COURT HOUSE – A former detective sergeant with the county Prosecutor’s Office agreed to sign a consent order for a lifetime ban on public employment, resolving a criminal prosecution in which he was charged with undertaking an unauthorized investigation of an accident involving his mother-in-law.
Robert P. Harkins Jr., the former detective, applied Friday, Sept. 27, for pretrial intervention — a diversion program that, if completed, would result in a dismissal of the charges — as part of a negotiated resolution with prosecutors.
Harkins, 52, acknowledged that he did not follow written policies maintained by the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office with regard to the opening of case files, requests for information from other agencies and the issuance of subpoenas.
Under questioning from his attorney, Harkins acknowledged he instead utilized past practice and completed an investigation and report outside the bounds of those policies, assigning his own case number and requesting information from other law enforcement agencies without following office protocols.
The state Attorney General’s Office had alleged that Harkins launched an unauthorized investigation in 2019 into a hit-and-run fender bender in which his mother-in-law was the victim. He was charged with second-degree official misconduct, third-degree tampering with records and fourth-degree falsifying records.
As part of the agreement memorialized during a hearing in Cape May County Superior Court, prosecutors agreed to drop the second-degree charge, allowing Harkins to apply for pretrial intervention on the third- and fourth-degree counts.
According to the complaint, Harkins made up a phony case number that he used in requests for non-public information from state law enforcement agencies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He also improperly issued a subpoena to the drugstore outside of which the hit-and-run occurred and then used the surveillance footage to identify a suspect. Subsequently, Harkins surveilled the suspect driver’s house at night.
Harkins admitted he didn’t document these activities on an internal system used by the Prosecutor’s Office, instead using outdated forms, allegedly to avoid detection from his superiors. Eventually he provided the Middle Township Police Department – which initially responded to the accident – with his findings. That department turned the report over to Harkins’ superiors, according to the state.
The case was expected to end up in front of a jury, but was taken off the trial list as a result of the resolution.
Harkins allocution did not include any acknowledgement of criminality, and he did not enter a guilty plea for any of the three counts originally filed.
His attorney, Louis M. Barbone, did not respond to an inquiry from the Herald. Representatives from the Attorney General’s Office also did not respond to a request for comment on the resolution.
Contact the reporter, Shay Roddy, at sroddy@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 142.
