The last of seven former New Jersey police officers charged with corruption in an expansive FBI investigation pleaded guilty Tuesday.
Then-Paterson police officer Daniel Pent fessed up to conspiring to violate individuals of their civil rights, using unreasonable and excessive force, and filing a false police report, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito.
Pent and other officers also routinely delivered a “running tax” to suspects who ran from them, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.
“If an individual ran from them, Pent and others would ‘tax’ the individual by striking the individual multiple times, causing bodily injury,” the federal office said.
Pent is also one of several former officers including Eudy Ramos, Jonathan Bustios, Matthew Torres and Frank Toledo who stopped and searched vehicles without justification and stole cash from the occupants, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in the news release.
Pent and Ramos stole approximately $10,000 from the passenger in a vehicle they stopped Feb. 1, 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.
Two other former Paterson officers, Ruben McAusland and Roger Then, are already serving federal sentences after pleading guilty this year to charges including beating a suicidal patient in a hospital emergency room bed and, in McAusland’s case, selling drugs from his police car.
Pent confessed before Judge Katharine Hayden at the Newark federal courthouse.
Paterson Police Chief Troy Oswald, who has been credited with cleaning up the police department, thanked the FBI for its work, according to the Paterson Times.
“I hope this closes the chapter on police corruption in Paterson,” Oswald said Tuesday.
