A convoy comprised of Passaic County, N.J. sheriff's officers and Wayne Township, N.J. police officers was returning from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission. The caravan of 22 county emergency vehicles was speeding north through Virginia on Interstate 81 on the morning of Sept. 18, having spent the past week in the slimy devastation of New Orleans.
The Convoy was moving at nearly 100 mph with its red lights flashing, Virginia State Police said.
In Virginia, it's illegal for emergency vehicles to flash their lights unless they are responding to an actual emergency.
Passaic County, N.J. Cops Hot After Va. Traffic Stop
Thursday, September 29, 2005
To Passaic County's sheriff, it was a mission of mercy getting a slap in the face. To Virginia cops, it was a case of stopping disaster before it happened.
A convoy of Passaic County police officers was returning from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission. The caravan of 22 county emergency vehicles was speeding north through Virginia on Interstate 81 on the morning of Sept. 18, having spent the past week in the slimy devastation of New Orleans.
The convoy was moving at nearly 100 mph with its red lights flashing, Virginia State Police said.
What??? -- Who??? -- ME Speeding???
In Virginia, it's illegal for emergency vehicles to flash their lights unless they are responding to an actual emergency. Forced to pull off to the shoulder, many alarmed motorists called the state police, who dispatched an Augusta County sheriff's officer to stop the convoy.
State police say they stopped the convoy because it was traveling too fast on a stretch of road that is known to be dangerous for its twists and turns.
"This was a courtesy stop," said Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police. "We were letting them know they were endangering their lives and the lives of others."
No summonses were issued, but the incident ruffled police feathers in both jurisdictions. Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale said Wednesday his force had the right to zoom up the interstate with lights flashing because a federal emergency had been declared.
"The president had declared a national disaster," Speziale said. "And federal law holds that the interstate highway system is to be used in the time of an emergency. That's what they were doing."
Speziale, who was in New Jersey on the day of the incident, later called the Augusta County's sheriff's deputy who made the stop and berated him, calling him a "disgrace." Virginia State Police taped the phone call and then released a transcript of Speziale's remarks to the local newspaper, The News Virginian.
"If you think that's not a disgrace, you should take that badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage," Speziale said. "This is unacceptable, and I'll tell you what, I hope to get the opportunity to show you the same courtesy up here in New Jersey."
"I guess we're not very popular in New Jersey," said Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher. "But we're not above the law. I shudder to think what might have happened."
Speziale acknowledged that his men were in a hurry to get home - although he disputed that they were doing 100 mph. He said some men had become ill from the filthy conditions; at the same time, the Passaic County contingent wanted to bring the equipment home so they could hand it over to another wave of relief volunteers who would jump on board and head back to the Gulf Coast, he said.
"I'm not apologizing to anyone," Speziale said Wednesday. "I stand behind what our men did, putting their lives on the line for others. This whole thing is very trivial in the grand scheme of things."
E-mail: cowen@northjersey.com
6781654Copyright © 2005 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
Comment from Michael L Owens / Alicia Petska
By Michael L. Owens and Alicia Petska
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
A speeding New Jersey police convoy should not have been warned to slow down here, their superiors say, despite numerous 911 calls from motorists claiming they were forced off Interstate 81.
An incensed New Jersey sheriff called an Augusta County deputy a "disgrace" for pulling over officers returning home from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission Sept. 18.
Augusta Sheriff Randy Fisher and the Virginia State Police defend the stop because the New Jersey officers were traveling 95 mph with their lights flashing.
Virginia law requires an emergency before officers can speed and activate their lightbars. Instead of a warning, the speeding officers could have gotten citations.
"It was causing a dangerous situation, and basically we had to do something," Fisher said. "People were pulling off to the left and people were pulling off to the right getting out of the way of these guys."
Virginia State Police said they logged "numerous" 911 calls early Sept. 18 from motorists complaining about marked cars from the Passaic County Sheriff's Office and Wayne Police Department driving dangerously near Weyers Cave.
With Virginia State Police troopers busy working other cases, only Augusta County Deputy Mike Roane was available to answer the call. Roane diffused a potential disaster, Fisher said, after clocking the convoy's lead car at 95 mph.
