CONFRONTING HATE
Government’s star witness testifies in case against former Bordentown police chief
CAMDEN >> A Bordentown Township Police dog handler testified he saw former police chief Frank Nucera grab a teenager’s head “like a basketball” and slam it into a metal door jamb in the stairwell of a township hotel in September 2016.
“I immediately knew it was wrong. I knew I had an obligation to report what I saw. I was afraid. I knew what I was going to have to do,” said Nathan Roohr, a sergeant with the Bordentown Township Police department since 2015 and the feds’ star witness against his old boss.
Roohr took the stand Monday, on the second day of Nucera’s hate-crime trial, testifying he and Detective Sgt. Salvatore Guido led a handcuffed Timothy Stroye down a stairwell of the Ramada Inn on Route 206 on Sept. 1, 2016.
Police responded to a call of two people using a swimming pool without paying for their room.
Stroye, who is black, had been involved earlier in a scuffle with Lt. Shawn Mount, who later described it the feds as the “fight of my f—-ing life.”
Mount, now a captain, also testified Monday telling jurors he feared for his life and thought about pulling out his piece when he thought he might “pass out” during a four- to fiveminute altercation with the shorter but stocky Stroye.
Mount, who peppersprayed the teen to no little effect, admitted Stroye got the best of him during the fight, leaving drag marks from his gun belt on the wall.
“I was in fear of my life,” he said.
Mount was out of work for at least three weeks after aggravated the existing herniated discs in his back during the fight and was later taken to a hospital for treatment of intense back spasms.
“We were going back and forth in the hallway,” Mount said. “Seemed like an eternity.”
But Roohr, taking the stand after his colleague, said the Trenton teenager no longer posed a threat to officers when Nucera teed off on him as he stopped short of doorway in the stairwell as he was being led to a police cruiser.
Stroye, still upset over the altercation, began shouting at officers.
“He was threatening to sue us all,” Roohr said.
As Sgt. Guido put his hand on Stroye’s back and attempted to push him through the doorway, Nucera simultaneously “lunged” at Stroye, grabbed his head “like a basketball” and slammed it into the metal door jamb, Roohr testified.
Stroye’s head made a “loud thud” when it collided with the doorway, the police handler said.
Roohr was shocked over his boss’ actions because “there was no reason to strike Stroye at that point.” The teen, the township sergeant said, was no longer resisting.
“He was only using hurtful words,” he said.
Nucera, the longtime township police chief and former township administrator, has insisted he never put his hands on Stroye, his attorney Rocco Cipparone Jr. said in opening statements last week.
Nucera pleaded not guilty to charges of hatecrime assault, civil rights deprivation and lying to the FBI, which could send him to prison for up to 20 years and result in him losing his $105,000 pension. Nucera retired abruptly from the township after 34 years amid the federal probe.
Prosecutors said in opening remarks last week that Nucera, who is white, harbored a “deep animus against African Americans” and assaulted Stroye because of it.
Nucera was caught on tape using racial slurs to disparage the teen and other African Americans back at police headquarters, where Stroye was taken for processing.
Roohr, who often recorded his ex-boss, turned over 81 recordings to the FBI he made of Nucera making disparaging remarks about blacks, including an instance in November 2015 in which Nucera reportedly compared them to “ISIS” and said he wanted to be on a firing squad and mow them down.
Altercation at Ramada
Stroye, still wet from the pool, was wearing swimming trunks with a towel draped over his neck and was walking with his female companion, who was in “street clothes,” when Lt. Mount and Sgt. Guido encountered them at the hotel.
Mount asked for their names and IDs but the teen girl told him she wasn’t “f***ing talking to me” and walked up the stairwell.
Mount ordered her to stop because they were being detained while the cops investigated the possible theft of a room. She continued walking up the stairs.
Mount grabbed the teen girl by the arm about threequarters up the stairwell, he said. She shouted for him to “get the f**k off” her, pulled away and swung at him, flailing and screaming.
Mount told the teen girl she was under arrest and attempted to handcuff her at the top of the stairwell while Sgt. Guido assisted.
Stroye attempted to “intervene,” telling the cops he wanted to calm down his female companion, Mount said. Mount told him to remain in the corner and allow the cops to “do their job.”
Mount, who stood about 6 feet 1 inches tall and weighed about 190 pounds at the time, described bearhugging Stroye after he charged at Sgt. Guido while he was handcuffing his girlfriend after she refused to comply with officers’ orders.
Stroye grabbed Mount around the waist, near his gun belt, and threw him against the wall.
Mount said it was “almost like a dance,” with his arms securely wrapped around Stroye’s upper body and Stroye’s head resting against his abdomen.
Stroye punched him several times in his side during the fight, Mount said on cross examination, insisting the teen’s head was “not at all” injured during their five-minute struggle.
Mount warned Stroye he would pepper spray him unless he got on the ground. As Mount reached for the pepper spray, Stroye grabbed the towel and put it in front of his face, blocking most of it from hitting him, Mount said.
During the fight, Mount called for backup over a police radio. Officers including Nucera and Roohr responded to the township hotel.
Not Turning ‘Blind Eye’
Roohr was on another call when he heard Mount’s cry for help. Prosecutors showed footage from Roohr’s dash cam showing him patting down an African American man who he was taking into custody for having outstanding traffic warrants. Roohr’s police dog could be heard barking on the video.
At one point on the tape, Roohr was seen sprinting toward his patrol cruiser, flipping on the police lights and sirens and racing to the hotel, about a mile away.
Roohr testified he arrived at the Ramada Inn around 7 p.m. Nucera – who was seen on video showing up in a shirt and tie – and other officers ran inside the hotel.
They found Mount and Stroye splayed out on the ground as Guido was straddled over the teenager girl, who was on her stomach.
