Today’s downpours are bringing not only flooding but possible snowflakes to North Jersey.

“The cold front pushing this precipitation through is very strong and cold for this time of year,” Severe NJ Weather reports. “Non-accumulating snowflakes are possible at the tail-end of precipitation overnight.”

The rain is moving north-northeast with heavy squalls and some thunder.

There may be a slight break in the action, but that will be followed late this afternoon by the cold. So consider your budding plants.

It’s begun already, in fact: Some areas of NJ are reporting temperature drops of as much as 20 degrees.

Tonight, though, we’re looking at the high 20s and low 30s.

This after yesterday’s peak of 80 in some areas.

It is spring, after all.

“Nothing to worry about,” Severe NJ Weather says. “We’ll be cooler but sunny Wednesday-Friday — then back to spring temperatures for the weekend.”

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A self-employed consultant from Englewood Cliffs and her daughter scammed clients out of $300,000 – sending some of the victims’ properties into foreclosure – for services that they said included attorney’s fees, escrow funds and processing costs, authorities said this afternoon.

Instead, Anna Lee, 54, laundered the money through hers and her daughter’s personal accounts, then used it for herself, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.

She and her daughter, 25-year-old Jennifer Lee of downtown Manhattan, were being held on $75,000 bail each in the Bergen County Jail following their arrests yesterday. Both also had to surrender their passports.

Molinelli said the elder Lee (above, left) “represented several victims in loan modification agreements for their residence and/or rental properties.”

After taking their money, he said, she laundered through her business, Donche Consulting Corporation. Jennifer Lee (above, right) did the same through her personal bank accounts, Molinelli said.

Both are charged with money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Anna Lee also was charged with theft and misconduct by a corporate officer.

Molinelli said the investigation was conducted by his White Collar Crimes Squad in conjunction with the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, Office of Criminal Investigation.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Ramsey police arrested two Paterson men and seized three bricks of heroin and two bags of Molly after stopping their speeding car on Route 17 and spotting several cellphones and air fresheners inside, authorities said this afternoon.

Sgt. Vasili Pieratos and Sgt. Michael Parise were on patrol near the Kentucky Fried Chicken on the southbound highway when they stopped the silver 2012 Nissan just after 11 p.m., Police Chief Bryan Gurney said.

Besides the phones and fresheners, the sergeants noticed that both the driver, identified as 32-year-old Francisco A. Pena (above, left) and his passenger, James P. Lopez-Lora (above, right), also 32, “appeared to be extremely nervous,” Gurney said.

A search turned up the bags of MDMA crystals and the bricks of heroin, packaged in 150 glassine bags, the chief said.

Both men were being held on $100,000 bail each in the Bergen County Jail, charged with possession with intent to distribute both drugs.

Pena also received summonses for speeding, careless driving, possession of drugs in a motor vehicle, improper display of license plates and failing to wear a seat belt.

Both were given April 22 first appearance dates in Ramsey Municipal Court.

MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF

HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? Eight days after his car was abandoned in a park atop the Palisades, Fort Lee police are seeking the public’s help finding a 50-year-old married father of two.

Loved ones said they last saw Hans Jong Lee a week ago yesterday at 11 a.m., Fort Lee Police Chief Keith Bendul said this afternoon.

Nine hours later, Lee’s silver 2000 Honda CRV was found parked at the Rockefeller Lookout in Englewood Cliffs.

Bendul’s squad was joined by a host of other agencies in a search of the cliffs – among them, the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police, the Englewood Cliffs Fire Department, the New Jersey State Police Aviation Unit and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office K9 unit.

The New York City Police Department Harbor Unit even searched the Hudson near Ross Dock.

The Korean Lee – also known as Hyung Jong Lee – was described as 5-foot-7 and 175 pounds, with brown hair and eyes and a birthmark on his hand.

He was last seen wearing beige pants, a light blue t-shirt and a Navy blue Polo jacket, Bendul said.

If you’ve seen Lee, or know where to find him, Bendul asks that you call his department: (201) 592-3510 or (201) 592-3700.

OR: TIPS@FortLeePolice.org

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Authorities today detained a 16-year-old boy from Garfield who they said trafficked in online child pornography.

Delinquent complaints charging the boy with child endangerment were signed, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.

Molinelli said the teen “was using the Internet to acquire and transmit images and/or video files depicting child pornography.”

“In this case,” he said, “the child pornography consisted of numerous images and/or videos of pre-pubescent children engaged in sexual acts.

