Professional courtesy or a crime?

TRENTON -- It had all the makings of a routine motor vehicle stop. Police officer Ronald Gorneau spotted a silver Toyota swerving and pulled it over. The driver, Sheila McKaig, admitted she had drunk "a lot" before getting behind the wheel, according to the incident report.

Then she told Gorneau she was a state trooper, and the stop in Hamilton Township, Atlantic County, was no longer routine. Instead of being charged, McKaig was driven to the township’s police station, where fellow troopers picked her up. Trooper Sheila McKaig was stopped 10 times for various offenses over 14 months.

It was not an isolated incident. In fact, it was the third time in three months in early 2008 that an off-duty McKaig was stopped by Hamilton police after drinking, according to a State Police document. Each time no blood-alcohol test was given, no charges were filed and no ticket was written. Today McKaig is still on the road as a state trooper, a position she has held for nine years.

All told, McKaig was stopped 10 times for various offenses over a 14-month period, but she has never received a traffic ticket in New Jersey, according to police records and a spokeswoman for the state judiciary.

The file on McKaig’s motor vehicle stops was part of State Police disciplinary records requested by The Star-Ledger and provided by the Office of Administrative Law. The incident report was obtained from Hamilton Township police under the state’s Open Public Records Act.

Law enforcement experts call it "professional courtesy" when officers give fellow cops a pass they would not give the average driver. At the same time, however, New Jersey has been on a sustained crackdown on drunken driving. In 2008, police arrested 28,705 people for driving under the influence, and 154 people died in accidents involving at least one intoxicated person.

Assemblyman Nelson Albano (D-Cumberland), who has campaigned for tougher laws against driving under the influence, said the McKaig incidents showed disregard for efforts to crack down on drinking and driving.

"Those officers did not do their job," he said of the Hamilton Township police who stopped McKaig. "There should be no favoritism, no special treatment."

State Police officials said McKaig, 41, is a highly respected and decorated trooper who has earned her spot patrolling the Atlantic City Expressway by staying sober the past two years. Although she caught a break from Hamilton police, they said, she used the opportunity to turn her life around.
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"The break got her sober," said Jim Nestor, who leads the State Police’s employee-assistance program, which arranges counseling for troopers.

State Police officials said McKaig would not be available for comment.

Hamilton Township Police Chief Stacy Tappeiner said the officers should not have given McKaig a break.

"The discretion exercised for McKaig was done far too leniently due to the person’s profession," said Tappeiner, who became police chief this year.

Deborah Jacobs, state director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the police should have taken a tougher stand. "It seems to me that police agencies should want to hold police officers to a higher standard than that of the general public, not a lower standard," she said.

Dennis Kenney, a former Florida policeman who is a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said police use an informal "sliding scale" when determining whether to look the other way. Speeding off-duty cops may get a pass, but drinking and driving is less likely to be overlooked because it’s much more dangerous, he said.

Although cutting breaks violates the principle of equally enforcing the law, it’s still common, Kenney said.

"Policing is not unlike any other profession," he said. "Every other profession has its way of making exceptions for friends and colleagues."

McKaig was never suspended after the stops, which were detailed in the police documents obtained by The Star-Ledger through the Open Public Records Act. But she is facing disciplinary charges of conduct unbecoming an officer related to the allegations of drinking and driving. The charges were signed by State Police Supt. Rick Fuentes in March 2009, almost one year after McKaig’s third alcohol-related stop. They will be reviewed at an administrative hearing before a final punishment is decided.

The disciplinary charges noted that Hamilton Township police pulled McKaig over 10 times from March 17, 2007, through April 30, 2008. "The majority of stops concluded with verbal warnings, however, the last three instances involved the consumption of alcoholic beverages," reads the document.

The document also shows McKaig later admitted to internal State Police investigators that she had been drinking alcohol before being pulled over each of those three times. Driving while drunk is a motor vehicle violation, not a criminal offense, in New Jersey. But the penalties are tough; even a first offense for drunken driving can cost the motorist a hefty fine and a license suspension of up to six months. A third conviction within 10 years of the second conviction can land someone in jail for 180 days in addition to a 10-year license suspension.

McKaig’s lawyer, Katherine Hartman, said she doesn’t believe her client was ever over the legal limit.

However, Hamilton police were concerned enough that they didn’t let McKaig drive home after the second and third stops involving alcohol, documents show.

Poor Communication

On April 11, police stopped McKaig for speeding and reported she was "pretty impaired and not fit to drive." A cop drove her home, leaving her car in a parking lot.

Two weeks later, when McKaig admitted to drinking "a lot" of alcohol, police had her car towed. Under the legislation known as John’s Law, police are allowed to impound a drunken motorist’s car to prevent the motorist from returning to it and continuing to drive while intoxicated.

Each stop was handled by a different officer, and poor communication left the Hamilton department in the dark about how often McKaig had been pulled over, Tappeiner said.

"Once we were aware of the multiple stops, the previous chief had our internal affairs officer notify the State Police immediately," he said. "The previous chief also took steps to correct the situation within the department."

At that point, McKaig’s supervisor sent her to the employee-assistance program to get help, state officials said.

"She’s a good person that had an issue," said State Police spokesman Capt. Gerald Lewis. "She has overcome some obstacles and is still a productive member of the State Police."

McKaig has drawn positive attention since graduating from the State Police Academy in May 2001. She was commended for helping save the life of a 4-year-old girl lying on a road in Deptford Township after a car accident in 2005; she performed CPR without a protective mask. In 2008 she was recognized again for helping disarm a man in Camden who had two handguns.

Lewis said State Police leaders do not want troopers cutting breaks for fellow cops, and he emphasized that the State Police were not responsible for pulling over McKaig.

Since the stops, she has attended meetings for alcoholics, spoken at conferences and visited with female prison inmates to discuss addiction, said Nestor, who talked about McKaig’s case with her permission.

He added that her situation is not unusual. "It happens to a lot of cops," Nestor said. "They get breaks by other cops."

There are no formal rules on how police should enforce the law with fellow officers, said Peter Aseltine, spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office.

Maki Haberfeld, another professor at John Jay, said detailed rules could help break down the "blue wall of silence where police officers cover for each other no matter what."

"If there’s no strict regulation, it will just continue," Haberfeld said.