Video: New Bergen County Sheriff Comes to Town

Bergen County sheriff Michael Saudino was a special guest at the United Republican Club of Fort Lee's meeting Tuesday at the VFW hall on Main St. in Fort Lee.

After running down Saudino’s extensive professional background, including 38 years in law enforcement, club president David Cohen said, “Obviously I share a lot with him—in my Republican philosophy.”

“In November 2010, we set out to elect responsible, accessible, hard-working people to do the right thing,” Cohen said by way of introduction. “That’s what makes us different.”

Cohen called Saudino “a regular guy; an affable guy.”

“He is approachable; I’ve approached him numerous times at [the Bergen County Republican Organization],” Cohen said. “He cares about us. He cares about our families, and he’s here tonight a little bit more than six months after he was elected. This is not a guy that comes every four years and shows up for a vote. This is a guy that we reached out to him, and he said, ‘yes.’”

The former Chief of Police in Emerson, Saudino talked about his first five months as Bergen County Sheriff. He said his campaign promise “was really simple.”

“I wasn’t going to be the politician the former sheriff was,” Saudino said, referring to Leo McGuire, whom he defeated in by a margin of nearly 10,000 votes when the Democratic incumbent was seeking a third term. “I wasn’t going to be at ribbon cutting ceremonies. I wasn’t going to be in places where just the cameras were and the media was. I was going to spend time in that office and make some significant changes. I believe I’ve done that already in as short as five months.”

Saudino also said his vow was to cut the budget without compromising public or officer safety.

“In other forms of government, you can make cuts and maybe programs you can do without,” he said. “But when it comes to public safety and officer safety, you cannot compromise, and I didn’t.”

Saudino said he was proud to be “the first sheriff ever to come in with a budget that was less than the prior year.”

“And that was without laying anybody off,” he said. “Every day I’m in there, I’m trying to make cuts wherever I can. I committed to that, and I will keep my promise to do that.”

He said every police department in the county is being pushed to do more with less.

Saudino also touched on some of the following--among other--topics:

• Gang activity in the county
• The county jail and alternative programs to imprisonment
• Shared services and mutual aid
• Duplication of services
• Saving taxpayers money
• Maintaining the same level of public safety while reigning in what he saw as “excessive” and “wasteful” spending on the part of his predecessor

(See video clips above)

Saudino said Fort Lee’s situation is unique when it comes to law enforcement, especially for drug-related crime, “because of the bridge.”

He opened his remarks by thanking members of the Fort Lee Republican group for their help in getting him and County Executive Kathleen Donovan elected in November and acknowledging the uphill battle Fort Lee Republican candidates for state and local office are likely to face. But he also said there is hope.

“I do recognize how difficult it is for Republicans in this town,” Saudino said. “You’re not going to change the political climate in this town overnight. But little by little I see this party chipping away, and that’s what it’s going to take. And there’s going to come a point, I believe, where there’s going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

A lengthy Q&A with the audience followed Saudino’s talk Tuesday evening.