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Terrance McCarroll (MUGSHOT courtesy Hackensack PD)
A judge boosted Terrance McCarroll’s bail to $120,000 after Hackensack police filed the more serious charge.
McCarroll, 29, thought he was taking the rap for pot found in his apartment when he voluntarily went to Hackensack police headquarters for booking.
What he didn’t know was that police began their hunt for him after a woman sent a desperate message through Facebook to her brother that McCarroll had her in debt bondage and was forcing her into turning tricks to repay him.
It all began at the Ocean County Jail, where the South Jersey woman was being held on charges of stealing her mother’s car after an argument.
“I got somebody who can get you out,” another woman there told her, citing her ex-boyfriend, McCarroll. “But you got to work it off.”
The woman agreed, and, soon after, McCarroll showed up and posted her bail.
Then it was time to work.
“She claimed that she’d never done this kind of thing before,” a law enforcement officer with direct knowledge of the case told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. But she told police she had no choice, he said.
“She admitted having several ‘dates’,” the officer said. “He would drop her off at these appointments, then he’d take the money, smack her around, threaten to kill her.
“It seemed he kept his eyes on her all the time.”
Most traffickers break their victims’ resistance by such behavior. But the woman told police she couldn’t take the treatment anymore. The only trouble was that her phone service was disconnected, and she didn’t have any way of getting back home.
While out on a call, the woman found a wi-fi hot spot. There she posted a message to her brother on Facebook, Hackensack Police Lt. Jaime Barrios told CLIFFVIEW PILOT earlier today.
Officers Nicholas Ortiz, Pedro Dominguez, along with Sgt. Darren DeWitt and Officer Dana Herrmann, went to the address the woman gave for McCarroll, he said.
Inside, Barrios said, they found a woman and some pot. So they took her in.
Narcotics Detective Jason Klosk then called McCarroll, who willingly came to police headquarters, claiming the drugs were his and not his girlfriend’s, and that she shouldn’t be charged, a source with direct knowledge of the incident told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
So Klosk charged him with drug possession.
McCarroll “thought that’s why he was coming in,” the source said. But police were hardly through with him.
Based in part on the Facebook woman’s statements, Detective Ryan Weber charged McCarroll with criminal restraint and promoting prostitution. A local judge ordered him held on $20,000 bail at the Bergen County Jail.
At that point, city investigators began digging further. What particularly interested them was that the Facebook woman claimed not to be the only one in McCarroll’s stable.
Human trafficking and involuntary servitude aren’t restricted to immigrants smuggled across international borders, law enforcement authorities say.
Anyone who is taken from once place to the other — even within the same state — and then recruited, harbored or provided for acts of sex for money has been illegally trafficked, especially if force, fraud or coercion is involved.
Although it previously had been only a federal offense, New Jersey six years ago criminalized human trafficking. Officials also put provisions in place for victims to have food, clothing, shelter and medical care not only to ensure cooperation but, more importantly, to meet their basic needs at a time when they are most vulnerable.
After consulting with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office this afternoon — while holding onto McCarroll — Hackensack police filed the more serious charge.
The case will now be referred out of city jurisdiction to attorneys in the prosecutor’s office, who will present it to a county grand jury in Hackensack in pursuit of a state indictment.
If the case goes to trial, or McCarroll pleads out, a judge likely won’t be inclined toward leniency: McCarroll, a Hackensack native who lived for a time in Elmwood Park, has been booked no fewer than eight times in Bergen County the past decade.
He’s been convicted, and spent two years on probation, for making violent threats. He was also arrested in connection with drug crimes and for driving while on the revoked list.
Bergen County authorities also have picked up McCarroll several times for failing to pay child support and court fines.
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