“The juvenile was released into the custody of his mother after being charged,” the prosecutor added.

Participating in his Computer Crimes Task Force, Molinelli said, were police officers from Bogota, Oradell and Waldwick.

ONLY ON CVP: A short time after reviving an 82-year-old woman who stopped breathing on a city street, Hackensack Police Officer Victor Vazquez arrested a wanted ex-con who’d been taunting him during a drug stop. But that wasn’t all.

Hackensack Police Director Michael Mordaga tried calling Vazquez in to congratulate him this afternoon.

But the officer apologized: He was helping subdue two men who led police on a chase that ended with a roadside brawl on Route 80 in Ridgefield Park.

Vazquez came to the city department in November from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office.

“Only five months and he’s doing a great job,” Mordaga told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Some citizens agree.

“While our paths may never cross again, know that I will never forget what I saw up close and personal this afternoon — Officer Victor Vazquez, a real hero in action, on Essex Street in Hackensack,” Rosanna Wright wrote in a letter yesterday to Mayor John P. Labrosse, Jr.

Wright said she was on NJ Transit Bus #712 headed towards Main Street around 12:30 yesterday afternoon when an elderly woman trying to board at Railroad Avenue “started started to sway a bit.”

The woman collapsed on the sidewalk and a group of good Samaritans immediately surrounded her.

One of them was Wright, who said she “kneeled down to try to help make her more comfortable until help came.”

“The poor woman began to vomit, wet her clothing, and then her eyes went blank,” she said.

As she frantically began looking around for help, Wright said, Vazquez arrived.

He radioed in, then laid the victim on the ground and began doing chest compressions, she said.

“He did about 7 or 8 compressions and this lovely woman suddenly started breathing!” Wright wrote in her letter, a copy of which was obtained by CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

“There you are. Good for you. You’re back!” Vazquez told the victim.

“I know there has been a lot of adverse talk and publicity about the Hackensack Police Department over the last several years,” Wright wrote, “but Officer Victor Vazquez is proof that this City is in good, caring hands … and hearts.”

He was only just beginning, though.

An hour and a half later, Vazquez stopped a car on Central Avenue. As he spoke to the driver, Mordaga said, two men nearby began taunting him.

When he was done, Vazquez and another officer approached them.

One of the men, it turned out, was 28-year-old Alec Parker, a city ex-con with a 10-year adult arrest history, Mordaga said.

A short time earlier, city detectives entered Parker’s name as wanted in connection with a 3 a.m. street robbery that morning on High Street.

Parker was already awaiting separate trials robbery and drug charges, records show, when police said he hit a 21-year-old man over the head and took his wallet.

Arrested by Vazquez, Parker was being held on $50,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail.

Mordaga said he returned to his office from a meeting earlier today to find Wright’s letter to the mayor. He said he immediately tried getting hold of Vazquez to congratulate him.

“I didn’t even know about the Parker arrest yet,” he said.

When he tried reaching him, Mordaga said, he discovered that Vazquez had rushed to Ridgefield Park to back up fellow officers following a high-speed chase that began on Vreeland Avenue in the city and ended on Route 80 in Ridgefield Park. Officers from several surrounding towns assisted, as well.

“Citizens were calling 911 from their cellphones in their cars to report two guys fighting with police on the side of the highway,” the director said.

The officers subdued the pair and recovered 250 bags of heroin, Mordaga said. They were being processed late this afternoon on charges of aggravated assault on police, resisting arrest, and possession with the intent to distribute heroin (CHECK BACK TOMORROW FOR DETAILS).

The director, meanwhile, was planning on shaking Vazquez’s hand — “soon as I can get him to stand still.”

PHOTO: Courtesy HACKENSACK PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Awaiting trial for having 65½ pounds of pot in his car during a Mahwah traffic stop, the son of reggae great Peter Tosh said he’ll celebrate “National Weed Day” this Sunday at a massive “smoke-in’ on the steps of the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton.

The “4/20 at Noon” march and rally in support of state Sen. Nicholas Scutari’s marijuana legalization bill was organized by Ed Forchion — also known as NJ Weedman. Forchion said it will culminate with the smoke-in beginning at 4:20 p.m.

Jawara McIntosh — also known as Tosh 1 — said he plans to attend “in an effort to teach the world, or at least New Jersey, the health benefits of marijuana.”

“There are just too many medical reports and medical professionals who believe in the medicinal benefits of marijuana to ignore the big government push to limit access,” McIntosh told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. ”The only ones who should fear it are the pharmaceutical companies whose medicines rarely work, or work with enormous side effects.”

