A veteran North Bergen police officer with no prior offenses on his record was arrested Tuesday and charged with involvement in a shoplifting incident at a township department store last November.
According to Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Peter Stoma, Dennis Pinto, 39, of South River, a 19-year member of the North Bergen Police Department, was brought into custody Tuesday morning when he arrived for work.
Pinto was arrested by his fellow North Bergen police officers and brought to the Hudson County Sheriff’s Office, when the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office took over the case.
“Mr. Pinto was charged with shoplifting, conspiracy, and misconduct in office,” Stoma said. “He was arraigned in Central Judicial Processing in front of Superior Court Judge Kevin Callahan, where bail was set at $50,000 and where he pleaded not guilty. He posted the bail and was released.”
Because Pinto was charged with a crime, he no longer has the authority to carry a firearm and was subsequently suspended without pay by the North Bergen Police Department.
According to Stoma, Pinto has been charged for his involvement in a shoplifting case at the Target store on Tonnelle Avenue – an incident which had already led to the arrest of former North Bergen police officer Vincent Sorge.
The 42-year-old Sorge, a resident of Rutherford, had been arrested Nov. 26 and charged with shoplifting with more than $2,000 of electronics, after he was positively identified on surveillance videos by North Bergen police officials. In the 1990s, Sorge had been fired from his police job and later sent to jail for his alleged participation in the alleged shakedown and beating of an undercover state trooper in North Bergen in 1993.
Pinto was allegedly a uniformed police officer working off-duty for Target Stores on the evening of Sorge’s alleged heist, and was captured on the Target Stores surveillance tape from Nov. 7, according to Stoma.
Stoma believes that Pinto worked with Sorge on the heist, that allegedly Pinto turned a blind eye while Sorge stockpiled a shopping cart of electronic equipment and brazenly just rolled the cart out of the store.
Whether the two men shared the wealth on the heist is not known.
“The evidence shows that Mr. Pinto was acting in concert with Mr. Sorge on that incident,” Stoma said. “After Mr. Sorge was arrested, the North Bergen police continued their investigation and based on what they saw on the videotape, as well as other developed evidence in the investigation, they decided to arrest Mr. Pinto.”
Working together? It was not immediately known whether Pinto and Sorge were friends during the seven years when the two served on the North Bergen Police Department together.
Albert Wunsch, Pinto’s Hackensack-based attorney, maintained that his client is innocent.
“I’ve seen no evidence to prove these allegations against my client,” Wunsch said. “There has to be an explanation. Dennis Pinto has done everything that has been asked of him in this case. He’s upset and troubled by it. He has 19 years on the job and no adverse marks on his record. I think this was a shock to everyone. My client is maintaining his innocence, and we hope that the Hudson County Prosecutor can give him a fair trial so that he could be exonerated of these charges.”
Wunsch knew that it was standard procedure to suspend Pinto without pay once the charges were handed down. “You can’t have a police officer who can’t carry a gun,” Wunsch said. “I understand the law. I don’t agree with the decision [to suspend Pinto without pay] because I think the charges are absurd. But once he’s cleared, he will be returned to rank and he’ll be owed a lot of back pay. It was troubling for Dennis to be brought into the sixth floor of the Hudson County Courthouse in handcuffs with all the other criminals there. But we will try to focus on what we have to deal with.”
Added Wunsch, “Dennis is a nice guy, a family man, whose father was a North Bergen police officer. This is a terrible situation. I know I handle a lot of the cases involving the North Bergen police, and I’ve never heard his name mentioned. We’re going to take some time to access the entire case.”
North Bergen police and the Hudson County Prosecutor’s office is continuing the investigation to see whether there were any other shoplifting cases in the town.
“There is no evidence to suggest that there was more than one,” Stoma said. “Right now, it appears to be the one incident, but we are investigating it.”
The case against Sorge went to trial first in 1997. Sorge was convicted of misconduct and simple assault and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Sorge actually served 18 months in prison and was then released. He remains free on bail, pending his trial on these new shoplifting charges.
The North Bergen Police Department did not want to comment on the arrest of Pinto. Police Chief William Galvin was not permitted to speak by law, because he was directly involved in the investigation in the case.
Stoma said that there has been no timetable set on the trials of either Sorge or Pinto and whether or not they will be tried in conjunction or separately.