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"I told (Sredinski) that would be in his best interest to take it down and the best interest for the town," Ball said.
Chief of Police Robert Coulton said, meanwhile, that he'll look into who used municipal computers to visit pornographic Web sites. He added, however, that pinning charges on anyone might be difficult because the computers were traded between departments and were used by many different workers.
The mayor and police found out Tuesday that Sredinski and LaRossaair had obtained the eight former police computers for $16 at a Ewing auction three years ago. Four of the hard drives contained information on them, including internal files dealing with murder and rape investigations, and evidence of the porn visits.
Over Memorial Day weekend, Sredinski and LaRossa began posting the information on the Web, averaging 50 to 100 hits a day, according to Sredinski.
By Tuesday night, they had already began to remove files from the site in compliance with the mayor's wishes. By yesterday morning, the story had gone national on The Associated Press wires.
Ball said that Sredinski also agreed to provide the mayor's office and police with copies of the hard drives.
The pair said that their mission was twofold. They wanted to inform people of the "sloppiness" of the Ewing police.
Both LaRossa and Sredinski also raised issues about the amount of overtime pay budgeted to the police department. They argued that if they had time to put out memos on such issues as football games and golf outings, their tax money was certainly being wasted in overtime.
Coulton, who was out on vacation when the story broke Tuesday, said that his officers are allowed to "do union business" while on the job.
"Those officers - what they are refering to - are doing union functions under the contractual agreement with the township and the officers," Coulton said.
As for the pornography found on the computers, both Coulton and Ball said that the issue is currently under investigation. "I would like to make sure it's there," Ball said. "If need be I would look at it for verification purposes anyway."
Coulton said that if they do find that pornography pages had been visited during work time, it may be hard to process legally. He added that his main concern at the moment was not the pornography.
Rather, Coulton said, he was more worried that "potentially sensitive information could be contained in these hard drives."
"There's potentially a lot of information in the wrong hands that could be damaging to individuals and the community at hand," he said.
The police chief also detailed the timeline under which these compters were sold. Coulton said that prior to four years ago, the police department had always purchased their computers directly.
At the time, the police department had no Internet specialist, only officers who were "a little better at computers then others."
Coulton to say that for fiscal reasons, the town began purchasing computers in bulk and and funneling them to different departments.
"There was a private contracter, vendor that was hired to set the new computers up for use, and then to decommission the computers for auction," he said.
"Apparently it wasn't the police department per say. It was the township in general that was facilitating this auction."
Ball said the police department will now remove the hard drives from all decomissioned computers and will now destroy them to prevent files from being recovered, as Sredinski and LaRossa were able to do.
On Wednesday, several local politicians expressed resentment toward the pair for what was posted on the internet - especially toward LaRossa.
"I think what Mr. LaRossa did was wrong," said Democratic Ewing Council person Bert Steinmann. "He's a public servant, he should know better."
LaRossa, who has been a prominent Republican figure in Ewing politics for years, maintained that his acquisition of these hard drives was a mere coincidence.
"I'm always looking for a good bargain," he said on Tuesday.
Sredinski said that he and LaRossa were also hoping for some publicity from the website. Along with police files, the partners posted contact information for people looking to retrieve lost data from computers, just like the pair did with the Ewing hard drives.
Yesterday, LaRossa and Sredinski were not available to respond to the shots taken at them.
While the Web site was gone by Wednesday morning, the work for the township and police has just begun.
Coulton said his main objectives are to ensure the safety of his officers, as well as maintaining the reputation of the police department.
The township must also contend with the fact that there may be more computers out there.
"I'd imagine that this is not only just police computers, but computers from other departments," Coulton said.
For whatever the coming days will bring, Ewing's mayor said he'd be working hard to "remedy a bad situation."
"Just when you thought things would get easier, they haven't gotten easier and I'm not complaining," Ball said, "Every day is a new challenge."
