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Police Impersonator Flashes Badge At Route 80 Crash, Flattens Trooper's Tires At Hospital: Njsp

Here's a strange one: A Wallington man was jailed after New Jersey State Police said he showed up at the scene of a traffic accident on Route 80, flashed a badge and pretended to be a police officer. 

Kenneth Delgado

Kenneth Delgado

Photo Credit: NJSP (background) / BCJ (mugshot)

And that's not all.

Kenneth David Delgado, 53, was later caught puncturing the tires on both a State Police SUV and county prosecutor’s vehicle outside the emergency room at Hackensack University Medical Center, authorities said.

Records show Delgado had briefly worked as a special police officer in Wallington, which did away with “specials” nearly five years ago. He never was an actual police officer.

He said he was, however, when he arrived at the scene of a crash on Route 80 in Teaneck involving an apparent relative shortly before 11:30 p.m. Jan. 1, according to State Police.

Delgado – who reportedly displayed a badge and work identification card -- was even wearing a body camera, an NJSP report says.

He later turned up at Hackensack University Medical Center, where the female family member had been taken, the report states.

Troopers were continuing to investigate when the one who produced the accident report left the hospital to find two deflated tires with puncture wounds on his Interceptor parked just outside.

An investigator from the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office who apparently was at the hospital for another matter had the same thing happen to an unmarked Chevy Tahoe, the NJSP reported.

Recorded evidence quickly pointed toward Delgado, they said. 

He’d reportedly gone to the hospital, valeted his car and got a COVID mask in the emergency room before heading straight for the vehicles. Then he left.

An attorney arranged for Delgado’s surrender on Thursday, Jan. 4. The NJSP charged him with impersonating a law enforcement officer, interfering with an investigation, obstruction, criminal mischief and weapons offenses, among other third- and fourth-degree counts. Then they sent him to the Bergen County Jail.

A Central Judicial Processing Court judge in Hackensack released Delgado on Thursday, with conditions, pending further court action.

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