Officer admits he falsified report in Zisa criminal trial

A Hackensack police officer testified in state Superior Court on Wednesday that it would have been “career suicide” for him to accurately state on a 2008 police report that Police Chief Ken Zisa’s then-girlfriend was obviously drunk when she crashed the chief’s SUV into a telephone pole.
Suspended Hackensack Police Chief Charles 'Ken' Zisa listens to opening arguments last week, sitting next to Kathleen Tiernan.
Under intense cross-examination from defense attorney Patricia Prezioso, Officer Joseph Al-Ayoubi admitted that the report he filed that night was false and could have opened him to criminal charges of official misconduct.
“It was a cover-up,” he said, reversing testimony from earlier in the day that the report — which said Kathleen Tiernan swerved to avoid hitting an animal — was accurate because it reflected what Zisa told him at the scene.
Prezioso lingered only briefly on the alleged misrepresentation during almost an entire day of questioning Al-Ayoubi in the criminal trial of the suspended police chief. Zisa is accused of intervening in two separate investigations to protect Tiernan and her family.
Prezioso locked her focus on Al-Ayoubi’s positive test for an anabolic steroid in his urine the following year, building on her defense that the police officers testifying against her client were biased by their own personal grievances.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Daniel Keitel, who questioned Al-Ayoubi Tuesday, has tried to show that the steroids test, like other disciplinary actions filed against the key law enforcement witnesses in the case, was orchestrated by Zisa in revenge for their cooperation with the investigation. But he had to curtail that argument and cut his questions for Al-Ayoubi short after a warning from Judge Joseph Conte, who reminded him to steer clear of allegations he could not prove in court.
Prezioso wants to show that criminal and administrative charges against Al-Ayoubi for the steroids test were dropped as part of what she has called an immunity agreement he and other witnesses negotiated with the Prosecutor’s Office in return for their cooperation with the Zisa investigation.
Al-Ayoubi has filed a civil lawsuit against Zisa claiming that the steroids test was illegal and that the drug it detected, called methandienone, was an ingredient in one of several legal supplements he took.
He asked for $1.5 million in damages in his lawsuit, he testified, adding that he and his wife had decided to give most of the money to charity if he won. He said he makes $119,000 a year.
The officer, who’s well above 6 feet tall and has a shaved head, read a list of more than 20 of those supplements to the jury at Prezioso’s request. They included protein powders, fat loss stimulants, testosterone boosters and sleep aids he said he bought at vitamin and supplement stores.
To that he added another list of medications that were prescribed by a Fairfield clinic that Prezioso said was featured in a Star-Ledger exposé as a popular destination for police officers seeking illegal steroids.
Al-Ayoubi, 35, testified that he has a testosterone deficiency.
He also said that he lost 25 to 30 pounds after the steroids test came back positive. But he took issue with Prezioso’s characterization that the weight loss is a typical response from someone whose body was suddenly deprived of a muscle-building drug. He said he was depressed.
Zisa is accused of abusing his power by shielding Tiernan's two teenage sons from a police investigation after they were allegedly involved in a 2004 fistfight and robbery of another teenage acquaintance.
He is also accused of escorting Tiernan from the scene of the 2008 car accident before she could be investigated for drunken driving. Tiernan was driving a car owned by Zisa, who later filed an $11,000 insurance claim, stating she swerved to avoid an animal.
Zisa faces at least 15 years in prison if found guilty of a pattern of official misconduct, witness tampering, insurance fraud and other charges. Tiernan faces charges of conspiracy to commit official misconduct and insurance fraud, and faces up to 15 years in prison.