Englewood Police Chief Michael Coiffi has been relieved of duty after he appeared to be heard on tape threatening to kill the town’s council president.

Mayor Mario Kranjac ordered police officers to go to Coiffi’s home to collect the chief’s badge and gun. He was placed on leave after the tape was played at a council meeting.

Coiffi is heard on the tape saying, “I’d like to kill her, but I can’t do that,” in reference to former Council President Carol McMorrow.

McMorrow, a Republican, resigned as council president Monday after her Democratic colleagues didn’t vote to discipline Coiffi.

“For a law enforcement officer, and the highest ranking law enforcement officer, that's in uniform, carrying a gun, to be able to say that and think it’s OK is horrible,” McMorrow says.

Kranjac says that the chief is not above the law.

“I have to deal with these things as I see them,” he says.

But the chief’s attorney, James Patuto, says that the comments were said in jest and argues that the mayor can’t put the chief on leave on his own.

“Obviously they have a functioning police department, what they don't have is a functioning executive who's functioning within the law, which we believe is the mayor,” Patuto says.

Coiffi made the recordings himself over the last two years to use in an ongoing lawsuit against the mayor. There are more than 100 recordings spanning over 20 hours of conversations. Kranjac says there are more sexist and racist remarks from the chief and at least three officers captured on recordings that are not yet public.

“There's the anti-Asian sentiment that he propounded within the Borough Hall, within the police department, there's other sexual explicit language discussions that he's had with other Borough Hall employees about other elected officials,” the mayor says.

The Englewood Cliffs Council will meet Thursday morning for another vote on an independent hearing officer to investigate the police department.