A convicted sex offender from Newark was recently sentenced to prison time for impersonating a police officer during an alleged sexual encounter in Fairfield, New Jersey.
According to authorities, the 43-year-old suspect committed the offense at the La Quinta Inn & Suites, a Fairfield NJ hotel, in March 2013. The suspect had allegedly arranged a meeting with a woman at the woman’s hotel room.
When the suspect showed up at the hotel, he reportedly told the woman that he was a police officer. He then allegedly threatened to arrest the woman unless she had sex with him. The woman reportedly engaged in sexual activity with the suspect because she was afraid of being arrested.
Police investigated the incident and arrested the suspect in Garfield NJ the following day.
The suspect was subsequently charged with two counts of sexual assault and one count of impersonating a police officer.
The suspect reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to the charges of impersonation in May 2015. Now he has been formally sentenced to serve 18 months in New Jersey State Prison.
In exchange for the suspect’s guilty plea on the impersonation charges, Essex County prosecutors agreed to drop the sexual assault charges.
Since the suspect has already spent 504 days behind bars while awaiting resolution of the charges, he is expected to be released from police custody soon.
The suspect has a checkered criminal past. He is a registered sex offender on the NJ State Police’s sex offender registry. The suspect pleaded guilty in 2004 to charges of aggravated sexual assault stemming from an incident in Bergen County, New Jersey. The suspect received a 5-year prison term for that sex offense.
For further information about this case, see the NJ.com article entitled “Convicted Sex Offender Sentenced for Impersonating a Cop.”
