Even serving papers can turn into ‘life-and-death’ for officers, sheriff says

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Two incidents this month have underscored the point that it isn’t only those sheriff’s officers who work in the jails who risk harmful or potentially explosive situations, Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino told CLIFFVIEW PILOT, citing an incident in which an officer serving process papers at a Hackensack boarding house had to pull his gun on a man who came at him with a large knife.

Photo Credit: *Courtesy Bergen County Sheriff CLIFFVIEPILOT.COM PHOTO*

Jerry DeMarco

06/27/2011 9:29 p.m.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy Bergen County Sheriff CLIFFVIEPILOT.COM PHOTO

Officer Leonardo Arellano forced 52-year-old Conrad Anderson to drop the knife, then arrested him on aggravated assault and weapons charges, Saudino said.

This follows the arrest of a Wallington man by a SWAT team was called after he barricaded himself inside his foreclosed house and threatened suicide with a knife when sheriff’s officers showed up to evict him.

Friday’s incident “highlights the dangers that officers encounter every day they are out on the road,” Saudino said. “Even a seemingly mundane task like serving civil process can become a life-and-death situation.

“I am proud of the way Officer Arellano handled himself.”

Units were called to the Euclid Avenue boarding house after Anderson approached the officer with the knife behind his back, the sheriff said.

Anderson — who wasn’t even the one being served — is being held in the Bergen County Jail, held on $25,000 bail.

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