"Five or six of them did not stop, they just continued northbound," the Augusta sheriff added. "I think they were in a hurry to get home."
Roane ordered the officers - whom Fisher described as belligerent - in the remaining six cars to cut off their lightbars and slow down. A Virginia trooper telephoned their New Jersey departments requesting that the homeward-bound officers slow down.
"There was no emergency situation they were responding to in Virginia that we know of," Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.
That same day, Virginia troopers patrolling the commonwealth's southwestern interstate roads pulled over a roughly 80-car convoy of New York police homebound from Katrina relief, Geller said. That group stuck to the speed limit, though troopers asked them to stay out of the left lane.
The news of the Augusta County stop incensed Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale, who, in a taped telephone conversation with Roane, lambasted the deputy for stopping his officers.
"If you think that that's not a disgrace, you should take that badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage," Speziale said. "This is unacceptable, and I'll tell you what, I hope I get the opportunity to show you the same courtesy up here in New Jersey."
Speziale told Roane "law enforcement is all about supporting each other" and said he was reporting the Augusta County stop to the National Sheriffs' Association.
Speziale ended the call after cutting short Roane's attempt to detail the incident. "I don't talk to deputies," the New Jersey sheriff said.
Other officials from the New Jersey departments remain indignant that its officers were ordered to slow down.
"We make no excuses," Passaic County Sheriff's spokesman Bill Maer told The News Virginian on Tuesday. "They'd been working 'round the clock [in a hurricane-devastated New Orleans]. They were coming back with equipment that needed to get back. In our opinion, they acted appropriately. We take offense at the way they were treated."
A Wayne Police official seemed angered when The News Virginian called about the incident last week.
"So what, we're not going to talk about the good these people are doing, you're just going to look for something bad," Capt. Paul Ireland replied.
Fisher, instead of phoning Speziale, drafted him a letter detailing the stop, defending Roane's actions, and arguing that the New Jersey officers were "unprofessional."
Passaic County, in the meantime, plans to send more volunteers to New Orleans, but not through Augusta County.
"We're going to avoid Virginia at all cost - we're clearly not welcome there," Maer said. "Maybe Virginia should learn from our example."
Comment from Michael L Owens
(NJ Cops Stopped In VA)
Culpepper (VA) Star Exponent ^
10/5/05
Michael L. Owens
New Jersey Sheriff Jerry Speziale - labeling Virginia law enforcement as distrustful - remains adamant that his officers should have received a free pass to cruise along local roads at nearly 100 mph.
Speziale's call to Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher on Thursday was more cordial than his fiery diatribe against a county deputy almost two weeks ago. Yet the only compromise that Fisher and the Passaic County sheriff could reach left them at a standstill.
"We ended up agreeing to disagree" Fisher said. Even with Fisher's claims that a deputy clocked the New Jersey convoy traveling the Weyers Cave stretch of Interstate 81 at 95 mph, Speziale's office demands proof.
"The Virginia authorities never produced any documentation, any radar, any evidence," Passaic County Sheriff's spokesman Bill Maer said. "All we have is their word, and we have not found them to be very truthful in the past, so we have no reason to believe them now."
Replied Fisher: "I've got my officer's testimony, and I've got about 10 people that have e-mailed me about the thing."
The Augusta County deputy's surveillance camera, normally used to record potentially hostile situations, was turned off during the stop, The News Virginian has learned.
"He didn't think he'd need it - it was a group of police officers," Fisher said.
The Augusta County stop, as well as a similar stop hours earlier of a New York Police Department convoy by Virginia State Police in southwest Virginia, has touched off a firestorm of debate and criticism among the East Coast law enforcement community.
"It's the chatter on the Internet," said Frank Ferreyra, head of the New York State Fraternal Order of Police. "Some of it is true, some of it is not true."
Nearly 100 e-mails and telephone calls have inundated the Augusta County Sheriff's Office since a Sept. 28 article in The News Virginian detailed the event.
The Virginia State Police reports receiving almost double that amount. Most of the mail and phone messages have been supportive of the sheriff's office and state police, they said.
