Robert Coccodrilli (
)
The Port Authority’s top cop blatantly flouted the rules to promote his two personal chauffeurs to the rank of sergeant – letting them leapfrog over dozens of more qualified officers, angry critics told The Post.
The unprecedented move by Michael Fedorko (pictured), the PA’s superintendent of police and director of public safety, arbitrarily rewarded the two cops who drive him — Robert J. Coccodrilli, 44, and Georgeos Masouridis, 35 — with the more prestigious and lucrative supervisory position rather than forcing them to undergo the far more rigorous process required for advancement, sources said.
“You set up ground rules … and you play the game by those ground rules. And the agency is absolutely ignoring these ground rules,” one source fumed.
“It’s outrageous — absolutely outrageous!”
The derided promotions boost the drivers’ base annual salaries from $90,000 to $95,920.76.
The men’s new base salaries will then soar by more than $10,000 — to $107,910.66 — after just four years.
With overtime last year, Coccodrilli (inset) of Staten Island earned $115,248 and Masouridis of Queens raked in $122,055 — meaning they will likely also net thousands more as they’re paid overtime at a sergeant’s rate.
The chauffeurs were promoted from among hundreds of officers vying for sergeant’s rank.
But while the pair passed the required written exam, they were not among 60 cops who were then randomly selected for the final group up for consideration, from which, ultimately, only 16 would be chosen for promotion partly based on their superiors’ recommendations.
Thanks to whom the chauffeurs knew, it didn’t matter. They were given two of the sergeant slots anyway, sources said.
Fedorko’s decision to short-circuit the process left some of those denied promotions “livid,” a source added.
It also even angered the PA’s chief financial officer, Ernesto Butcher, who has demanded that Fedorko explain his actions.
Fedorko, 66 — the crew-cut-sporting former Marine and Vietnam War vet appointed to his $215,098-a-year post in July 2009 — has characterized his decision to bump his drivers as “field promotions.”
But cops say the term doesn’t exist in the PAPD lexicon and is rather ironic, since neither Coccodrilli nor Masouridis have extensive field experience within the department.
“The two of them are basically ‘headquarters guys’ who haven’t served in too many different commands,” explained one source.
Each is a nine-year PAPD veteran who began his law-enforcement career as an NYPD cop before switching over to the PAPD in 2002, a source said.
Some cops consider the move a slap in the face to the regular rank-and-file who have to abide by the system, particularly since both continue to perform the exact same duties as sergeants — driving around their boss — that they performed as officers.
In response to the promotions, an irate Port Authority Police Benevolent Association has filed “improper practices” charges against the bi-state agency, saying that it violated the union’s collective-bargaining agreement governing how sergeants are appointed.
The PAPBA declined comment. A Port Authority spokesman also refused to discuss the matter.