Lakewood PD settles lawsuit for $55,000

Lakewood Police agreed to pay $55,000 to a couple who said that officers tried to intimidate them into admitting to a pair of burglaries and then retaliated when they complained about the police conduct.

The allegations included charges that police used one of the plaintiff's children as a tool to get her to implicate the other plaintiff.

Victor Wilson and Maria Rizzolo sued Lakewood Police and four individual officers — Michael Cavallo, Peter Aakjer, Thomas Delia and Greg Staffordsmith — in January for a series of wrongful acts they said began two years earlier. The case was settled Nov. 20, according information obtained by NJ Civil Settlements, a website that tracks settlements by state and local governments and the insurers.

The pair alleged their ordeal started with a pair of burglaries in which witnesses described a male subject who was white and with "black bushy hair," neither of which described Wilson, according to the complaint. Police zeroed in on him anyway.

As part of their investigation, the police started surveilling Wilson's girlfriend, Rizzolo

On Jan. 17, 2013, police followed as the couple drove in Wilson's car. When the vehicle stopped at a home on James Street, near where one of the burglaries occurred, Rizzolo got out of the car, knocked on the door and then returned when nobody answered.

Police moved in as the two sat in the car. Four officers — their guns drawn — confronted the pair, ordering them to shut the car off.

The pair were arrested for trespassing. The officers, after getting permission to search the car, identified "bolt cutters, a sledgehammer and wire cutters," according to an inventory. The complaint, however, said those items were actually hedge clippers, a hammer and pliers.

Back at the station, Rizzolo was told "she would not see her children again" if she did not cooperate. Unknown officers, according to the complaint, picked up her children from their elementary schools in Brick, then brought them to police headquarters where they could see their mother in handcuffs.

Rizzolo agreed to cooperate, the complaint said, because she "felt threatened and coerced." She told police that Wilson had entered a home on James Street but that he didn't steal anything.

Wilson was indicted and spent most of 2013 in jail awaiting the outcome of the case, which was dropped after the court threw out all the evidence gathered from the traffic stop and arrest on the ground that the officers lacked probable cause. Wilson is currently in prison on a separate charge of receiving stolen property, according to state records.

Wilson and Rizzolo alleged that since they filed the lawsuit they were targeted for harassment by police, including being issued multiple motor vehicle citations and tickets in "direct retaliation."

Township attorney Steven Secare said Monday that Wilson got off of the burglary charges on "a technicality."

"Did the Lakewood Police make a mistake? I guess," he said. "But (Wilson) spent 234 days in jail (awaiting trial) and the Lakewood Township Police takes burglaries very seriously. You can't tolerate burglary."

Wilson's counsel could not immediately be reached for comment.

The settlement agreement does not include an admission of wrongdoing by police.

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