October 15, 2014 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 5 Midland Park Council dismisses police officer charged in DWI case After nearly three years of legal maneuvers, Midland Park Police Officer Joseph B. Gaeta is out of a job. The Midland Park Borough Council last week decided to accept a hearing officer’s recommendation to terminate Gaeta from the position he had held for seven years following his guilty plea for driving while intoxicated. Councilman Mark Braunius cast the sole dissenting vote. “I disagreed with the hearing officer’s findings of the facts leading to his rec- ommendation,” Braunius explained. Gaeta was suspended without pay after he pleaded guilty in December, 2011 to driving an all-terrain vehicle while drunk following a DWI training session at the Law & Public Safety Insti- tute in Mahwah. He had volunteered to drink beer and undergo field sobriety tests performed by trainees for the state police program. He was driven home by a fellow officer, but four hours later, he crashed his all-terrain vehicle off Godwin Avenue in Wyckoff while he was off duty. “We followed the process. I feel the hearings were fair, and we went by the hearing officer’s recommendations. Officer Gaeta had the opportunity to appeal that decision; he didn’t,” said Councilman Nick Papapietro in making the motion for dismissal. Gaeta’s attorney, Joseph Rem, said he had submitted a letter to the council responding to the hearing officer’s deci- sion but his client had not been invited to appear in front of the governing body. “I believe they intentionally chose not to speak to him,” the attorney said. Rem said he would appeal the deci- sion to Superior Court, where, he said, there would be a brand new hearing. “Nothing that happened below would count.” Rem said. “This is a gross mis- carriage of justice that will be rectified at Superior Court.” The administrative hearing was con- ducted in June by Matthew Mahoney, an independent hearing officer with experi- ence in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and as a special assistant U.S. attorney. Mahoney also found that the borough had taken appropriate action when the council suspended the police officer pending a review of the case. Gaeta was suspended without pay. Papapietro said the council was also guided by the fact that both former Chief John Casson and his successor, Chief Michael Marra, had recommended dis- missal following an internal review. “It was a tough decision. It was not something we took lightly,” Papapietro said of the time it took the governing body to render a decision on the case. The council had put off the hearing on the appeal of the disciplinary action until Gaeta’s DWI conviction in Wyckoff Municipal Court went through the appeal process in Superior Court. On July 17, 2013, the Appellate Divi- sion of Superior Court overturned Gae- ta’s sentence for DWI and remanded the case to municipal court in Hackensack. That court found that his sole penalty should be a fine of $150. “It was an extremely minimal viola- tion,” Rem said. “Almost never does a police officer get dismissed for a real DWI; this was not a real DWI. Its sole penalty was a $150 fine. I have not spoken to a police officer around the county who is not shocked and angry by the recom- mendation of the hearing officer to dis- charge Officer Gaeta. They consider it a great injustice,” Rem added. When Gaeta had the accident in Wyckoff, his blood alcohol content was measured at 0.135 percent. The state’s legal limit is currently 0.08 percent. On appeal, Gaeta claimed that, because he was driving an ATV and not a car, truck, or similar motor vehicle, the pen- alties imposed by the Wyckoff Munici- pal Court were illegal. He claimed that, although the stricter statute that equated an ATV to other motor vehicles for DWI purposes had been adopted in 2009, it had not yet taken effect in 2011 when the accident occurred.