Edison cop craved private lingerie show by hotel guest, new documents reveal
August 6, 2015 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
EDISON — Anthony Sarni noticed right away that she was attractive. Fit. Pretty. Mid-20s, maybe. Alone in her hotel room, the floor covered in shopping bags, including one from Victoria’s Secret.
The Edison police officer had arrived around midnight for a routine fire alarm call. By the time Sarni got to her room, the situation was under control — a prankster had sprayed a fire extinguisher under the woman’s door, but there was no suspect in sight — so Sarni moved on to other topics, the woman later claimed.
Would she model some of that newly purchased Victoria’s Secret lingerie for him?
When she said no, Sarni allegedly suggested that her “fate was in his hands.” He earlier let her flush some pot down the toilet, so she took that as a threat that she might go to jail, she said later. But he gave up and left, she told investigators, with a promise that he’d return.
This account is based on reams of newly obtained Internal Affairs documents that include interviews with Sarni and investigators’ descriptions of witness statements from the woman and hotel staff. NJ Advance Media received the reports via a court records request. Sarni, who was suspended with pay in October 2013 for alleged misconduct, is suing to keep his job. He is paid $120,000 a year, though he has not worked for the past 22 months.
Both Sarni and the woman have similar stories about his first visit to her hotel room. What happened next at the Extended Stay America on that September day in 2012 is now the subject of dispute, and could result in Sarni losing his job — an effort hampered by the town’s inability to file administrative charges on time. A neutral hearing officer has yet to recommend to the mayor if Sarni should be fired.
Steven Cahn, Sarni’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
He previously said: “He made a mistake in judgment on a personal level, and it essentially had very little connection to work. It was a personal issue off duty. If he wasn’t a police officer, nobody would have cared.”
Sarni is hardly the first Edison cop to face accusations he abused the power of his badge. His behavior was deemed so egregious that the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office has said it will dismiss any criminal case in which Sarni would be a witness — potentially leaving the township with two compromised cops.
‘Bold enough to say no’
With time, the woman would say she was disappointed the actions of the Edison police officer. But in the moment, after he first left her hotel room, she was just deeply uncomfortable. Months later, she told investigators Sarni’s remarks were so disconcerting that she considered switching hotel rooms, according to an investigator’s memo.
The hotel manager would eventually tell police that the woman repeatedly requested a room change, but that Sarni ordered hotel staff to keep her where she was. (Sarni denied this.)
He was back at the hotel again before long. Now off duty, he had tried, and failed, to reach her on the phone, so he showed up, knocked on her door, and made his way inside, the woman later said.
“I can’t believe you really came back here in uniform,” she said she told him, according to investigators.
It was almost 2 a.m., well after his shift had ended. Sitting in a chair next to her bed with his gun in its holster, he asked again for the woman to model her lingerie for him.
She complied, changing into a few outfits in the bathroom. Then, she said, he stood up, asked if things could go further, and showed her that he had an erection.
“I was bold enough to say no, I don’t think we should do anything,” she would later tell investigators.
She moved to a different hotel after her second run-in with Sarni, she said. But that did not stop Sarni’s text messages — some of them sexually explicit.
A month later, the person she’d saved in her phone as “cop” texted her again. That’s when she complained to the Edison Police Department.
‘Vaguely recalling’
It would be months before Sarni got to tell his side of the story, and an hour of questioning from Internal Affairs investigators before he’d start to recall it with any clarity. At first, there was much he couldn’t remember about that night 10 months earlier. Not the Victoria’s Secret bag, or the marijuana, or the request.
He’d been through the IA process before. A motorist had said Sarni propositioned her for sex after a traffic stop, but the claim was not sustained, according to law enforcement officials.
This time, however, investigators had reams of evidence, including surveillance footage and a lengthy written account from the woman. (She later stopped cooperating, telling investigators not to contact her again because her family feared for her safety.)
Sarni became visibly nervous and upset during his interview, Lt. Joseph Shannon and Det. Sgt. Thomas Errico noted, but at first he held firm: He didn’t ask for a lingerie show. The IA investigators weren’t buying his fuzzy memory.
“It doesn’t strike me as plausible at all,” Shannon told him.
But Sarni was never charged criminally, because despite the victim’s statement, county investigators didn’t believe he used the overlooked marijuana as leverage, Shannon told him. By July 2013, the county’s criminal investigation was over. The town’s administrative probe began. And he’d only get in more trouble if he lied.
“I just want you to be honest, Tony,” Shannon said, according to the transcripts.
About an hour into the interview, Sarni stepped out, spoke to his attorney for two minutes, and came back with more answers about the lingerie.
“The more that we are speaking of this,” he said, “I am vaguely recalling something along those lines.”
Sarni continued to deny that he’d used the threat of a marijuana arrest as leverage to get her to take her clothes off. He didn’t even recall seeing marijuana, he said. He continued to deny that he’d asked her for sex. He couldn’t recall whether he was erect — “How do I remember that?”
But after a second break from his interview, Sarni came back and acknowledged that, yes, he did ask her to model lingerie when he went back to her room, and she showed him one or two different outfits.
“There was outfits,” Sarni said, according to the transcripts. “I did ask her to try them on.”
Sarni also maintained that his initial intentions were to check up on her, he said.
“You just said that was your initial intentions?” Errico asked him.
“Yes.”
“What were the follow-up intentions?”
“I knew that was coming,” Sarni said. “Umm, let me rephrase that.”
Sarni later added: “I can’t say I didn’t want it to go further.”
‘Absolutely petrified’
Even in Edison, where it’s long been at the forefront of civic discourse, public scrutiny of police is as intense as ever. The Township Council recently created an investigative committee to probe the decision to let an Edison cop who had sent racist texts keep his job.
Sarni’s lawyers, however, have signaled an intention to sue the township over alleged leaks to The Star-Ledger. He has been suspended with pay since September 2013.
He initially misled investigators because he was afraid of leaks, and didn’t want his wife and kids to know about it, he said.
“I am absolutely petrified,” Sarni told investigators, “that this will get out.”
In a lawsuit against the town demanding his reinstatement as an active duty police officer, Sarni’s lawyer argued that he eventually came clean about the lingerie, so the charges of lying (23 times, the town said) should be dropped.
That lawsuit has been partially successful. The administrative charges stemming from the night at the hotel room were thrown out by a Superior Court judge. The town had 45 days to try to fire Sarni in 2013 — a well known disciplinary rule — and it took about 90. Charges of lying to investigators remain, which could still cost Sarni his job.
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Brian Amaral may be reached at bamaral@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
