Bristol Twp. Manager Looks To Have Grand Jury Report Stricken From Record

Bill McCauley, the manager of Bristol Township, and his legal counsel are pushing for something which has never been done on the state level in Pennsylvania.

Represented during a hearing before Bucks County Judge Wallace Bateman by attorney Harvey Sernovitz, McCouley’s counsel argued Tuesday in Doylestown that a scathing Grand Jury report filed in February of this year should be stricken from the record and thrown out.

McCauley’s request to squash the Grand Jury report comes months after he did not get a city government job he applied for in Ohio. It was not immediately clear if he was seeking another job outside of Bristol Township or whether the Grand Jury report was brought up by hiring officials in Ohio.

The Grand Jury report included details on an investigation regarding accusations that members of the Bristol Township Police Department were covering up what McCauley felt was a possible DUI crash committed by off-duty Sgt. Kevin Burns in late 2014. The 37-page report outlined ways Township Manager Bill McCauley took advantage of an unfortunate incident involving a vehicle crash caused by a police officer who was drinking – but reportedly not intoxicated – in an alleged attempt to harm the career of some department members.

Included in the report were judgments of McCauley’s character, as determined by testimony at the Grand Jury hearings.

“We find the behavior of William McCauley unethical,” the Grand Jury wrote. The also described his testimony as “utterly without credibility” and raised concerns over his role to oversee some aspects of the police department.

McCauley and counsel are petitioning the report because judgment of McCauley’s character within the report could have permanently damaging effects if the report were to remain public. “The remarks about Mr. McCauley are going to haunt him for the rest of his life,” Sernovitz opined during the hearing.

“This whole thing is built on sand,” said Sernovitz.

According to Sernovitz, McCauley should have had time to respond to the report before it was made public, but he did not receive the chance, according to argument made during the hearing.

Sernovitz argued for McCauley’s allegations against members of the police force, saying that “any lawyer in the universe” could have seen the need for probable cause at the time of the incident which began the events culminating in Tuesday’s trial.

It was this alleged lack of investigation by initial officers on the scene that motivated McCauley to head his own investigation and hire his own private investigator. However, the Grand Jury found that the proper commanding officers were contacted and followed proper procedure.

In the Grand Jury report, McCauley, who reportedly did not cease his investigation after receiving a letter directing him to do so from the District Attorney David Heckler.

The Commonwealth previously stated that McCauley had no right to investigate the police department. During the hearing, however, they acknowledged that McCauley has the right to conduct an “investigation,” just not a “criminal investigation.”

According to argument put forth by Sernovitz, McCauley did not need any reason to put Sgt. Ralph Johnson in charge as the acting chief of the department, stripping Lt. John Godzieba from the interim job in December, after 14 months at the helm. The Grand Jury reported McCauley used the “questionable integrity” of Godzieba from the incident regarding Burns as reason to remove Godzieba as acting chief and replace him with his own “yes man,” which was determined by the Grand Jury to be Johnson.

The Grand Jury found that Johnson, a long time and respected patrol officer, was not as qualified to run the department as Godzieba, who is also respected career police officer. They also stated McCauley worked to “tarnish” the career and character of Godzieba, Lt. Terry Hughes and Lt. Guy Sava, who retired earlier this year.

According to McCauley’s counsel, the Grand Jury’s investigation should have stopped after they concluded that no cover up had occurred, but instead, they continued to investigate into McCauley’s reasons behind his investigation. “This was truly a runaway Grand Jury,” Sernovitz said.

According to Sernovitz, he submitted a revised version of the report to the commonwealth’s counsel, prosecutor Robert James. James said, however, the revised version could not have been considered serious, as too much information was cut from the report.

According to James, if a single line of the report was opposed by a single juror, it was changed or removed. “Everything critical of Mr. McCauley came directly from the mouths of the grand jurors,” he said.

Sernovitz also asserted that the credibility findings in the report were not credible. Sernovitz asserted that Officer Eric Barros, as named in the report, gave a sworn statement which directly conflicted with his testimony heard by the Grand Jury.  “This report should not have seen the light of day,” Sernovitz said.

“Bristol Township has been a political cesspool for at least 40 years. I accepted the job of trying to clean-up the mess of corruption, incompetence, and mismanagement in January 2012. The most amazing thing I have observed and experienced is the amount of resistance to my instilling integrity and ethics into the local government and complete lack of support from so many varied parties,” McCauley said in a statement released following the Grand Jury report.

Bateman told the court that he would have an answer to them within 10 days regarding the fate of the petition.

Click here to read the full Grand Jury report