Jawara G. Mcintosh, Carlotta Z. Leslie (MUGSHOTS: Mahwah PD)

McIntosh has been free since posting a $200,000 cash bond in December. Two months ago, a judge in Hackensack granted him a one-week furlough so he could perform at a concert in Kingston, Jamaica, as part of Reggae Month there.

McIntosh, 34, didn’t have a license — and had open bottles of booze on the front seat — when his rental car was stopped for recklessly cutting off other motorists on Route 17, Mahwah police said in June.

The officer who pulled over the 2013 Nissan Maxima said McIntosh appeared under the influence of some type of drug. He and his passenger also gave conflicting accounts of where they’d come from and where they were headed, the officer said.

The vehicle was searched, with McIntosh’s consent, after other officers arrived. Mahwah Police Chief James Batelli said they found two large pieces of luggage in the trunk that reeked of pot.

The officers then found two bundles of marijuana inside one and a third in the other, Batelli said. One was shrink-wrapped, he said, and the other two were wrapped in duct tape.

Mcintosh and his passenger, Carlotta Z. Leslie, 23, both of Dorchester, Mass., “denied any knowledge that the marijuana was in the vehicle,” the chief added.

Both were arrested on charges of marijuana possession with the intent to distribute the drug. McIntosh also was charged with two counts of driving under the influence of drugs, driving with a suspended license, improper passing and having an open container of alcohol in a vehicle.

During his six months behind bars, McIntosh led Bible study classes at the county jail, his attorney, Ron Bar-Nadav, told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

“He’s a man full of love,” Bar-Nadav said.

The “4/20″ counterculture holiday — in both the U.S. and Canada — stems from a group of San Rafael, California teenagers calling themselves the Waldos who began using the term in 1971 as a code for their meeting time while on a search for an abandoned cannabis crop they’d heard about.

They never found the herb, but the term took root. It soon became associated with pot smoking, in general, before sprouting into an annual national observance — publicized in large part by followers of the Grateful Dead.

Forchion said he’s hoping at least 500 attendees will fire up at the Statehouse following a walk from the Trenton train station beginning at 2 o’clock Sunday afternoon.

Trenton police have not commented.

RELATED:

In a bid to have him released in October, McIntosh’s lawyers showed a Superior Court judge in Hackensack a video that they said was proof of a “family bond” that would guarantee he doesn’t try to evade prosecution.

The video includes a brief interview with one of McIntosh’s young daughters, Selecta Jah Tosh, saying how involved he is in her and her sister’s lives. Also interviewed is his sister, Niame McIntosh, a Boston public school teacher who said her brother’s time spent behind bars so far “is really too long knowing that he’s really not a bad person.

Peter Tosh with Bob Marley, Mick Jagger

“He’s not a menace to society.”

Niame McIntosh refers in the video to their world-renowned father, who was killed during a 1987 home invasion in his native Jamaica, as “a musical ambassador for equal rights.”

Grammy winner Peter Tosh (Winston Hubert McIntosh) was a member of Bob Marley’s Wailers, arguably the most accomplished reggae band in musical history. Although an international recording star, Tosh didn’t achieve fame in the U.S. until his 1978 duet with Mick Jagger on the Temptations song “Don’t Look Back.”

He fought publicly against apartheid and for the legalization of marijuana for much of his career.

McIntosh who shares his father’s “Legalize It” advocacy and goes by the performing name “Tosh 1,” refers to himself in the video as the “last hope” for his father’s legacy.

“I’m going to make sure I live up to that,” he adds:

A group called Cannibas Patriots Unite (CPUnite.org) says McIntosh was arrested for “driving while dread[locked]” and called him the world’s “most important political prisoner.”

The California/Colorado non-profit group contends that McIntosh is accused of possessing an “herb” that in 20 states, including New Jersey, is considered to have medicinal value.

For those who follow the African-based spiritual ideology known as Rastafari, pot is a sacrament — “whether it be a stick or a ton,” the group adds.

“One crucial element of this mission is to make it very clear to the world that arrests for cannabis are politically motivated and are not based on science or legitimate social needs,” CPUnite said in a statement following the bail hearing.

“Under our mandate we hold (and science supports) that cannabis herb is a perfect medicine as it repairs, restores and supplements the mechanism by which our body heals itself: the endocannabinoid system,” it continued.

