‘WELL, YOU’RE DRUNK’
Video shows Scotch Plains police officer fleeing police before DUI arrest >>
READINGTON » Stephanie Roggina, a Scotch Plains police officer, did not move from the stop sign for 90 seconds, despite no cars coming from either direction.
A Readington police officer was sitting behind her motionless Ford Edge the whole time on Aug. 26 at approximately 11:30 p.m. at the intersection of County Route 629 and Hillcrest Road, according to a copy of the dash-cam video obtained by The Trentonian.
When the Readington officer turns on his emergency lights, 26-year-old Roggina takes off by turning right and leads police on a one-minute wild chase.
Roggina swerves in and out of her lane, hitting a guardrail. At one point the rookie Scotch Plains cop signals that she is turning right, but doesn’t turn there, instead taking a left a little further up. She finally comes to a stop in someone’s driveway by parking horizontally on the 500 block of Locust Road.
“Get out of the car,” the Readington cop screams at her.
“Are you serious?” Roggina responds, which she repeats throughout her traffic stop. “Are you kidding me?”
Roggina, who slurs her words and is clearly hammered, is handcuffed as she exits the vehicle.
“You don’t take off from a cop,” the Readington officer says. “Are you out of your mind?”
Once she is in the backseat of the cop car, she denies ever attempting to elude police.
“I didn’t take off from a f**king cop,” she tells police. “I was not running from you.”
The Readington officer then corrects her.
“You took off,” says the officer, who is identified in court documents as Lt. Scott Crater. “You crashed back there and I got it all on my tape. You crashed your car.”
Roggina, who was off-duty at the time, is in disbelief and the officer then takes her to show her the damage she did to her vehicle firsthand.
“Where did I crash my car?” she questions.
“Right here,” the officer responds, pointing to the front passenger side of her vehicle. “Are you serious,” she says. “I’m not joking,” Crater deadpans.
Roggina then asks if the officer wants to see her badge.
“I work in Scotch Plains,” she says.
“Well, you’re drunk,” the officer responds.
Police apparently can’t find her ID or wallet while she is brought back to the police vehicle.
“She’s a recruit,” one officer says, rummaging through her car.
At one point, Roggina appears to mutter her former boss’s name, retired Scotch Plains Police Chief Brian T. Mahoney, who was also arrested for a DUI ironically two weeks after Roggina.
“Do you know Brian?” Roggina says, indicating her badge is inside her wallet.
After she is read her Miranda rights, Roggina again tries to tell cops who she is.
“I’m a cop,” Roggina says. “I work in Scotch Plains. My number is 140.”
“Well, then you should know better, right?” Crater says.
“Obviously,” the rookie cop says, mentioning Brian’s name again. “Please don’t, seriously.”
The Readington cops still can’t find Roggina’s wallet.
“If you keep me cuffed, I will show you where it is,” she says. “You can keep me cuffed. It’s fine.”
She is led off in the police car after 13 minutes and is driven back to the police station.
“Do you think I’m lying to you ... that I’m a cop?” Roggina asks the officer.
“Well, what do you want me to do about that?” Crater says.
“I don’t want you to do anything about that,” Roggina says. “Do you think that I’m lying to you?”
The officer says “no,” but Roggina’s fate is already sealed.
Roggina was charged with a third-degree eluding offense. She was also charged with driving while intoxicated, obstructing passage of other vehicles, reckless driving, failure to yield to an emergency vehicle, and leaving the scene of a crash.
According to court records, Roggina, of the first block of Chamberlain Road in Flemington, pleaded guilty to a disorderly persons offense and was sentenced to pay a small fine.
She was indicted Oct. 13, 2016, on one criminal count of resisting arrest but the charge
was downgraded to a disorderly persons offense. Roggina ended up pleading guilty on March 17 to disorderly conduct for improper behavior.
The disgraced officer was sentenced in March by Hunterdon County State Superior Court Judge Angela F. Borkowski to a non-custodial sentence. The petty disorderly persons offense resulted in no hard penalties -no prison incarceration, no probation, no jail time, not ordered to give a DNA sample. Court records show she was ordered to pay a fine of $125.
Her other charges were heard at the municipal court level. It is not immediately clear what the outcome of those charges was.
Following the crash, the officer who joined the Scotch Plains Police Department in June 2016, was immediately suspended without pay. Police did not respond Tuesday to a request about her current status within the department.
Roggina previously worked as a Kean University police officer and security guard.
The recording, which The
Trentonian needed to sue to obtain, inexplicably appears muted at a couple points in the video.