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The first arrest was made on Saturday, Dec. 21, when members of the team identified 51-year-old Randolph R. Smith of Far Rockaway, NY, who was wanted in connection with an armed robbery that occurred in New York City, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said. Smith was spotted in the Ramsey area, and when confronted by the Crime Suppression Team, he provided a false name to investigators, Musella said.
He was subsequently taken into custody without incident and charged with third-degree possession of a false government document and hindering apprehension, a disorderly person’s offense. Smith was lodged in the Bergen County Jail pending extradition back to the state of New York.
Then, on Thursday, Dec. 26, the Saddle River Police Department launched an investigation into an attempted sexual assault. The county's newly formed crime suppression unit was called in to help track him down. The suspect was identified as 37-year-old Carlos J. Castro Gonzales, of Suffern, NY, according to Jeff Angermeyer, the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office's Deputy Chief of Detectives.
Castro Gonzales was taken into custody in Mahwah, on Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024, following a two-day search by members of the multi-jurisdictional task force. He was charged wth second-degree attempted sexual assault, third-degree criminal restraint, fourth-degree criminal sexual contact, simple assault, and lewdness, and lodged in the Bergen County Jail.
About The Bergen County Crime Suppression Team
The Bergen County Crime Suppression Team was deployed for the first time during the holiday season.
Musella's office described it as "a purposeful deployment of additional law enforcement officers to strategic sections of Bergen County on a rolling basis throughout the month of December." Think residential neighborhoods, shopping districts, and high-traffic areas across the county.
The idea? "To deter, disrupt, and detect criminal activity by focusing on the times of day when crimes of opportunity were likely to occur," the prosecutor added.
Upwards of 70 officers and detectives of various ranks from 21 agencies across Bergen County, along with prosecutor’s office detectives and special agents from Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), all participated in the effort.
The team conducted numerous investigations during its December operations, including the arrest of multiple fugitives wanted for unrelated crimes, such as Smith and Castro Gonzales.
During ten deployments that were scheduled on both weekdays and weekends in the month of December between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., the Crime Suppression Team’s plainclothes task force officers visited more than 25 municipal shopping districts and countless residential neighborhoods.
The special task force spent a portion of each shift focusing on local shopping districts, including for example, the business areas of Cliffside Park, Closter, Edgewater, Emerson, Fort Lee, Glen Rock, Hillsdale, Mahwah, Maywood, Montvale, Ramsey, and Ridgewood, to name just a few, Musella said.
The Bergen County Rapid Deployment Team, a separate strategic force of uniformed Prosecutor’s Office detectives and uniformed municipal law enforcement officers, was also proactively deployed at the major malls of Bergen County during the holiday season, which is an annual initiative apart from the newly formed Crime Suppression Team.
"As we set out to surge areas where crimes of opportunity could occur, this latest collaborative effort has demonstrated the power of working together to protect our residents and visitors, and the value of intelligence-led, data-driven policing," Musella said. "More than that, this special detail provided a sense of security by having officers be visible in our communities and by using a full complement of both plainclothes and uniformed police officers."
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