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Esta página no está disponible en español. The Associated PressProbes, Charges Only Add To Passaic Mayor's AuraBy WAYNE PARRY
February 18, 2002 PASSAIC, N.J. (AP) - The harder they come at Samuel Rivera, the more he shrugs his shoulders and smiles. And the more legal troubles the city's first Latino mayor encounters, the fonder many residents grow of him. First there was the federal government, which prosecuted him for helping cover up a murder while he was a police officer in Puerto Rico 22 years ago, and came away with only a minor conviction. Then came New Jersey officials, who are trying to oust him from office because of the Puerto Rico conviction, so far without success. And while that's continuing, Rivera is now tussling with a former boxing champion who claims the married mayor stole his girlfriend and threatened to kill him for complaining about it. "Believe it or not, I was raised in a religious atmosphere," Rivera said. "I trust God. If you do something wrong, you pay for it. If not, then you have nothing to worry about." Rivera, 55, has had plenty to worry about since 1980 when he was a police officer in the Puerto Rican city of Caguas. His partner shot and killed a drug dealer under questionable circumstances, then lied about it. Rivera says he went along with the story to protect his partner, who was 21 years old with two young children at home. The FBI charged his partner with murder, and Rivera with violating the victim's civil rights by covering up the crime. His partner eventually was acquitted, but Rivera accepted a deal in which he pleaded guilty to failure to report a crime in return for a probationary sentence. The state attorney general's office says that conviction makes Rivera ineligible to serve as mayor under terms of the Faulkner Act, a New Jersey law that bans those convicted of crimes involving "moral turpitude" from holding public office. Prosecutors went to court three days before Rivera was to take office last July, but a judge refused to block his inauguration and chastised them for waiting until the last minute to act. Many residents in Passaic, a city of nearly 68,000 which is two-thirds Hispanic, see a darker side to Rivera's legal woes. "It's because he's Spanish," said Joey Nunez, who works in a Main Street electronics store. "He's the first Spanish mayor we ever had, and some people don't like that and they want to get rid of him." "It's been one thing after another," agreed Evaristo Gueztiria. "He's a real good guy, but some people are (ticked) off that we have a Hispanic mayor, and they just keep going after him. It's not right that he has to deal with all this (nonsense) day after day." Yet Rivera has let prosecutors roll off his back like so much water, delving instead into the bread-and-butter issues of running a struggling blue-collar city. One of his first initiatives was to crack down on slumlords, leading several highly visible raids on run-down buildings. He defied state education officials who wanted to place temporary classroom trailers on land Rivera said was contaminated. He formed a redevelopment agency and began searching for investors to build on vacant or blighted land, and had police crack down on several homeless encampments on the fringes of the city. "There used to be a lot of trash in the street," said Jimmy Amir, another Main Street merchant. "Sammy has cleaned it up. And there's police coming by here again. Before, there were drug dealers in the street, robbing people. Sammy actually walks around and comes in the store and asks if everything's OK, or if we need something to be done." Amir didn't even mind the parking ticket he found on his car that afternoon, calling it "proof that things are working here." The state renewed its efforts to oust Rivera last month, seeking personnel records and gun permit applications that ask whether the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime. A week later, Rivera was back in hot water again, this time involving allegations of a love triangle with the girlfriend of a former WBC welterweight boxing champion. When the mayor showed up at the home of a city woman, Lucitania Mendez, at 8:40 on a Friday night, an angry Luis Santana, clad only in his underwear, answered the door. Rivera said he was there to check on Mendez and Santana's 4-year-old son, who has cerebral palsy, and inquire about placing him in a special school in Clifton. But Santana said the mayor came to his girlfriend's house for other reasons. "I said, `I'm here with my wife and child. Go!' " Santana said. "He said, `No, the one that has to leave is you because she is my lover, and if you don't, I'll kill you.' " Santana went to municipal court and charged Rivera with making terroristic threats. At a probable cause hearing that was moved to Wayne because it involved allegations against a Passaic city official, a judge ruled there is enough evidence for the case to proceed to a grand jury. Rivera and Mendez deny having a romantic relationship, and both say the mayor's schedule is booked through April, making the late-night weekend visit necessary. Santana is not impressed. "In Passaic, there are hundreds of sick children," he said. "He doesn't come knocking on the door to check on them at night." Rivera claims this, too, will blow over soon. "I'm not worried at all about this, and I'm not scared of this gentleman," he said. "It won't stop me from helping people. Although when I went to the door, a little light came on above my head that maybe I should have brought someone else along with me. Next time, I'm gonna do that."
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