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Officers were originally called to do a welfare check on a woman at a River Road home, Detective Lt. Kevin Van Saders said.
The woman answered the door -- not telling police that she was the one who made the call -- then directed them to the basement.
There they found her brother, 48-year-old Victor A. Collado, and “detected an odor of raw marijuana,” Van Saders said.
On a table in plain view was pot, the lieutenant said.
Collado admitted growing the weed, then showed the officers “a climate-controlled room that was set up for marijuana growing,” he said.
After taking him into custody, police secured the residence, got a judge’s approval on a search warrant and summoned a K-9 unit from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department.
Van Saders said they seized:
- 46 marijuana plants of different sizes;
- various packaged bags of pot;
- candies made with marijuana wax;
- liquid THC;
- some “cocaine, steroids, and materials used to grow and distribute marijuana.”
Collado was charged with maintaining a drug manufacturing facility, along with various other drug-related offenses, and sent to the Bergen County Jail.
A judge ordered him released hours later, under New Jersey’s 2017 bail reform law.
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