When the chief is the one under investigation

A police chief runs the internal affairs process. When the chief is the subject of it, the ordinary machinery of police discipline has to be pointed at the person who normally operates it, and someone else has to do the pointing.

New Jersey's major discipline data offers a narrow view of how that goes. Between 2021 and 2025 the Attorney General's releases carry 16 finalized disciplinary actions against 14 officers whose reported rank was some form of chief.^[1] That is a small set out of roughly three thousand records, and it is the whole set: these are final, post-appeal actions, not open complaints.

Two of the fourteen were fired. Both had already been convicted in criminal court. Five others left their departments while the internal affairs case was still open, and the discipline column records the exit rather than a punishment.

The Bradley Beach case

Leonard Guida, chief in Bradley Beach, has a record four sentences long. The Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office investigated and sustained multiple charges against him, including untruthfulness under a Bradley Beach rule. According to the agency's own account, Guida lied about how intoxicated he was when he inserted himself into an active drunken driving investigation. His presence hindered that investigation. A road sergeant tried to remove him from the scene, and the attempt ended in a physical altercation.^[2]

A sergeant physically removing the chief of police from a DWI stop is not an ordinary internal affairs matter. The department reported it, which is the system working. What the department did not report is a termination. Guida separated from employment while the case was pending, and the sanction on file is a monetary fine or loss of pay.^[2]

The two who were fired

Termination appears twice in the set, and in both cases the criminal courts got there first.

Thomas Herbst, chief in Manville, was suspended in 2023 after being charged with an indictable offense.^[4] In February 2025 a Somerset County jury convicted him on four counts of official misconduct, a pattern of official misconduct, sexual assault, and criminal sexual contact. The conviction concerned unwanted sexual behavior toward at least three women, including a department employee who reported directly to him, over a period the record dates from 2008 to 2021. He resigned as chief the day of the verdict. The department's 2025 record shows a termination and 612 days of suspension, and notes that an appeal of the conviction was pending.^[3]

Peter Cooke, Jr, chief in Englishtown, pleaded guilty in 2025 to third degree computer theft after using a law enforcement database to pull a photograph of an acquaintance's former boyfriend. The guilty plea carried forfeiture of public office, and the record shows a termination.^[5]

Both firings followed a conviction that a chief could not survive. Neither was the department reaching a conclusion on its own.

The exit ramp

The more common ending is quieter. In five of the 16 records, the officer separated from employment while internal affairs was still pending.^[1]

Sean Smith, chief in Hillsdale, was found to have made a bias comment in police headquarters, asking a Black officer whether he would compare skin tones with a newly hired Black officer to see, in the words of the sustained finding, how black the two of them were. The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office sustained the allegations. The discipline line reads: separated from employment with the Hillsdale Police Department prior to discipline being imposed.^[10]

Jason Massimino, former chief in Berkeley Heights, drew sustained findings on four counts of a truthfulness rule, along with findings that he spread false stories about colleagues' qualifications, encouraged an employee to assault another employee, obtained a master's degree through work done by his own personnel, and used department staff for personal business on department time. He resigned in May 2024 before any disciplinary action was taken.^[11]

Pedro Casiano, chief in Vineland, was arrested on a domestic simple assault charge, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct, and then resigned as part of a settlement agreement. His record carries a 180-day suspension, the second longest in the set, and a truthfulness charge among the sustained findings.^[8]

Brett Friedman, chief in Sea Bright, was arrested for drunken driving after an off-duty crash. His record shows a 44-day suspension and a separation while the case was pending.^[9]

None of that is a loophole, exactly. An officer who resigns cannot be fired, and a department that accepts a resignation from a chief facing sustained findings has still produced a public record where none existed before. But it is a pattern, and it means that reading only the sanction column would badly understate what these five cases were about.

Alcohol, and telling the truth about it

Six of the fourteen chiefs have a record that involves alcohol.

Carmen Veneziano, chief in Totowa, drove a department vehicle to a Polar Bear Plunge, carried non-officers in it, switched on his emergency lights in Point Pleasant for no emergency, and was arrested for driving under the influence with a blood alcohol level of .241. He was suspended 23 days.^[6] A second record, filed later in 2025, reports an indictment in Massachusetts on kidnapping and assault and battery charges and a court order that named him a danger to public safety.^[7] Those charges were pending as reported, and an indictment is not a conviction.

Brian Pesce, chief in Bordentown Township, struck a mailbox with his personal vehicle, left the scene, and pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated. Thirty-day suspension.^[14] Jason Love, a chief in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, drank at a restaurant while on duty and accepted that his subordinates did the same. Seventeen days.^[13]

Departments discipline officers for drunken driving with some regularity, and the suspensions here sit in the ordinary range. What separates these cases is what came after. In the Guida, Casiano, and Massimino records, a truthfulness charge is sustained alongside the underlying conduct. The account a chief gave about what happened does more damage in this data than the thing he did.

The rest of the set

Darren McConnell, chief in Red Bank, was suspended 86 days after the state found he failed to report a dating relationship with a subordinate officer and held internal affairs investigations open past the 45-day limit, with the effect that the subordinate could no longer be disciplined.^[12]

Carol Cooper, a chief in the Burlington County Sheriff's Office, was suspended five days for insubordination and removed from the unclassified chief title, returning to sergeant.^[15] John Hamilton, chief in Linwood, was demoted to lieutenant after pleading guilty to conduct unbecoming an employee and abuse of law enforcement power.^[16] Gregory Meyer, chief in Lakewood, was suspended six days over three posts on his personal social media account.^[17]

How to read this

Sixteen records over five years is a thin evidence base, and it cannot tell you how often chiefs are investigated, only how often an investigation of a chief reached a final, reportable action. Departments that never open a case on their chief produce no record at all, and that absence looks identical to a clean one.

What the set does show is who does the investigating. Five of the 16 records name a county prosecutor's office or the Attorney General as the body that ran the investigation rather than the department itself.^[1] That is the arrangement the state's internal affairs policy contemplates for this situation, since a department cannot credibly investigate its own commanding officer. The remaining records do not say who investigated.

And it shows how these cases end. Two terminations, both after a criminal conviction. Two demotions. Five departures with the case still open. The rest are suspensions measured in days.

Every record here is final and post-appeal, reported by the employing agency to the Attorney General, and shown on this site as reported. The individual officer pages carry each record in full, with its own citation.