“Its ease of use, safety profile, and wide range of applications means that cannabis herb is an effective, safe medicine. It belongs into the hands of the people, for it provides treatment at fraction of the cost of currently sanctioned healthcare. In this, The Herb lives up to its reputation as The Healing of the Nation.”

UPDATE: All of the rooms were checked and no unaccounted for occupants were found after a hotel fire raged through a Route 46 motel in Elmwood Park.

The fire at the Red Carpet Inn quickly went to four alarms after beginning in the basement and shooting through the first floor around 1:30 p.m., emergency responders told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

PHOTO (and TOP): Damien Danis

Five people were rescued via ladders through windows on the second floor as smoke and flames rolled through the three-story motel. All five sustained minor injuries, Acting Elmwood Park Police Chief Michael Foligno said.

“The back side of the building is possibly compromised,” one emergency responder told CLIFFVIEW PILOT around 2 p.m. “Evacuation tones were dropped and it’s going to defensive operations.”

Eventually, firefighters were able to return inside.

Maywood, Rochelle Park, Fair Lawn, Saddle Brook and Clifton were among the companies that responded, he said.

Lodi, Paramus and Wallington remained on standby.

Route 46 was initially closed in both directions and then eastbound, causing huge backups.

PHOTOS: Damien Danis

Courtesy: DAVE L. CRAMER III

CVP SCOOP: An Elmwood Park fire captain had a blood alcohol content 2½ times the legal limit when he crashed a firetruck while returning from a call over the weekend, CLIFFVIEW PILOT has learned.

Russell Fenn IV, 37, was “visibly swaying” after the engine slammed into two utility poles on East 54th Street and Molnar Drive around 1:15 a.m. Sunday, Bergen County Police Department Capt. James Mullin told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

Another firefighter in the rig had to be taken to Hackensack University Medical Center with what appeared to be minor injuries, he said. The engine was taken out of service — leaving borough firefighters one short in battling a blaze at a Route 46 hotel this afternoon (SEE: Firefighters find rooms empty after hotel fire).

County police charged Fenn, of Elmwood Park, with assault by auto, DWI and reckless driving, the captain said. He was issued summonses and released to a responsible adult.

Elmwood Park police requested the BCPD investigation that led to Fenn’s arrest to avoid any potential or perceived conflict of interest, Mullin said.

Mullin said that the truck — the department’s only ladder — sustained $250,000 in damage.

Borough Administrator Keith Kazmark said Fenn was suspended pending the results of the BCPD investigation.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Jurors today convicted two Bergen County men on just about every count in connection with a pair of burglaries and a chase that involved officers and detectives from the prosecutor’s office, Englewood, Fort Lee, Hackensack and Teaneck.

Driver Hakeem Chance, 22, was convicted on all counts.

Dammen McDuffie, 39, was convicted on all but one count of destroying evidence and another of aggravated resisting arrest. He was nonetheless found guilty of resisting.

A judge ordered McDuffie returned to jail. He’d been free on a monitoring bracelet since February 2013. Chance remained jailed.

Sentencing was scheduled for June 27.

Prosecutors told jurors during the 11-day trial that Chance was driving his mother’s BMW during the July 2012 chase through Nutley and parts of Bloomfield and Little Falls before the car slammed into a brick wall in front of a hilltop house in Montclair.

The last couple of miles were “driven on steel” after the car hit a curb as Chance made a steep left, shredding the front tire on his side, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor David Calviello said.

According to Calviello, the area was illuminated, and Detective Johnathan Arcohas saw McDuffie “looking out the passenger side, directly at him.”

“What does McDuffie do?” Calviello continued. “He climbed over Chance through the air bags, out the driver’s side door. He didn’t surrender. He took flight and ran as fast as he could down the hill, through a yard, through a vast, dark meadow – into brush six to eight feet high.”

“Chance, having been stepped over, climbed out. He refused all commands and ‘beat feet’ the other way, through another thick, brushy meadow,” the assistant prosecutor said.

Chance, of Hackensack, was found and arrested nearby.

Arochas later identified McDuffie, of Englewood, through his driver’s license photo via the state motor vehicle database, Calviello said.

Defense attorney Vincent Basile, representing Chance, told jurors that the prosecutor’s case has a fundamental weakness because investigators didn’t recover any stolen property from either house.

“With all of this technology, why didn’t they find the stuff?” he asked. “They can show you block-by-block the route the car took. With all this technology, I suggest to you, they should have been able to find it.”

Frank Carbonetti, representing McDuffie, told jurors that his client “suffered a nightmare” since his arrest a few days after the burglaries and was in “shock and awe” at how police treated him.