Not everyone has sided with Virginia law enforcement, however. "It's created a lot of ill will in the law enforcement community," said Joseph Occhipinti, executive director of the National Police Defense Foundation. "We don't need war between the Virginia law enforcement and the Northern law enforcement."
Some police, basing their rationale on a code of professional courtesy called the Thin Blue Line, argue that local deputies and state police should have ignored the convoy.
This code backs the share of support received at the Passaic County Sheriff's Office.
"I think most, 80 percent of people, see it for what it's worth -- and realize that Virginia authorities acted inappropriately and unprofessionally," Maer said.
It was on Sept. 18 that Augusta County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Roane spotted a convoy of New Jersey officers - from Passaic County and the Wayne Township Police Department - in police cruisers returning home from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission.
Virginia State Police had received multiple 911 calls from I-81 motorists complaining the convoy, with as many as 13 cars, had forced them off the road. Roane was dispatched because a trooper was not available.
Roane managed to stop five or six cruisers, while the rest continued down the interstate. He asked them to cut off their emergency lights and to slow down.
Virginia law bans police cruisers from topping the speed limit and using lights unless responding to an emergency.
That stop earned Roane a rebuke over the telephone later that day from Speziale.
"If you think that that's not a disgrace, you should take that badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage," Speziale said in a taped conversation with Roane. "This is unacceptable, and I'll tell you what, I hope I get the opportunity to show you the same courtesy up here in New Jersey."
Yet it's another stop that day that has sparked much of the ongoing debate in police Internet chat rooms. It surrounds an Internet-circulated picture of a Virginia State Police trooper speaking with members of the NYPD.
The caption erroneously claims that the photo was snapped on Sept. 18, within seconds of the trooper stopping a convoy on its way home from New Orleans.
The photo actually depicts a Sept. 5 event that had a state trooper checking on an NYPD convoy that had stopped in Caroline County while en route to New Orleans, reports the Virginia State Police as well as an officer claiming via e-mail to be a member of the convoy.
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller provided The News Virginian an e-mail from the convoy member. The officer has not responded to requests for an interview.
"That Troopers [sic] only concern was that we were OK and even stopped traffic on the highway to let all our vehicles back out onto the highway," the officer wrote. "He then proceeded to the front of the caravan and gave us an escort as far as he could."
It was the New York convoy's return trip through Virginia that elicited 911 calls from motorists complaining of a roughly 80-car convoy driving under the speed limit. That group did not have its emergency lights flashing.
"The trooper who stopped us just asked that we stay in the right lane and not use our emergency lights," wrote the officer claiming to be in the convoy. "It wasn't a big deal and don't forget that outside of the great state of New York we had no power as police officers, we were just American citizens traveling on an interstate."
Not everyone views the event as an innocent stop, however. "I think the public needs to get over themselves and say, they are returning officers from three weeks in the worst conditions and they just want to get home to their families," N.Y. Fraternal Order of Police head Ferreyra said. "So they were hogging the left lane - whoop-de-do."
Many of the officers joining the debate in police chat rooms point to the lack of an escort for the convoys on the part of the Virginia State Police.
"Why was Virginia the only state that failed to provide a police escort?" Occhipinti asked, arguing the convoys were vulnerable to possible terrorists attacks.
Officials that sent the Passaic County convoy notified the Federal Emergency Management Agency of their trip. It was FEMA's job to notify other jurisdictions, Maer said.
Officials at New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly's office refused to answer News Virginian inquiries concerning protocol for the New Orleans trip without a written request. They have not yet responded to a faxed inquiry.
But FEMA, if indeed contacted by Passaic County Sheriff's Office and the New York Police Department, failed to notify Virginia State Police, said Geller.
"We were not notified of the procession coming or going until we started receiving [911] calls," she said.
A police escort along I-81 would have required coordination among four different Virginia State Police jurisdictions for a trip spanning 325 miles.
Escorts weren't requested when a convoy of Virginia State Police, Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries, Henrico and Chesterfield counties left two weeks ago on a Hurricane Katrina relief mission, Geller noted.
And they won't ask for an escort when a second contingent of volunteers heads to Mississippi on Tuesday.
"We respect the laws of the other states we are going through,"she said.
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