Part-time officer linked to E. Greenwich mayor's DWI charge is laid off

East Greenwich Township Mayor Fred Grant voted to lay off a part-time officer who law enforcement officials said helped arrest him on drunken-driving and speeding charges in July, a move denounced Wednesday by the police chief as a conflict of interest.

Grant was driving 91 m.p.h. in a 45-m.p.h. zone on Kings Highway in the Gloucester County township July 31, according to police, and was charged with driving under the influence.

"I don't feel the mayor should be able to discuss personnel issues or budgetary issues with police when he has a pending DWI case in town. There's no way he can justifiably be fair about it," Police Chief Barry Jenkins said Wednesday. "This is politics at its worst here. It's a shame, it really is."

Grant said Wednesday that the decision was solely a budgetary matter and not influenced by the incident. He denied that the officer, Gerald Hall, was even present during the arrest.

The mayor said that the township was facing a shortfall of more than a half-million dollars and that each department had been asked to cut its budget by 20 percent.

"This has nothing to do with this summer at all," Grant said.

Hall, who could not be reached, and a clerk in the police office were the only employees let go Saturday. As part of a wider reorganization, the five-member township committee voted to reappoint a number of employees, said Sam Giordano, a member of the Democratic majority on the committee.

Giordano said he was not aware that the two employees' names had been taken off the reappointment list. The committee voted 3-2, along party lines, on the resolution. Had he known their names had been removed, Giordano said, he would not have voted for the resolution.

He said he was under the impression that the committee would not vote to reduce the workforce until it received more information Friday from the township's chief financial officer.

Grant met Monday with Jenkins, the deputy police chief, and a lieutenant to discuss the town's financial situation. Only then did the police department - and later the two employees - learn about the layoffs, Jenkins said.

"When a person comes in on Monday morning believing they have a job, that's where I have a problem," Giordano said. "It was done improperly. It may have been legal, but it was not done properly from an ethical standpoint."

Jenkins said he was "blindsided" by the move, and was not given a choice over how to trim his department's budget. Rather than layoffs, he said, the department could have reduced part-time employees' pay or hours.

"How do you take a 20-hour-a-week police officer . . . an EMT, and not tell us at all and not give us a choice or an option?" he asked.

Grant said that the department had been resistant to cuts and that layoffs were necessary.

Giordano said he planned to introduce a resolution Jan. 22 that would reinstate the employees. He said Grant had agreed to put the resolution to a vote.

Grant said a hearing in his case, scheduled for Thursday, had been postponed.

According to reports, after Grant was pulled over for speeding, his blood alcohol level registered 0.11.

In statements since the incident, Grant has apologized.