NJ.com
Two Jersey City police officers fired for legally using cannabis while off-duty have filed a lawsuit against the city for refusing an order by the state’s Civil Service Commission to reinstate them.
The 33-page lawsuit filed Wednesday claims Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop has flouted the state law — which says police officers can’t be disciplined for off-duty cannabis use — as “a ruse done solely to bring attention for his gubernatorial campaign to the detriment of Jersey City employees as well as taxpayers who are now footing the bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars in backpay awards and attorney fees.”
Among the eight counts in the lawsuit, Mansour and Polanco are seeking damages for “false light,” saying the police officials “openly (announced) to the entire Jersey City Police Department that (Mansour and Polanco) were guilty of misconduct and were being terminated;” and the officials gave “hundreds of coworkers the false impression that (they) were derelict in their employment and portrayed them in a false light.”
The two officers also sued the mayor and the city in November, claiming that Fulop and the city did not comply completely with an Open Public Records Act request for emails pertaining to the city’s cannabis policy.
The latest lawsuit is seeking to compel the city to reinstate Mansour and Polanco after Civil Service Commission rulings last year ordered the city to do so. They are among five police officers fired for failing drugs tests after cannabis was legalized in New Jersey.
In both Mansour’s and Polanco’s cases, the Civil Service Commission ruling affirmed rulings by the Office of Administrative Law, and awarded the police officers back pay, benefits, seniority and reasonable attorney’s fees.
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