Denied his own run for mayor of Paterson this year, jailed and released Jose “Joey” Torres at the Brownstone tonight formally announced his support for Alex Mendez for mayor, making a hard case for public safety.

“Three-hundred cops on day one,” said Torres, who  served as Silk City’s mayor from 2002 to 2010. He came back and won the seat again in 2014, defeating the man who beat him, Jeff Jones, only to run afoul of the law.

Earlier this year, envisioning another crack at mayor, he unsuccessfully tried to submit petitions to run citywide in Paterson.

But the City Clerk’s Office refused to accept Torres’ petitions.

“Subsequent to your picking up petitions for the 2022 Mayoral Election, the Office of the Corporation Counsel provided me formal confirmation that there is a criminal bar not only against your returning to public office, but also against your submitting election petitions, and against my office accepting them,” a letter from city clerk Sonia Gordon to Torres dated December 28, 2021 read to the former mayor. “Accordingly, I must respectfully notify you that my office will not be able to accept petitions in support of your candidacy.”

So he’s backing Mendez, a candidate permitted to run, but immersed in his own thorny legal situation.

Denouncing a state mail fraud case against him as “politically motivated,” Paterson Councilman Mendez late last year submitted petitions to run for mayor in 2022.

His campaign released the following statement:

“Today, December 27, we are depositing the necessary petitions to certify our candidacy as Mayor of our City of Paterson for the elections of May 10, 2022. I am the first candidate to present  petitions and that is thanks to the support of the community. It’s time to bring safety to our streets, clean up our City, stabilize taxes, and provide the services our residents deserve.”

Defeated in 2018, by sitting Mayor Andre Sayegh, Mendez subsequently absorbed an indictment by a state grand jury on charges of election fraud and other offenses related to the May 12, 2020 special election in the City of Paterson. His case is now pending as he prepares a second run for mayor as a Sayegh rival.

From NorthJersey.com:

“An indictment last February charged Mendez with seven crimes — election fraud, fraud in casting a mail-in vote, unauthorized possession of ballots, tampering with public records, falsifying or tampering with records, false registration and attempted false registration.”

There’s more.

Defeated by Sayegh in the 2018 mayoral election, Mendez is running again and accused the mayor of trying to “take me out” of the race, sabotaging his campaign and challenging the validity of his petitions. In his response to Mayor Sayegh’s attempts to dismiss his petitions, went so far as to call him “Vladimir Putin,” using taxpayer dollars to direct City resources to, in his view, obstruct his campaign.

As bombs rain down on Ukraine by the Russian president’s orders, the death toll rises daily.  Millions of refugees have fled their homes in Ukraine.  Mendez’s remark, Sayegh said, showed a lack of perspective on the councilman’s part. “He is the one who is criminally charged, and he calls me Putin?” Sayegh told Insider NJ.  “He is reckless, that’s what has gotten him into the position he is in.  His petitions are being challenged, his ballots were being challenged as well.  It’s just a pattern of criminality.”