Happy together? Oct. 1, 2012

  

It is hard to say exactly when she and RR became romantically involved, but it is clear that he latched on to her almost as soon as she started working for us in fall of 2011, as he had latched onto other female writers prior to her.

RR’s placement as one of the county’s most influential people showed this connection. Whether he pushed for this, or she thought of it herself, it’s hard to say. But she was clearly infatuated with him. She even wrote in glowing terms his somewhat fictional account of the 1994 sting which led to the arrest of more than 30 of his fellow police officers, and his false claim he had brought down the police chief as well.

“He has since turned his advocacy and accountability into a career,” she wrote. “He volunteers 30 hours a week as chairman of civil rights protection agency, runs a personal community advisory, and investigation and consulting group, and wors with the attorney general and county prosecutors to deal with complaints about police.”

Her account did not mention the “secret missions” he took part in that required him to go away for sometimes weeks at a time, regular I Spy stuff he had fed to several of the previous female employees – off doing undercover work that rivaled what he supposedly did in 1994, but without apparently the arm twisting of a previous arrest by the feds.

A Jersey City police lieutenant said his wife, a lawyer, has used RR from time to time as “an expert witness,” but described RR has as “a glorified ambulance chaser,”

“He runs around after cops carrying a video camera trying to catch them doing wrong doing,” this cop said.

No doubt, RR was trying to recapture former glory.

She in her story about him in late 2011 made it clear RR was determined to get his job back as a cop.

This is largely the reason RR apparently supported the election of the current mayor in 2011, although when the mayor came afoul of the law, RR quickly turned this in an opportunity to advance his cause by feeding inside information to her, using his relationship with the feds and the criminal lawyer the mayor had hired – the same lawyer who had represented RR during the scandal in the mid-1990s and who was deeply involved in the county corruption legal proceeding in the early 2000s.

In some ways, all of this had the makings of a bestselling espionage novel as RR plotted to get even with his political enemies and using her as part of the plot.

It is possible RR may have even met her prior to her getting a job in our office, but once she became the primary media voice in North Hudson, he apparently latched on and refused to let go.

The plot has so many twists and turns, it’s very difficult to follow, although at one point, RR speculated a run for mayor himself, even when most people perceived him as an insider with the current mayor.

When I asked her about this recently, she claimed RR had broken with the mayor, although this apparently was news to the mayor when I asked about RR. The mayor sang RR’s praises even.

But the mayor may be the only person with anything good to say about RR. An Assemblyman from the southern part of the county, who also served as public safety director, had nothing good to say, but would not divulge all he knew about him.

“He can’t be trusted,” the assemblyman said. “Everything he does is to promote his own agenda.”

Others – non-cops -- have accused RR of secretly recording them, suggesting he might be looking for dirt with which to blackmail them.

A spokesperson for the former county executive said she met RR during a fundraiser.

“He was running for office while at the same time he claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress,” she said. “I suffered that, too. He couldn’t run a campaign if he was. I thought he was just a jerk.”

Starting last January, RR became her primary source for inside information about the mayor’s legal trouble and may well have been acting on RR’s behalf in attacking the neighboring mayor who some claim turned his back on RR’s mayor.

But it is clear Tom was right when he warned me about RR in July, although it is clear that she and RR have working closely together almost from when she started to work for us. Considering RR’s history, I’m surprised he waited too long to launch his attack on the congressman.

 

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