The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office has dropped the charges in eight active criminal cases after the suspension of seven Hackensack police officers who allegedly conducted an illegal search last December, court documents show.

The officers, six of whom were assigned to the city Police Department's Narcotics Unit, were suspended without pay in May after an Internal Affairs investigator discovered surveillance video that contradicted the officers' account of a Dec. 28 investigation into "narcotics activity" at a Prospect Avenue apartment, according to Internal Affairs reports and the transcript of an administrative hearing that were both included in the lawsuit.

The report said the officers “illegally entered the building to conduct, or conspired to conduct, an illegal entry and search of apartment C7 without a search warrant or other legal justification.”

Those allegations, said county Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal, led his office to dismiss the charges in the eight cases because of doubts cast on the Hackensack officers’ credibility.

“We do not take the decision to dismiss criminal charges against seventeen criminal defendants lightly, but the conduct of the Subject Officers leaves us no other choice,” Grewal wrote in a July 20 letter to the Hackensack police. “Simply put, their conduct undermines their credibility as law enforcement witnesses.”

Additional cases might also be affected, Grewal said. He declined to comment further Tuesday.

The officers — Capt. Vincent Riotto, Lt. Scott Sybel, Det. Sgt. Justin De La Bruyere, Det. Mark Gutierrez, Det. Joseph Gonzalez, Officer Victor Vazquez and Det. Rocco Duardo — allegedly entered a third-floor apartment at 64 Prospect Ave., conducted an unlawful search, mishandled evidence and falsified reports afterward, according to Grewal’s letter. Sybel retired from the Police Department in March, according to court documents.

The man who lives in the apartment, Candy Gonzalez, said Tuesday that he wasn’t sure if the officers went into his home, but he was suspicious after he was visited in April by Internal Affairs officers from the Hackensack police.

“If that’s true, what they did … I know they violated my Fourth Amendment rights,” Gonzalez said. “But I don’t know if it’s true.”

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The investigation report, prepared by Gutierrez and approved by De La Bruyere, said the officers were checking on narcotics activity at the apartment building when they were approached by a man claiming there might be an unattended child in apartment C7. The man wished to remain anonymous, the report said.

The source of the tip that brought seven officers to investigate the report about drug activity is not clear from the lawsuit or the attached documents. Only one of the officers involved in the search was wearing a uniform at the time, according to court papers.

There was no dispatch record that sent the officers to Prospect Avenue, according to a transcript of Capt. Peter Busciglio's testimony during a May 31 administrative hearing. Busciglio, who led the Internal Affairs investigation, also testified that it would not be unusual for a detective to go to a place that was brought up during the course of an investigation.

According to Gutierrez's report, the officers got no response when they knocked on the apartment’s unlocked door, so they went inside. No one was home, and police left after finishing the check, it said.

Three months later, Sgt. Anthony Di Persia found an anonymous letter stuffed inside a city of Hackensack envelope and placed in Internal Affairs’ mailbox. That letter, included in the court documents, claimed there was a cover-up regarding the Prospect Avenue apartment.

“Captain Riotto and his boys covered up 64 Prospect Ave, the reports are full of lies!!!" the letter read. “You think your guys got away with it, we know what really happened.”

The letter triggered a weeks-long investigation by Internal Affairs, which concluded that the officers had illegally entered both the building and the apartment. The June report, filed by Busciglio, also claimed video surveillance footage contradicted Gutierrez’s incident report — Riotto watched as one of his officers tampered with the apartment’s lock, it said. Busciglio testifed at length to contradictions between the video and Guiteirrez's report.

The report also said officers had mishandled an evidence bag containing a cellphone relevant to the case.

The officers have declined to be interviewed by Internal Affairs investigators, citing their Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, according to court papers.

Capt. Francesco Aquila, the officer-in-charge of the Hackensack police, declined to comment Wednesday. City Manager Ted Ehrenburg also declined to comment, citing the prosecutor's investigation.

"Any active investigation that has not been closed up, I just can’t comment,” Ehrenburg said Tuesday night.

Duardo, one of the suspended officers, has filed a suit in state Superior Court against the city, its Police Department, Ehrenburg, the Prosecutor’s Office and Grewal himself. The four-count suit claims the Prosecutor’s Office declared Duardo a “Brady officer” — a cop whose record of lying in an official capacity requires the prosecutor to notify defendants and their attorneys — without sufficient proof.

The suit also claims due process violations and procedural violations, and called Grewal’s decision that the officers’ conduct undermined their credibility arbitrary and capricious. The determination was made despite the lack of a completed investigation, hearing or “any findings whatsoever,” it said.

Charles Sciarra, Duardo’s attorney, said Wednesday that the Internal Affairs investigation was retribution for a previous lawsuit Duardo filed against the city.

“This is just a hang-job,” Sciarra said. “The worst-case scenario for these cops is they were over-zealous in engaging in their police mission … no one’s alleged to have stolen anything, no one’s alleged to have engaged in any kind of personal gain with this.”

Sciarra said the officers are still suspended, though a hearing officer has reversed the ruling that suspended them without pay.

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