A high-ranking city employee revealed today that embattled Police Director Joe Santiago is strongly considering bringing a lawsuit as a means of seeking compensation for violations of conceptual and intellectual property rights. According to sources, Santiago is planning to sue Paramount pictures and their parent company Viacom, for producing a movie based on ideas and concepts formulated by Santiago.
“Director Santiago was the originator of this concept and therefore expects to be fully compensated,” said one police official.
Paramount contends that the concept for Team America: World Police was formulated without any prior knowledge of Santiago’s manipulative management style and has vowed to vigorously defend their creative rights.
In a strange turn of events several members of the Trenton Police Department, who are usually staunch critics of Santiago, supported the director in his claim.
“Paramount may have a tough time winning this suit,” said one union official. “Santiago has clearly demonstrated his propensity for encouraging underlings to abandon independent thought and reason. He has done this through the years. It would be absurd to think that those officers who kowtow to his every whim are not puppets.”
“Santiago has his little puppet horde, just as Mayor Palmer has City Council,” added another officer. “The problem is, the residents suffer while they are busy pulling the strings of theirs serfs. Bottom line, in my opinion Paramount will pay in the end.”
Supporters of Director Santiago say that even the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had Santiago and the city police in mind when they assigned the movie’s rating.
“That rating describes this place (police headquarters) to a T,” said one officer.

Ask any officer about Director Santiago’s biggest pet peeve and chances are that you will hear about how Santiago mandates that he always be made aware of serious and/or politically sensitive issues. Such a policy is likely in place in most police departments, regardless of size. However, Director Santiago has been accused in the past of over reacting to some instances where subordinates didn’t advise him of certain incidents. In his own heavy-handed way, Santiago has made it abundantly clear that he wants, no demands, to be notified on issues of importance.
Evidently such a policy doesn’t exist in Mayor Palmer’s cabinet. According to three reliable sources in the police department, copies of the referendum petition seeking to halt Santiago’s plans to layoff the deputy chiefs were seen in the Police Director’s complex days before media reports surfaced. One of the sources first heard a discussion about the petition in the Director’s complex on Tuesday, September 14, which was three days before Santiago left for his romp in Disney World. During the September 14th discussion a copy of the petition was allegedly being passed around. The other sources heard discussions about the petition in the Director’s complex on the following day and during one of those discussions a copy of the petition was also seen being passed around. Based on Santiago’s reputation for demanding to always know what is going on around him, it is unlikely that that he was not aware of the petition. It is just as unlikely that Deputy Director Hemsey was not told of the petition.
The question that persists is why didn’t Santiago, or Hemsey, give a copy of the petition to Mayor Palmer and council?
By not having copies of the petition, Trenton’s elected officials were forced to rely on innuendo and rumor (with a heavy dose of exaggeration) when commenting publicly about the petition.
There are some who believe that, in an attempt to stave off the petition drive, the mayor and council chose to make the uninformed comments as a means of purposely misleading the public.
Although the latter opinion is quite plausible, it is more likely that Santiago’s arrogance of being “untouchable” led to the omission of advising the Mayor and City Council about the petition.
Of course there is a third possibility. Perhaps Santiago had no clue about the petition being circulated for over a week in neighborhoods around the city. Perhaps his network of cronies in the police department failed to learn about the petition drive. This wouldn’t be the first time Santiago was found to be out of touch with the department and the public.