“We exhausted each other out,” Mount said.
Mount had his arm across Stroye’s back, Roohr said, and Stroye was “lying on his stomach and his hands were under his body,” Roohr said
Another officer knelt down by Stroye’s side while Roohr crouched down over Stroye’s legs, both urging the teen to put his hands behind his back and stop resisting.
Sgt. Matthew Simmons IV of neighboring Bordentown City Police handcuffed Stroye, and Roohr rolled him over to search him for weapons, he testified.
Roohr noticed some “scars on the left side of his face” but the teen didn’t observe any injuries on his face. A book mug, taken at the police station and shown to jurors during opening statements, showed Stroye sustained injuries to the left side of his face, which prosecutors contend happen when Nucera slammed his head.
While Nucera stood in the hallway shouting at one of the suspects, Roohr and another officer helped
Stroye, whose hands were shackled behind his back, to his feet and patted him down.
Assistant U.S. attorney Molly Lorber asked the police sergeant whether he saw any injuries on Stroye’s face after lifting him up, to which Roohr responded that the teen appeared unmarked.
One cop walked through the “narrow” doorway to get ahead of the group and ready the patrol cruiser to transport the Trenton teen.
As Sgt. Guido escorted Stroye through the doorway, into the stairwell, Roohr was steps behind, he said, following.
When they got near the bottom of the steps, outside a doorway, Stroye stopped and shouted at officers, Roohr said.
Roohr said the teen wasn’t kicking, punching or flailing at officers when Nucera grabbed the teen’s head and slammed it into the door jamb.
The police handler testified earlier in the day that police officers can use reasonable force to make arrests. He said head blows were considered deadly force because they could cause serious injury or death.
Police officers, however, are trained not to strike handcuffed suspects, Roohr said, and risked “administrative charges or, depending on the circumstances, be charged criminally” if they veered from their training.
Because of that, Roohr knew immediately he would have to let someone know about the police chief’s actions.
“I wasn’t going to turn a blind eye,” he said.
Possible Concussion
After officers accompanied Stroye to a patrol car and put him in the back of it, Roohr went back inside the hotel to check on Mount, who admitted his head was “buried in the carpet” as officers subdued Stroye.
Mount said he “was in so much pain you could have dropped an atom bomb” and he wouldn’t have noticed.
Sgt. Roohr called an ambulance for Mount, who initially resisted medical treatment but finally gave in to Nucera’s urging for him to get checked out at the hospital, Mount said.
Back at police headquarters, Stroye, while handcuffed to a bench awaiting processing, complained to another prisoner that he was suffering from a headache and nausea, according to footage prosecutors showed jurors.
“I know I got a concussion,” Stroye said. Paramedics checked him inside the holding area.
“Your eyeball’s swollen. You tell us what you want to do,” the paramedic told the teen.
Stroye ultimately decided against going to the hospital.
While that was happening, Roohr spoke to the chief in his office, flipping on the audio recorder on his phone before walking into the police station thinking the chief would be “vocal about [the arrest].”
Sure enough, Roohr caught the chief calling Stroye a “f***ing little f***ing n***er” and his aunt a “nipple-hanging b**ch,” on the tapes, Lorber said.
Roohr also testified to hearing the chief use racial slurs before Stroye’s arrest, including a time in 2015, when Nucera, infuriated over learning a tire on a patrol cruiser had been slashed, suspected an African American arrestee of being behind it.
Roohr testified he heard the chief say, “I wish that n **** r would come back from Trenton and give me a reason to put my hands on him, I’m tired of ‘em. These ni**ers are like ISIS, they have no value. They should line them all up and mow ‘em down. I’d like to be on the firing squad, I could do it. I used to think about if I could shoot someone or not, I could do it, I’m tired of it.”
Roohr said he didn’t capture that particular remark on the recordings he turned over to the FBI. But he hurriedly scribbled the comment down “verbatim” in a notepad after the chief left his presence.
Roohr said he regularly recorded the chief after that because his “demeanor was escalating. The police sergeant also believed Nucera’s use of police dogs at basketball games involving teams with players who were predominantly African American, such as Willingboro, was racially motivated.
Ratting on Chief
Roohr knew his life would change once he turned on the chief.
He waited two weeks, contemplating a “game plan,” before telling Capt. Brian Pesce, then the head of internal affairs, about the chief assaulting Stroye.
He and Pesce worked to formulate a 12-page misconduct complaint against the chief. Roohr created an email account and uploaded some of the things he caught the chief saying to a secret Word document only Pesce could access outside the office.
Pesce admitted in his testimony last week he neglected to include Stroye assault in the complaint, which he planned to turn over to the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office and the township committee overseeing the chief.
Roohr said he also texted and met with Jacob Archer, a former Bordentown City Police officer he knew from working “hand in hand” with over the years, having no assurance the BCPO would take action.
Archer, who was a special agent with the FBI at that point, met with Roohr at the end of September 2016 and put him in touch with special agent Arthur Durrant III.
Roohr admitted he was nervous about diming out Nucera, who promoted him to sergeant in 2015, over other qualified candidates, including Nucera’s son, Frank Nucera III.
Lorber asked Roohr to describe his rapport with the tightly wound police chief, to which Roohr responded they had a good relationship.
But Roohr was also deathly afraid of his boss. He thought Nucera would retaliate against him if he found out about his cooperation with Pesce or the feds.
The police dog handler described other instances in which Nucrea harassed officers, brought them up on internal affairs charges, docked their pay and tried to destroy the credibility of another officer who raised concerns over a prior instance of Nucera allegedly standing on the neck of a handcuffed prisoner.
That officer, Roohr said, ultimately retired early under duress.
The trial resumes Tuesday at 9 a.m.