As the news was broken very first here on FAA News, in December 2024, Jackson Township Police Chief Matthew Kunz filed a massive lawsuit seeking to toss Mayor Mike Reina’s decision to appoint Joseph Candido - a sitting Police Lieutenant (and subordinate to Kunz) - as Director of Public Safety and effectively, Kunz's boss.
Kunz is now heading back to court with renewed vigor, FAA News has learned.
According to the court filing in New Jersey Superior Court in Ocean County by Secaucus Attorney John P. Nulty, Jr., Esq.:
The Township of Jackson, through Reina, and Candido, have unlawfully usurped the statutory rights and privileges attendant to Kunz's position as Chief of Police. By statute, Kunz possesses the right to administer and enforce rules and regulations applicable to the Department and to oversee and manage the Department’s day-to-day affairs. The Legislature has made clear that these statutory rights are designed to insulate chiefs of police from political pressures and to permit them freedom to manage their departments free from unnecessary interference.
The Township has trampled upon Kunz's statutory rights and procedural protections. In early 2024, the Township passed an ordinance which designated Candido -- a Lieutenant within the Jackson Police Department and thus a subordinate of Plaintiff -- as the Township’s Director of Public Safety. Upon assuming his new title as Director, Candido has exercised absolute and total authority over the Department’s day-to-day operations, including personnel assignments and duties, uniform and badge requirements, purchasing authority, equipment assignments, police investigatory affairs, and officer discipline. In each of these various responsibilities, he either has cut Kunz completely out of the decision-making process, overturned Kunz's prior orders, or both. Kunz thus has been forced involuntarily to cede unassignable statutory privileges to a subordinate officer.
Director Candido is barred from serving as the Director of Public Safety by the common law incompatibility doctrine, which prohibits public officials and employees from serving in dual roles, one of which is subordinate to the other. Because he already serves as a Lieutenant in the Department subordinate to Kunz, Director Candido cannot fill a second role in which he is able to exercise supervisory authority over Kunz. Finally, Director Candido issued discipline to Kunz, contrary to the IAPP and the Department’s Standard Operating Procedures, both of which require that investigations for police chief misconduct be carried out by the County Prosecutor’s Office or the Attorney General’s Office, and then be referred to the appropriate authority.
The suit also lists a number of contentious issues over the years between Kunz and Reina, including that in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Reina directed and encouraged Department Heads to file false, misleading and/or inflated insurance claims. Kunx resisted this illegal direction and, instead, reported the conduct to the FBI. Kunz, at the FBI’s request, acted as a confidential informant and provide information which he reasonably believed, demonstrated criminal conduct by Reina. During the course of that investigation, the FBI revealed to Reina that Kunz had been operating as a confidential informant and had provided information to it regarding Reina’s conduct.
Ocean County Superior Court Judge Valter Must previously denied to grant injunctive relief prohibiting Director Candido from working the job, instead permitting the case to proceed to discovery.
Chief Kunz is now returning to court with a motion for summary judgment.
The motion papers highlight that since the initial court appearance, the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office took the extraordinary step of issuing a letter to the Director, informing him that he could not unilaterally discipline Kunz and that his incessant interceding in the department’s affairs violated the Police Chiefs’ Responsibility Act.
"The Prosecutor’s Office’s letter has not deterred Defendants from continuing on their troubling course. On the contrary, they have become only more brazen. At the end of May 2025, roughly one month after receiving the Prosecutor’s Office’s letter, Director Candido was appointed for roughly a week as the Township’s acting mayor," the motion filing alleges.
A key point of hesitation on Judge Must's part to grant an injunction was uncertainty as to whether or not Candido could indeed return to his original police Lieutenant position should he choose to do even while in his director position which is permitted by law to be held only by a civilian.
Kunz's motion filing contends that in their discovery responses the Township admitted that Director Candido has not retired from his position as a lieutenant in the Jackson Township Police Department; he remains on an “indefinite” leave of absence, and can return to his lieutenant position whenever he wishes.
"Prior case law conclusively establishes that this arrangement is unlawful, and that a police officer on unpaid leave cannot serve in a second position within the same municipality that employs him as a law enforcement officer. All the while, Director Candido continues to engage in law enforcement activities and to issue directives to Plaintiff regarding the department’s day-to-day operations, all of which the County Prosecutor’s Office instructed him not to do. He remains free to return to his lieutenant position at any time, even though the time period set forth in the Civil Service Commission regulations for unpaid leaves of absence has long since expired. Taken together, Defendants’ actions have shown a regrettable disregard for the well-established limits placed upon public safety directors and a willingness to cross those boundaries even after concerns from the Court and a stern rebuke from the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office. The current circumstances are unlawful, untenable, and ultimately unsustainable. Given the facts adduced by Plaintiff in discovery, no doubt remains as to the unlawful and unsustainable authority the Township has provided to Director Candido. Regrettably, and wrongly, Defendants have been emboldened by the Court’s unwillingness to grant immediate injunctive relief, taking it not as the procedural cautiousness it was, but rather as tacit approval to push beyond the boundaries even further. With the factual issues that the Court cited in declining to issue injunctive relief now resolved, the Court now has the opportunity to grant appropriate relief," Kunz stressed.
The New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police has filed an amicus curiae brief in support of Chief Kunz.
The motion for summary judgment is returnable before Judge Must on Friday July 18. Township attorneys have not yet responded to the motion.
Kunz has been employed by the Township for over 34 years and has served as its Chief of Police since 2008.
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