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A standing room audience filled the Asbury Park City Council meeting room Wednesday.

While it was difficult to ascertain just how many supporters were in attendance for the City Council’s proclamation recognizing Rev. David Harrington’s 20 year pastoral anniversary within the city [shown below] with those turned out in support of Asbury Park Police Capt. Marshawn Love, the two events merged when Harrington spoke on behalf of the 21-year long department veteran.

Harrington, pastor of Good Hope Baptist Church on Washington Avenue, noted that his congregation has invested over $2 million in the community

“I’ve known Marshawn Love for about 11 years, I’ve been here 20,” he said. “I play ball with him. I laugh and talk with him…You will not make a mistake in seeking truth and justice, and doing the right thing.”

In using his a portion of his three minutes in the public comment portion of the meeting for prayer, Harrington [at right] said, “This city is rising whether some people don’t want it to or not. I pray that we all work together because there is really only one color and one creed – the betterment of us all.”

Love faces disciplinary action in relation to his conduct during the local police response to the June 16, 2015 shooting of his neighbor Tamara Wilson Seidle at the hands of her estranged husband, veteran off-duty Neptune Township Police Sgt. Philip Seidle.

Seidle, a mother of nine children, was shot 12 times following a car chase from their Neptune neighborhood across the border into Asbury Park. The couple’s youngest daughter, who was 7-years-old at the time of the incident, sat in the back of her father’s car during the chase, eventual shooting, and a stand off as her father threatened suicide.

And while the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office internal affairs investigation found no actions by law enforcement could have prevented Seidle’s death, it did reveal a lack of effective communication by the first officer at the scene, and that of a senior officer [who was third on the scene].

“That officer [Capt. Love] did not take command as he is charged to do,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni [above right] said in a June 29 interview.

Instead, Love left the scene on two separate occasions – once to escort the Seidle’s’ youngest child to headquarters, and once to transport the first officer at the scene back to headquarters, Gramiccioni had said.

“[His] decisions to leave the active crime scene on two occasions demonstrated poor leadership and judgment and violated several Asbury Park Police departmental policies,” Gramiccioni said. “This poor leadership, however, did not rise to the level of criminal conduct.”

On Sept. 30, a disciplinary hearing headed by City Manager Michael Capabianco [above right] was held in public at the request of Love, who faces a recommended two level demotion to sergeant.

Capabianco said Wednesday night that he has 20 days from the hearing’s date to make his decision.

Letters and comments from members of the community were entered into record but the first to speak [on behalf of her father] was Raven Love [at right], a fourth year Spelman College psychology student.

“When a child is subjected to grim events like the one involving Capt. Love, it can negatively affect them socially, mentally, and physically,” she said. “It can also affect them education wise. With that in mind, I would like to speak on the charges my father is facing for saving a little girl. It is sad to see such a man, with so much passion for the people in his community, have to go through what is called injustice. The New Jersey judicial system is failing our community as well as our hardworking officers who are properly serving Asbury Park, like my father.”

Love [shown below] spent the majority of the public portion of the meeting just outside the City Council Chambers, periodically entering and leaving the meeting room.

Raven Love said she considers her father a hero.

“I believe removing the little girl away from that dangerous environment was most important because she had already witnessed a lot and it was better for her safety, not knowing what her father could have done to her,” she said. “Dad wherever you are, your actions preserved a little girl as a little girl.”

In speaking to to the validity of the charges, former internal affairs supervisor Derrick Parreott [at right] said in a written statement, “This incident, ambiguous in investigative process, deviated from normal procedures of internal affairs activities in that the Asbury Park Police Department was excluded from all fact finding respective to Capt. Love’s charges.”

Also going on the record was Adrienne Sanders [below right], President of the Asbury Park/Neptune NAACP, who called the disciplinary action a violation of Love’s civil rights. Sanders noted that both times Love left the active shooter scene, he was ordered to do so.

“According to the policy/guidelines in dealing with an active shooter, the first officer on the scene is the lead/managing officer of the scene, not the senior officer,” she said. “The second time Capt. Love left the scene, he was again ordered to do so, but this time by his superior officer to remove APP Officer 1 from the scene…We as African Americans and minorities have the same right to due process as our Caucasian counterparts. When those rights are violated, it must be taken seriously.”

Both Sanders and Parreott called into question why the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office allowed Seidle to keep a department issued firearm after approximately seven reported domestic violence incidents were filed against him.

Gramiccioni has said that no guidelines were in place at the time to govern or track such incidents at the County level. He’s since put such measures in place.

In his response to the City Council recognition, Rev. Harrington said, “We have invested in this community and we are glad to share in dreams to help people’s lives be transformed.”

In speaking directly to the teenage members of the audience, many of them members of the school district’s basketball and football teams, he said, “Let me say this to you guys, I’ve been through it….I want you to know you can do it. You have an opportunity. Do the best you can in school, get help if you need it. It doesn’t matter what color you are or what kind of family you come from, you have the power to do it.”

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