In 1991, Bissell showed just how willing he was to turn traditional allies into foes when he personally prosecuted two white Franklin Township police officers who were charged with beating an African American motorist after a traffic stop.

Depending on your point of view, the case demonstrates either Bissell's unwavering confidence in his own ability as prosecutor, or it highlights what some have described as his deepest personal flaw, boundless arrogance coupled with a political death wish.

Unlike most states, in which district attorneys and prosecutors are restricted to the courthouse, prosecutors in New Jersey are more than just lawyers. They are also, officially, the chief law enforcement officers within their counties. This mix of responsibility has created a kind of symbiotic relationship between local police and county prosecutors in New Jersey. To some degree, the cops on the beat are a prosecutor's most important constituency and in New Jersey, the record is replete with cases where the bleached bones of overreaching prosecutors were tossed on courthouse lawns figuratively speaking after they lost the support of the local authorities.

Officers beat Rodney King

 

But Bissell, it seems, had no qualms when it came to crossing swords with local police and he proved it in the Franklin Township case.  Maybe it was the gambler in him, the same instinct that led him to risk thousands of dollars on a weekend in Atlantic City. It was, after all, the early 90's; a period of heightened racial tension in America and much of the nation was still reeling from the repulsing and riveting images captured in the videotaped beating of Rodney King by a small cadre of Los Angeles police officers. Perhaps Bissell was betting that he could raise his own profile if he could propel the Franklin Township case into the national spotlight the way the Rodney King case had been.

Or maybe he simply underestimated the opposition that would be mounted by the rank and file police officers who, in theory, served under him. Whatever his motivation, Bissell turned the prosecution of the two police officers into a kind of crusade. It was clearly a case that most prosecutors, at least those interested in professional survival, would have gladly "pawned off," on one of their assistants, Wronko noted. But Bissell chose instead to prosecute the case himself and that decision triggered a war with the Franklin Township Policeman's Benevolent Association that would last, literally, for the rest of Bissell's life.

In hindsight, most observers believe that Bissell somehow lost his sense of proportion when it came to that case. For him, the case became personal. When members of the local FOP showed up in court each day wearing their union jackets in a show of solidarity with the two accused officers, Bissell saw it as an ad hominem attack. The prosecutor considered it a personal defeat when the trial ended with one of the officers acquitted and the other convicted. When an appeals court overturned the one conviction he had managed to eke out, he took that as an even greater personal affront. It only made matters worse, in Bissell's estimation, when that same officer was ultimately acquitted after a second trial.

Was it revenge? Perhaps, but four months after the first trial, Bissell announced that his office was taking over the day-to-day operations of the Franklin Township police department. He justified the power grab, according to a report published in the Courier News at the time by accusing "Franklin detectives of retaliating against his prosecution in the beating case by producing shoddy police work."

To the cops, the move was naked aggression and part of a vendetta that Bissell had launched against them. It institutionalized the deep and abiding rift between the two sides, a chasm of loathing and mistrust which remained so strong that during Bissell's own trial, members of the FOP flooded the courtroom, again sporting their union jackets, and when Bissell skipped bail while awaiting sentencing, the union put up a $1,000 reward for his capture.

"There's clearly a history between us," union president Mike Gilhooly was quoted in the Courier News as saying at the time. "We want people to know that we want him caught as much as possible. Every day that he's loose is a slap in the face to law enforcement."

Thinking back on the Franklin Township case, Wronko says he is still baffled by Bissell's decision to wade into such an obviously perilous case. "It just struck me as bizarre that he would keep it. Why would the head law enforcement officer not dump it? I'm rather happy he didn't dump it on me, but I'm surprised that he kept it. And I was kind of surprised that it became so personal.

"It went personal both ways," Wronko says. "You know, I was a prosecutor for 10 years and I never took anything personally. I'm a defense lawyer now and it's not personal. It's a business. It's a profession." But Bissell, it seems, could not distinguish between the personal and the professional.

In some ways, Wronko believes, Bissell's peculiar inability to separate himself from his case may have presaged his ultimate fall.

"I think that was part of his downfall," he said. "He took everything so personally that when the time came, everybody was willing to find any little thing and big things, you know, whatever they could find against him."