“The cops confront you, treat you like an animal, and you’re just supposed to say ‘OK’?” Carbonetti asked.

No fingerprints or DNA belonging to McDuffie were found at either house, Carbonetti added. What’s more, he said, the GPS data pinpointing the location of Chance’s car says William Street and not Dubois Court, where he lives.

Carbonetti challenged the contention that an officer saw his client in the BMW before he purportedly jumped over Chance following the crash.

Both defendants were convicted of separate counts of burglary.

Chance was also convicted of a dozen criminal charges related to the chase — among them, include reckless driving, creating a risk of death or injury, eluding capture and attempting to injure no fewer than eight officers.

Chance has prior arrests for assault, theft and weapons, as well as pending burglary charges out of Teaneck.

McDuffie has been arrested in five separate New Jersey counties: Bergen, Essex, Morris, Middlesex and Somerset. Although several of those cases were downgraded, dismissed or not pursued, he pleaded guilty in four different theft cases and in one of showing false indentification.

PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Closter police said they seized 4½ pounds of marijuana, various pieces of drug paraphernalia and liquid THC from the home of a borough man.

Alexander Drazen, 43, was arrested after detectives searched his Piermont Road home following a three-month investigation, Police Chief Dennis Kaine told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

He was charged with marijuana possession and distribution and distribution of pot in a school zone, as well as possession of drug paraphernalia.

Kaine thanked the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office for its assistance.

MUGSHOT/IMAGE: Courtesy CLOSTER PD

TRIBUTE: Today’s annual memorial service for Fair Lawn Police Officer Mary Ann Collura will feature the hanging of a portrait of the slain officer (above) in the borough courtroom “as a lasting reminder of her selfless and inspirational service,” police said.

The Fair Lawn PBA and the Fair Lawn Police Department will hold the 11th anniversary service at 3 p.m. on the 2nd floor of the Fair Lawn Municipal Building, 8-01 Fair Lawn Avenue. 

The public is encouraged to attend.

Time has only strengthened memories of Collura, who was shot and killed on the grounds of the Van Riper Ellis Broadway Baptist Church on River Road after coming to the aid of a fellow officer trying to arrest a murderous ex-con a decade ago.

The 18-year veteran was Fair Lawn’s first female police officer and a shining light throughout the community.

Her badge number, 136, is a familiar sight around town and beyond.

Collura was respected, admired and loved. Her commendation file contained a letter citing her professionalism from a motorist she’d ticketed.

She has a street, a rifle range and a post office, among other locations, named after her.

A lifelong borough resident, Collura attended William Paterson College.

She was so dedicated to public service that she nearly joined the Army before volunteering with the borough’s police reserves.

Three years later, she was in uniform with the Fair Lawn Police Department.

“I wanted to be on the road, taking it as it comes,” Collura once said, explaining her reason for becoming an officer.

The words still haunt those who loved her, many who still visit her grave in George Washington Memorial Park.

A Clifton colleague was chasing a speeding ex-con on Route 46 when the pursuit headed into Fair Lawn.

Collura was on her way when the driver — a 23-year-old drug dealer from Passaic named Omar Marti — lost control of his car, which ended up on the lawn of the church.

Marti tried to run, but the Clifton officer tackled him and was trying to pepper-spray him when Collura arrived.

Marti, desperate not to go back to prison, pulled a gun and fired, hitting Collura twice.

He then shot the other officer, got behind the wheel of Collura’s cruiser and drove over her while speeding off.

She was only 43.

Investigators from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office traced Marti to a town just outside Tampa, Fla., where he was killed in a shootout with area sheriff’s officers.

FLPBA #67

Ridgewood police have charged a YMCA bookkeeper with embezzling $40,000.

Catherine Easer, 54, of Mahwah, was released on a summons charging her with theft last week.

Detective Jeffrey Casson prepared the charges following a two-month investigation that began when officials of the Ridgewood Y complained to police of “account dicrepancies and possible theft.”

ONLY ON CVP: A Chinese national was hustling bootleg DVDs — “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Anchorman 2,” and “Frozen,” among them — when he was arrested with nearly 600 pirated copies at a local bar, Fair Lawn police said.

Heping Lin, 50, was charging customers $5 per disc when police grabbed him at a Broadway tavern , Sgt. Brian Metzler told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

They seized the bootlegs and $517 in cash, he said.

Lin was being held on $15,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with possession with the intent to sell bootlegged video and possession of criminal proceeds.

