Ken Zisa, Hackensack’s suspended chief of police. According to state records, Zisa was the sole owner of Krisant Security Associates. The chief – who was charged recently with insurance fraud and official misconduct — landed a two-year pact to work for Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus in 2004, an agreement worth $120,000 to his company, Krisant Security Associates LLC.
And the city of Linden paid a business connected to both Zisa and Oury — former attorney to the county’s Democratic Party — $25,000 for a review of its police department.
“It was just my feeling that it was done to give a political friend a little something,” said retired Linden Police Chief John Miliano.
So, apparently, was the hospital contract. State Sen. Loretta Weinberg said recently she was told by then-Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Ferriero — who was convicted of federal fraud charges connected to his work with Oury last year – that the contract was payback for Zisa’s giving up his state Assembly seat to run in the 2001 sheriff election. (He lost, leaving him with neither elected post.)
“I was so annoyed over this whole thing,” Weinberg said.
Zisa was in line to land a similar contract from Bergenfield, but one councilman criticized the move as political and said the matter was dropped.
Maki Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, described the chief’s actions as “just wrong, wrong, wrong,” and said they suggest that he was misusing his public position.
“You should not use your position in law enforcement to generate business. You just shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s a question of ethics.”
Zisa is suspended without pay from his $191,606-a-year post in the wake of his arrest, which stems from claims that he covered up alleged misdeeds by his girlfriend and someone else with whom he had a close relationship.
In addition, members of his own department have accused him of using his position to advance his private and political interests. More than 20 current and retired officers have filed suit against him in the past year, some alleging he used his influence to get officers to vote for the police union delegate of his choice and to donate to public election campaigns. The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office took steps to depoliticize the department and installed a monitor to oversee operations after his initial arrest in April.
Zisa hung up on a reporter, and his attorney could not be reached for comment.
The chief used off-duty officers from his own department to work at the hospital. In a statement, Bergen Regional officials said Krisant was hired to assess security and provided consulting and security services during the June 2004 nurses strike, “including the employment of off-duty police officers.”
In an earlier interview, the chief said he paid Hackensack police through his company to work at the hospital. At that time, he would not discuss his side business or what he hired the officers to do.
“I’m not going into anything, other than to confirm that there … was a time that I fulfilled a request of theirs to see if there were any police officers that were interested in working part time for them, and they did,” he said in 2007, adding “I paid the police officers.”
Haberfeld, who has written extensively about police integrity, said the use of subordinates is troubling.
“That’s a conflict of interest,” she said. “If you’re in a supervisory position in a government organization and you run a private enterprise and you’re asking people to work for you, you’re basically using your status as a government employee to influence people to work for you. That, by itself, is wrong.”
Two Hackensack officers who worked at Bergen Regional said they provided security at a walkathon that was taking place on the grounds of the hospital during the strike by nurses. The pair, who both requested anonymity, said they assumed they were working for — and being paid by — the hospital.
They said they were recruited for the out-of-town job not by Zisa but by the ranking officer in charge of security details for the Hackensack police; one recalled being paid in cash by that officer a few days later.
Because of the strike and so many people being there, they wanted security in the crowd,” said one of the officers.
Both said they were in plainclothes and joined the walkers.
“We all went in different directions,” another said. “…ŸWe were just part of the crowd and we had to make sure nothing went wrong.”
State law prohibits active law-enforcement officers from owning a private-investigation or security company or from being a “qualifying member, officer or director” of any such company. Active police officers can do consulting work, such as recommending where security cameras should be placed, but they cannot be hired as independent contractors to provide investigations or security guards for hire.
A spokesman for the New Jersey State Police, which has oversight of security and private-investigation firms, said they do not comment on whether specific circumstances present a violation of the law.
Asked about Zisa, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office said they would not comment because of an ongoing case against the chief.
The ousted chief isn’t the only prominent police official to get a side deal from a local hospital while on the public payroll. Michael Mordaga, former chief of detectives for the Prosecutor’s Office, was paid as a consultant by Hackensack University Medical Center for five years – a job that began while he was with the Hackensack police force.
Bergen Regional Medical Center LP, the private company that manages the Paramus hospital formerly known as Bergen Pines, said in its statement that the contract with Krisant began in January 2004 and ended in December 2005; Zisa is listed as the firm’s sole owner in records on file in the state Division of Revenue.
