get even with the people he believed responsible for his loss: the Congressman and The Small Man
He had apparently hoped to use the Virgin Mayor in some way, but the Virgin Mayor’s legal troubles and eventual arrest in May may have dashed those hopes even as RR got his Master of Science in criminal justice,
At the time of her October 2011 story, RR was still married and raising two sons, one just one month old.
A year later, his wife and kids are living out of county, and he lived a few blocks from our writer where he has always lived.
In her most recent poems, she hints that she had given up on romance while at the same time admits her prejudice (perhaps on RR’s behalf) as a cry for help in the dark and her need for affection – all this leading to the question: is he the mastermind, or is she? Is there relationship personal, or professional?
The Congressman’s PR person suggested that RR might have been hired to do dirty work for people like the Neighboring Mayor and that her dislike of the Neighboring Mayor may have more to do with his unwillingness to fall for her the way other politicians have, and thus, not succumb to black mail or manipulation the way the Virgin Mayor may have done.
As pointed out, she still believed in RR when I talked to her in September, suggesting that she has bought his line of bullshit.
“He talks a really good game,” said the Small Man. “But it’s all bullshit.”
The Congressman’s PR person calls her a black widow, and the one manipulating everything.
If so, she has latched onto RR with the hope that he may actually take her somewhere, a sad testimony to her continued poor judgment since she’s ridden failed horses before this, not least of all, her husband – with whom she stayed with for five years.
What becomes clearer is that her activities at our office and outside are on RR’s behalf, if not at his bidding, manipulations she hopes she can help him with.
But it’s a losing game, and in the end, the more time she spends working on his behalf, the older and less functional she’ll be when it’s over.
At some point, she will come to realize – the way she did with the Restaurant in New York that RR can’t take her where she wants to go.
This may be mutual blindness, she buying his bullshit to think he’s worth something, he believing she can help him – when with each move he makes, he becomes less and less credible. Indeed, if the Virgin Mayor steps down, RR’s political protection will end, which may cause both she and RR to realize they are both losers.
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