An officer pulled them over around 1:30 a.m. Saturday for failure to signal what became an unsafe lane change on the northbound highway, Police Chief Dean Ackermann said.
Che Muller and Matthew Bourgholtzer were arrested after an open alcohol container, cocaine, suboxone and pot were found, Ackermann said. Traffic summonses also were issued, he said.
Both men have documented criminal histories.
Bourgholtzer began eating pot when his home was raided in April 2013, Mahwah police said at the time, adding that they also found heroin, hypodermic needles and other drug paraphernalia.
Fair Lawn police said they arrested him in August 2017 for having drugs in a vehicle that he left in the driveway of a Saddle River Road home while he walked to a nearby service station to get gas.
Mahwah police said an intoxicated Muller had three teenage girls in his car and outstanding warrants during an overnight DWI stop in the Fardale section of the township seven years ago.
He also was carrying heroin and crack when he was arrested in a drug crackdown in and just outside of Paterson during the summer of 2016, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office charged at the time.
A few months earlier, police in Oneonta, NY, said they stopped Muller for driving drunk.
A search of criminal records turns up a host of prior arrests from several municipalities, including Hackensack, Hillsdale and Ho-Ho-Kus.
Earlier this year, Wyckoff police arrested Muller on drug charges and found a trio of outstanding warrants – for drug possession, hindering and assault, among other offenses – from Fair Lawn, Ramsey, Ridgewood and Paterson, records show.
He was released from the Bergen County Jail the next day under New Jersey’s 2017 bail reform law.
This time, a Superior Court judge in Hackensack again ordered both Bourgholtzer and Muller released the same day that they were booked into the jail.
Click here to follow Daily Voice Highland Lakes-Vernon and receive free news updates.