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The first involved an ex-con with a lengthy criminal history who charged at Hackensack police officers with a large knife on May 21 in what authorities said was an apparent suicide-by-cop.
The second involved a Lyndhurst man who authorities said was carrying a knife when he was shot and killed after assaulting two officers who followed him into the local library on May 29.
ALSO SEE: Body cameras, new procedures for use-of-force investigations coming to NJSP, local police
Kevin Allen, 36, had a criminal record that included an arrest for criminal sexual contact eight years ago and a previous drug conviction out of Passaic County.
He spent nearly two weeks in the Bergen County Jail on a disorderly persons conviction and failing to pay fines before fleeing a work release program in early April, records show. A judge then issued a contempt of court warrant for his arrest.
Lyndhurst officers spotted him walking into the library next to the police station on Valley Brook Avenue and followed him inside, Police Chief James O’Connor told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.
Molinelli’s detectives interviewed witnesses, including a child, and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Identification collected evidence.
Eight days earlier, 24-year-old Elvin Jesus Diaz was shot after charging Hackensack officers who’d gone to his parents’ Temple Avenue home on a probation check.
“This was a scenario in which he forced the officers’ hands,” City Police Director Michael Mordaga told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time. “It wasn’t a scenario where the officers had any kind of discretion.
“He outright charged at them.”
A records check by CLIFFVIEW PILOT turned up several incidents involving Diaz the past five years:
After family members reported him missing in late July 2010, he set fire to his car on Johnson Avenue and was rushed to the hospital after city firefighters pulled him out, Mordaga said. Police later charged him with arson.
Three months later, officers responded to his parents’ home because he was acting violently, the director said. They subdued Diaz and an ambulance took him to Bergen Regional Medical Center, he said.
In January 2012, family members again reported him missing.
Diaz was arrested on drug charges in May 2013 and again a month later on a drug-related warrant, criminal records show. He pleaded guilty and received probation.
Diaz was suspected in a burglary when officers approached him in December 2014 and he turned on them, sending one to the hospital, Mordaga said. He was charged with assault on police, resisting arrest and obstruction, then posted $15,000 bail and was released three days later from the Bergen County Jail.
Two weeks after that, Diaz was issued a disorderly person’s summons for an unspecified incident, the director said.
A family friend told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that he’d moved back to Hackensack after a brief stay in Florida last year and was living with his Dominican-born mother in the home at 10 Temple Avenue that his parents, Julian and Cecilia, bought near the corner of Main Street 15½ years ago.
Diaz had been diagnosed depressive and complained to friends that he’d had trouble finding work because of people’s reactions to his neck and facial tattoos, several of which he’d recently gotten.
Under Hoffman’s new guidelines, prosecutors must present police-involved shootings to a grand jury for independent review “unless the undisputed facts indicate that the use of force was justified under the law.”
If a prosecutor doesn’t go to grand jury, the state Division of Criminal Justice must approve the decision after “substantive review.”
“The decision to present these matters to the [g]rand [j]ury is made in accordance with the New Jersey Attorney General Directive 2006–5, as modified on July 28, 2015,” Molinelli said today
“The public should be aware that, in accordance with state law and court rule, all proceedings concerning the [g]rand [j]ury are to remain absolutely confidential and no information can be released regarding either of these cases while such matters remain pending,” the prosecutor added.
“For this reason, no details of either incident or any part of the investigation which has been completed will be released to the public under any circumstances,” he said.
Molinelli said his office hadn’t yet complete an investigation into the June 11 fatal Hackensack police shooting of Raymond Peralta-Lantigua.
“At this time our office is not in a position to make a determination of whether or not to present the case to the [g]rand [j]ury and will make that determination in the near future,” the prosecutor said this morning.
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