State investigators are looking into whether a New Jersey cop stole kilos of illegal drugs from an evidence room at the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, The Post has learned.
Law enforcement sources said investigators believe the officer made off with a significant amount of narcotics that had been seized as evidence – possibly including cocaine.
The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office confirmed Thursday that it had launched a criminal investigation into the conduct of a sworn officer from the agency, but did not provide additional details.
The AG’s office did not release the officer’s name and has not charged the officer with a crime.
The state’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability and the Division of Criminal Justice – as well as the county’s Confidential Investigations Unit – are conducting the probe, an AG spokesperson said.
“No further information is available at this time,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The prosecutor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Led by Mark Musella, the office is the top law enforcement agency in Bergen County, a fairly wealthy region of just under a million people in the Garden State’s northeastern corner.
The office investigates major crimes and oversees each of the county’s 76 police departments.
It answers to the attorney general’s office, which is the top police agency in New Jersey.
Most recently, the prosecutor’s office came under fire for its questionable handling of the investigation into a fatal car crash involving the wife of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ).
Investigators reportedly filed an error-filled account of the accident, in which Nadine Arslanian Menendez struck and killed Richard Koop, 49, as he crossed a road in a small North Jersey suburb in December 2018.
BCPO investigators wrongly described elements of the crash, according to the New York Times, which in turn buttressed the conclusion that she was not at fault in the accident.
The scandal – and the couple’s indictment for allegedly conspiring to work as a foreign agent for Egypt, among other charges – has tanked Menendez’s approval ratings and led many to believe that the formerly Teflon-coated senator has reached the end of his political life.
Menendez and his wife have each pleaded not guilty.