ICE issued an immigration detainer on him, as well.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF

HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? Garfield police are seeking the public’s help finding a masked gunman who a woman said chased her through a bank parking lot.

The 30-year-old woman told police she was walking through the PNC Bank lot on Outwater Lane between 10:30-10:45 p.m. Monday when the man came running up behind wearing a “red, shiny plastic” mask and holding a small black handgun.

She said she turned and ran away and no contact was made, Detective Capt. Darren Sucorowski told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

The woman described him as about 5-foot-10, with a medium build and wearing dark clothing, including a sweater.

She said he came running from an area where, moments earlier, she saw a light-blue, four-door vehicle park.

It had two “colorful cartoon stickers” on the passenger side rear bumper.

Sucorowski asked that anyone with information that can help his detectives’ investigation call the department: (973) 478-8500.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Garfield man arrested on charges of breaking into storage units in Clifton nine months ago was arrested yesterday by city police and charged with the same crime.

Garfield Officer Dennis Serritella found a lock cut and put back into place after the burglary was called in from Safeguard Storage on Belmont Avenue, Detective Capt. Darren Sucorowski told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

Detectives Michael Latona and Thomas LaMantia found several of the stolen items in a unit nearby, leading them to 28-year-old Kurt Bilin, Sucorowski said.

“Additional stolen items were recovered from a vehicle and from Bilin’s residence,” the captain said.

The 5-foot-11-inch, 250-pound Bilin was being held on $60,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with burglary and theft.

Bilin was being held on Serritella arrested Bilin yesterday after

Records show Clifton police arrested him late last summer on charges of breaking into 26 self-storage units on Broad Street. He was leaving the Extra Space Storage facility when they grabbed him, they said.

They said they recovered some of the stolen items, including jewelry, compressors and electronics.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy GARFIELD PD

SHOUT OUT: Members of the Fair Lawn Rescue Squad are seeking help raising funds to buy flashlights for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“It turns out our troops are in the dark at night and need led flashlights,” Capt. Steven Milnes wrote. “Afghanistan has rough terrain and gravel that our troops have to walk across on base in the middle of the night.

The lights, which cost between $4-$8, “will be used to light up the ground while our brave soldiers walk to the bathroom or dining facility, for example,” Milnes said.

“We are asking our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers to help us help the troops,” he said.

CLICK HERE: Adopt-a-SoldierPlatoon

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Paramus police said they cracked a series of arrests from the lockers at a local health club with the arrest of a 20-year-old Belleville man.

Christopher Gallo was released on $50,000 bail on charges of burglary, criminal trespassing and credit card theft following an investigation by Detective Glen Pagano, Police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg said this afternoon.

Gallo went into the at least three lockers at 24-Hour Fitness on eastbound Route 4 the afternoon of Feb. 10 and took the victims car keys, Ehrenberg said.

He then went outside and entered each of their cars, taking credit cards, cash and GPS units, the chief said.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy PARAMUS PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Mahwah firefighters extricated a driver who was in critical condition after his car rolled near southbound Route 287′s split with Route 17 this afternoon.

Hackensack University Medical Center’s AirMed One landed at the Sheraton Mahwah Hotel off Route 17 and took him to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Paterson.

All lanes were soon opened.

PHOTO INSET: Courtesy ROI KLIPPER

CHECK BACK FOR MORE DETAILS

BEHIND THE STORY: A Cliffside Park man marked his 24th birthday this week by being indicted by a grand jury in Hackensack on charges of having sex with a 15-year-old runaway from Seattle and then lying to police about her whereabouts.

Borough police went to David Ruiz’s Palisade Avenue apartment on Nov. 6, 2012 after the teen’s worried mother called them, saying her daughter was there again after previous cross-country visits.

The first time, they couldn’t find her, then-Detective Capt. Michael Russo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time..

The second time, Ruiz sent officers “on a wild goose chase,” telling them he had a new girlfriend, the now-retired Russo said.

This time, however, the teen called police, and they rushed back to Ruiz’s apartment, he said.

After hearing her side of the story, they arrested him.

Ruiz spent 11 days in the Bergen County Jail before posting $150,000 bail. The indictment returned today charges him with sexual assault, unsworn falsification and child endangerment.

Paramus police arrested the 6-foot-1, 180-pound Ruiz in early 2012 after they said he fought with a man in the parking lot of the Garden State Plaza, rammed the other man’s car, then took off and later reported the car stolen after abandoning it near Route 17.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy CLIFFSIDE PARK PD