In its statement, the hospital management company said Krisant was paid to evaluate the level of security of the facility, monitor movement within the hospital to deter and prevent “patient elopements” — unauthorized departures — and determine “the vulnerability of the facility relating to post-9/11 security concerns.”
Krisant also submitted “several written reports,” which included findings and recommendations regarding the hospital’s “technology and infrastructure such as lighting, parking lots, cameras, card access control, and closed-circuit TV systems.”
The hospital management company refused to provide copies of its contract with Krisant or any reports submitted by the firm.
The Bergen County Improvement Authority, which oversees the hospital, said it has no reports or contracts related to Krisant or Zisa. The hospital was privatized by former Republican County Executive William “Pat” Schuber after several scandals involving poor conditions and patronage. Consultants also projected that the hospital would become a drain on the county budget. It has been run by a private manager since 1998.
Another company
Krisant isn’t the only company name the chief has worked under.
In 2001, the city of Linden, in Union County, awarded Professional Law Enforcement Evaluators LLC a no-bid contract to review the operations of its police department.
The company was formed in January 2001, and its registered agent — and the only name on incorporation documents — is Oury, who declined to comment.
Oury, who is also a former counsel for the county Improvement Authority, signed the proposal submitted by the company to Linden. Zisa signed the three-page contract on behalf of the business. The chief also signed the 17-page final report to the city and the payment voucher. Both the proposal and the report include a Hackensack post office box as the mailing address for the company that is the same one used for Krisant Security Associates.
Zisa was a Democratic state assemblyman for the 37th Legislative District when the contract was struck.
Linden Mayor Richard Gerbounka, who was a councilman in 2001, said Joseph S. Suliga, who was the city’s financial officer and also a Democratic state assemblyman at the time, urged city officials to hire Professional Law Enforcement Evaluators. Suliga, who became a state senator, died in an auto accident in 2005.
“We voted on it on his recommendation,” said Gerbounka, an independent.
According to the final report, members of Professional Law Enforcement Evaluators conducted interviews with various police and civilian personnel and did on-site inspections of facilities and equipment. The report also makes recommendations, including the elimination of two-man patrols, reducing overtime by offering compensatory days and the upgrade of police vehicles.
Miliano, the former Linden chief, said he was dissatisfied with most of the study and called much of the information flawed. He said he met with Zisa once or twice in his office during the workday to talk about it, and wrote a memo to the mayor refuting some of its recommendations.
In 2002, Bergenfield officials discussed giving Zisa a similar $30,000 consulting job to review police services. Former Republican Councilman George Williams remembers discussing the possibility of hiring Zisa for a “substantial contract,” but argued against it because he saw it as a conflict. Williams said the subject was tabled; Bergenfield officials say they have no record of payments or contracts to Zisa or the two companies.
“Ken Zisa’s name did come up, and I did adamantly come up and say that is absolutely not correct,” he said. “Let’s keep politics out, because I knew what had happened before with the Oury thing.”
Earlier that year, Bergenfield had hired Oury as its borough attorney. That same day the Democrat-controlled Borough Council hired Governmental Grants Consulting to help it obtain county and state grants. The company was secretly owned by Oury and Ferriero, who were later indicted on federal corruption charges relating to the firm and its work in Bergenfield. Oury pleaded guilty and testified against Ferriero, who was convicted in a jury trial.
Neither Ferriero nor his attorney could be reached for comment. Ferriero’s lawyer has said his client would seek to overturn his conviction, based on last month’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court limiting the application of the “honest services” fraud statute under which he was prosecuted. Oury’s attorney did not return phone calls seeking comment on his plans in light of the honest-services decision.
Current and former city managers in Hackensack say they were unaware of Zisa’s security firm or his work at the hospital or Linden, but only one thought he should have been notified. Peter Capone, who served as city manager from July 2004 until September 2005, said the chief should have told him.
“I think it’s a critical aspect of being a city manager. You need to know what’s occurring in the city, and what personnel is doing, absolutely,” he said.
Hackensack’s current city manager, Stephen Lo Iacono, sees things differently. He said he never spoke with Zisa about any of his outside work.
“I don’t necessarily have to know what everybody is doing on their own time as long as there was no impact,” said Lo Iacono. “I didn’t see any impact on his official duties here. I mean, he was here every day. He spent actually pretty long days.”
The written rules and regulations for the Hackensack Police Department say the chief is “on duty at all times” unless the city manager grants a special leave of absence.
Source:NorthJersey.com
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