N.J. trooper hazing controversy lingers

Its foreboding name evokes a code of medieval justice to match its reputation for secrecy and retribution.

Its alleged victims are members of the New Jersey State Police, and so are the people they accuse.

Its very essence is the subject of dispute: In the eyes of top state officials, the group said to call itself the Lords of Discipline doesn't exist.

But allegations of harassment by troopers who say they were victimized by a cabal of comrades for blowing the whistle on questionable police procedures have just sent New Jersey's legal tab past the $1 million mark.

A $400,000 payout to ex-trooper Justin Hopson was made public this week, settling claims that so-called Lords brethren in South Jersey barracks harassed him after he questioned an improper arrest by a colleague in 2002.

The settlement - the third involving Lords of Discipline lawsuits since 2005 - came at a time of both good and bad news for the beleaguered state police.

A few weeks ago, federal monitors, who have been overseeing the state police for years, since a profiling scandal erupted, praised the agency for having curbed its controversial practice of targeting motorists based on race and ethnicity.

The settlement also came a few days before the fifth anniversary of the suicide of a young trooper named John Oliva, who took his life on the steps of an Absecon church in October 2002 after being tormented, his attorney says, by the Lords of Discipline.

Oliva's lawsuit was filed in 2001, preceding Hopson's by a year. After his suicide, it was amended and put into the name of Oliva's estate.

Oliva's federal lawsuit, which could go to trial next year, ensures that questions of improper conduct by troopers will remain on the radar for some time - as will the prospect of additional payouts for damages.

A spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office called the recent six-figure out-of-court settlement to Hopson's federal lawsuit "fair." The spokesman, David Wald, was quick to praise state police progress in reducing the profiling problem.

Wald maintained that there was no pattern of vindictive behavior toward troopers from within the organization - despite settlements in all three cases so far.

"These are individual cases, and a judgment was made that these were fair settlements," said Wald, speaking for Attorney General Anne Milgram.

Wald also stood by the results of a two-year probe by the Attorney General's Office that found in 2005 that some troopers were guilty of hazing, but that the Lords of Discipline as a group that retaliated against fellow troopers did not exist.

Hopson's attorney, William Buckman, reiterated his criticism of that two-year-old report as a whitewash. Buckman said he had seen no evidence that the vindictive culture outlined in his Lords of Discipline cases has been eradicated.

It is unclear, he said, whether the state police have sufficiently rooted out what he called a culture that seeks to silence troopers who dare to question police practices - particularly methods of pulling over motorists based on ethnicity and race.

"The state seems to have taken a position that it will absorb the costs of the injuries meted out to troopers rather than dig into the organization and finally rid it of the culture that produces this kind of phenomenon," Buckman said.

The New Jersey State Police have referred all comment about the Lords of Discipline to the attorney general, said Lt. Gerald Lewis, a spokesman for Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes.

Prior to the $400,000 settlement in the Hopson case, the Attorney General's Office settled two other Lords of Discipline cases brought by troopers: $235,000 to Emblez Longoria in October 2005 in Superior Court and $375,000 to Kim Zollitsch in federal court, Wald said.

Hopson said last week that the settlement in his case was a "fair amount" of money, but he called the entire affair bittersweet.

Five years of legal action have taken an emotional toll on the 33-year-old, who left his job with the state police this year to become a private investigator in another state.

Hopson holds two college degrees - a bachelor's in psychology and a master's in management - and had been inspired to join law enforcement while growing up as the son of a high-ranking agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Now, he says, he has no desire to return to law enforcement. Rather, he sees himself becoming a reformer who will press for anti-hazing laws to be passed in New Jersey.

"When's it going to end?" Hopson asked. "When is the last time someone's going to be victimized?"

Hopson, who had been stationed with Troop A in South Jersey, claimed he had been sent threatening notes and beaten, and had his belongings vandalized, after questioning the way a colleague had arrested a woman.

He filed his lawsuit in March 2002 - knowing that Oliva, also in Troop A, had filed his Lords of Discipline lawsuit the prior year.

His perspective changed when, in October 2002, Oliva committed suicide.

Oliva was 36 when he fired a bullet from a .40-caliber Glock into his chest and collapsed outside a church near his home.

Oliva was on sick leave after being harassed by fellow troopers for objecting to procedures that called for pulling over motorists based on their race and ethnicity, Buckman said.

With exchange of evidence between both sides nearly complete, Buckman said, a trial date could be set for 2008 if the case is not dismissed.

Buckman said state officials had shown no interest in settling the lawsuit.

"The man is dead, and the state is going to have to recognize the incredible pain that he suffered," Buckman said.