A Ridgefield Park police sergeant caught a suspect dumping more than 500 used tires before dawn near Overpeck Creek, producing a case that the state Attorney General’s Division of Criminal Justice is prosecuting, authorities said.
Sgt. Michael Cmielewski was on patrol around 4:20 a.m. Tuesday when he spotted a rental boxed truck backed into the corner of the parking lot at 55 Challenger Road, Capt. Daniel Hippe told the press.
Looking closer, he spotted the tires dumped onto the property and a bank of one of the creek’s tributaries, then chased after a man who dashed into the weeds, the captain said.
A trio of village officers formed a perimeter.
Soon after, Bergen County Sheriff’s K9 Officer David Ciliento and Bosco flushed the suspect from the marsh and Officers Brian Lyons and Joseph Avilla grabbed him, Hippe said.
Louis C. Reyes, 28, of the Bronx remained held on $25,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail today, charged with improper solid waste disposal, resisting/eluding, hindering apprehension and defiant trespassing.
The New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice’s Environmental Prosecutions Unit is investigating, along with Ridgefield Park detectives and Bergen County Health Services, Hippe said.
“It isn’t every day you see an officer grab someone in the act,” the captain said. “It was great work.”
The Ridgefield DPW cleared the site, he said.