In different cases, a current New Jersey police chief and a former New Jersey police chief are being charged with sexual misconduct while on the job.
Andrew Kudrick, who used to be the head of the Howell Police Department, is accused of having an affair with a police employee and then trying to hide it when the township started to look into it.
On Wednesday, the attorney general said that official misconduct and tampering with public data were among the charges.
“According to our investigation, the defendant went so far as to threaten to start an improper internal affairs investigation of a high-ranking member of the police force who knew about the affair and planned to tell the special counsel,” said New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin.
The AG says the witness was a captain in the police force.
“Falling into political disfavor does not make you a criminal. Andy is well liked by both the police and the people of Howell Township. “He plans to fight these charges with all his might,” his lawyer, Robert Honecker, said in a statement.
Chief Thomas Herbst has been on administrative leave in Manville, Somerset County, since one of his alleged victims filed a lawsuit against him last year. On Wednesday, however, he was arrested by state police and brought before a judge on charges of sexual assault, official misconduct, and criminal sexual contact.
The AG says Herbst preyed on women sexually for more than a decade and went after many of them. The Attorney General says he even went to the home of at least one of his victims.
“From 2008 to 2021, the defendant touched, exposed himself to, and sexually assaulted a police officer on a regular basis.” “He did this a lot, and he did it a lot while he and the victim were working,” Platkin said. “At one point, the defendant is said to have told the victim to wear skirts.”
The AG says the chief used his power to get sexual favors from the wife of at least one subordinate in exchange for a raise. These women weren’t just the ones he worked with.
Platkin said that Herbst would ask the wives of officers under him for sexual favors so that those officers would get good job decisions and chances.
Herbst, who has worked there since 1991, says that the claims are false.
“He has never had any non-consensual, forced, or coerced sexual behavior with anyone, period,” defense attorney James Wronko said. “It doesn’t matter if they worked with him, if he worked near them, or in any other situation. He has never done that.”
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