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An officer tried stopping the Audi A5, reported stolen out of Livingston, on the northbound parkway in Alpine early Monday afternoon, Sgt. First Class Raymond Walter said.
The same vehicle had been chased by police in Madison before dawn that same day, he noted.
The parkway driver hit the gas before quickly exiting onto Henry Hudson Drive and heading down the hill into the Alpine Marina parking lot, Walter said.
With no way out, both occupants ditched the Audi and ran into the woods along the cliffs, he said.
Parkway police converged on the area and set up a secure perimeter with help from Bergen County sheriff’s officers, a Bergen County Regional SWAT team and police from Alpine and Englewood Cliffs.
About two hours later, police spotted a Lincoln with Pennsylvania license plates and its hazard lights on going up and down Henry Hudson Drive at barely five miles an hour, Walter said.
Officers stopped the vehicle and were “overcome by the strong odor of burnt marijuana from inside,” the sergeant said.
The driver, Jaquan Miller-Hanson, 23, and passenger, Maurice Rogers, 22, both of Newark “were extremely nervous and had no explanation of why they were there,” Walter said.
At one point, Miller-Hanson said he’d come from Newark and was headed to a gas station in Alpine that was in his GPS because his car needed fuel, the sergeant said.
A check of the gas gauge exposed that lie, and police arrested both men, he said.
A short time later, an Uber showed up in the same area. It “was traveling slow and kept stopping,” Walter said.
As parkway officers in unmarked vehicles watched, the pair who fled earlier emerged from the woods and got into the vehicle, he said.
Officers moved in and arrested Sharrod Rogers (Maurice Rogers’s brother) and Isaiah Davis, both 18.
The Rogers brothers’ mom, Felicia Best of Newark, came to PIP police headquarters a short time later and “attempted to lie to officers about the identity of her son,” who’d been driving the stolen Audi, “by giving a false name to police.”
The officers, in turn, arrested Best, charged her with hindering apprehension and obstruction and released her pending a court hearing.
Sharrod Rogers was charged with resisting arrest. Both he and Maurice Rogers were charged with obstruction, hindering and receiving stolen property.
Police sent both to the Bergen County Jail only to have a judge order them released a short time later under New Jersey's bail reform law.
Isaiah Davis was charged with receiving stolen property, eluding police, and obstruction. He and Miller-Hanson, like Best, were released with court dates.
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