BY JEFF GREEN
CLIFTON — Passaic County
Prosecutor Camelia Valdes on Thursday said she was instructing her staff to
determine whether she should intervene in a Clifton Police investigation of an
alleged handgun theft by a special police officer.
Clifton police charged Nayeska
Bermudez, 36, a special police officer working in Guttenberg, with theft of
firearms this month but initially withheld information about her arrest. Documents
released Thursday also showed the police charged her with a third-degree crime,
which is an indictable offense and punishable by up to five years in prison.
Bermudez was issued a summons to appear in Municipal Court. She was released
without bail.
Valdes said her office was not
involved in the case and had not been notified. "I'm not familiar with it
at all, because it's not here," she said, meaning a case file is not in
the prosecutor's office.
Valdes said that while she did
not know the details and didn't cite specific issues, she was concerned about
how the case was being handled. Valdes said she would instruct Paul DeGroot, an
assistant county prosecutor who handles public integrity cases, to contact
Clifton Police today.
Documents released on Thursday
showed that Bermudez, a Clifton resident, was accused of stealing two 9mm Glock
handguns from a Union City police officer who also lives in Clifton. The guns
were not recovered.
The Union City police officer
from whose home the weapons allegedly were taken declined to comment. Bermudez
could not be reached.
On May 15, The Record reported
that Detective Sgt. Robert Bracken confirmed there was an ongoing investigation
into a complaint police received about a theft of firearms in Clifton. He
declined to release details of the case, saying that criminal charges were
being considered. However, a booking sheet obtained last Friday through a
public records request showed that Bracken had arrested Bermudez and charged
her on May 8. Police are required to release certain information to the public
about arrests within 24 hours.
On Thursday, Bracken told The
Record that he did tell a reporter that charges had been filed during the May
14 interview, and that a summons had been issued, but that he was compelled to withhold
key details about the case because it was under investigation and because it
may have involved domestic violence.
"I don't hide
anything," Bracken said. "All I've done is withhold information
that's sensitive to an investigation. I never give any falsehoods or anything
else."
Bracken disputed that he was
the arresting officer, saying he didn't know how his name was listed as such on
the booking sheet. He said he was "involved in the investigation" but
that his detectives "worked the job."
Documents provided by City
Attorney Matthew Priore list Bracken as the lead investigator and complaining
party in the case.
Police Chief John Link was not
available for comment on whether the investigation was being properly handled.
The motive for the alleged gun theft
remains unknown. But it's apparent that Bermudez has had a close relationship
with the police officer from whom she is charged with stealing the guns.
"You look great, Hottie!!!" she wrote in a comment on a photo of the
man on Facebook. "I wonder who took such a nice pic. … Lol."
Michael Caliguiro, Guttenberg's
police director, said Thursday that an internal affairs investigation was under
way but he could not comment on whether Bermudez had been suspended. She became
a special police officer in January 2013 and remains employed, he said. Special
police officers are part-time officers, sometimes paid by the hour, who often
are assigned by departments to parking and traffic enforcement.
