newjerseynewsroom.com

BY TOM HESTER SR.

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The Christie administration Wednesday continued to play down the seriousness of two law-breaking State Police-escorted high speed sports car caravans that endangered the lives of other motorists on the Garden State Parkway on March 30 and in 2010.

State Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa and State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes met Wednesday morning at State Police headquarters in Ewing but a spokesman for the attorney general said the meeting was of the type held monthly with command-level officers and was not in direct response to what one witness to the latest caravan has tagged  “Death Race 2012.”

Paul Loriquet, the spokesman, told The Star-Ledger that Chiesa told the officers, "We cannot ever let conduct undermine public safety. That is our mission. We cannot ever let conduct undermine public safety.”

Following the meeting, The Star-Ledger reported, Chiesa stressed that proper authorization must be obtained, and escorts must be carried out properly, in the future.

"The [attorney general] said, going forward, let’s make sure proper authorization is given and that it’s carried out properly," Loriquet told The Star-Ledger.  "Everyone is focusing on whether or not he had proper authority, but the execution was poorly conducted."

On Friday, March 30, motorists traveling south on the Garden State Parkway unexpectedly found themselves in the middle of what witnesses described as a caravan of 25 to 30 luxury sports cars traveling at over 100 miles-per-hour escorted by at least two marked State Police patrol cars traveling at the same speed with their lights swirling. Witnesses said the drivers of the sports cars had covered their license plates.

Sgt. First-Class Nadir Nassry of Phillipsburg, an assistant commander at the Totowa Station, and Trooper Joseph Ventrella of Bloomfield have been suspended without pay for their role in the incident. The Totowa Station commander, Lt. Phillip Gundlah has been transferred pending the outcome of an investigation of the incident.

Chiesa said Nassry and Ventrella's alleged actions endangered the safety of other motorists. “Escorts are designed to enhance public safety," Loriquet told The Star-Ledger, "and in this instance the allegations and the preliminary investigation indicate that it compromised public safety."

State Police Superintendent Fuentes is distancing himself from any responsibility in the March 30 or 2010 caravans. Fuentes called the two incidents  "an aberration" and that responsibility for escorts rests with station commanders, not him or other  top brass.

"We have a 25-year trooper [Nassry] here who has numerous commendations, who spent his entire time in uniform, who 12 years ago saved an occupant from a burning vehicle and the signature event of his career is going to be this, so it’s very disturbing," Fuentes told The Star-Ledger.

A video of the 2010 caravan can be viewed at nj.com. It does not show one or two lanes of sports cars following one or two State Police cars in order. Instead, it shows the sports cars weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds and cutting in front of other cars at near-collision range.

Lt. Stephen Jones, a spokesman for Fuentes, said the superintendent did not learn about the 2010 incident until he saw the video as part of the investigation into the March 30 incident.

Speeding and multiple careless driving and endangering public safety violations are obvious in the video.

Christie laughed off the seriousness of the high-speed caravans when asked about them Monday in Newark.

The press aides for Christie and Fuentes have been asked Wednesday what action the two officials took immediately after viewing the video but there has yet to be a response. If there was a response, it was apparently not enough to prevent the March 30 incident.

Fuentes told The Star-ledger that troopers perform hundreds of escorts every year, but refused to say if those could include private groups of luxury cars, calling the question a "hypothetical."

"The permission is given at local command," Fuentes said  "And so we entrust our local command to authorize those escorts." He added he was unaware of the escorts before they happened and, "I hate for this to be a blemish on the rest of the organization."

Fuentes said escorts are often done for high-profile funerals, dignitaries, or to help the U.S. Secret Service or for any large amount of traffic that might impede the flow of a highway.

"There’s a whole host of factors that are involved here," the superintendent told The Star-Ledger.

Meanwhile, another witness to the March 30 caravan, Janet Jervis of Franklin Lakes, told The Star-Ledger, “I pulled over because I was in the left lane. Then the cars were coming on the left of me, the right of me, they were bullying and taking over the highway. They were zooming past us. I was like, ‘Wow, who do they think they are?’"

Jervis told The Star-Ledger she encountered the caravan just as she approached the Driscoll Bridge in Woodbridge. She said sports cars sped past her and over the span. She next saw the drivers stopped at a Parkway rest area, where she said she saw the drivers laughing with troopers.

"They were having a ball," Jervis said. "I was kind of jealous. I wish I could have gone that fast with one of those cars and with a trooper, front and behind."