2nd cop says he saw ex-chief assault black teen suspect
CAMDEN >> As he took the stand in the hate-crime trial of his former boss, Bordentown Township Police Detective Sgt. Salvatore Guido still seemed conflicted about testifying against a man he’s known for at least three decades and whom promoted him through the ranks.
“I don’t want to be a part of this right now,” Guido, a 20-year veteran of the police force, said Friday at Frank Nucera’s federal trial. “It’s hard. I’ve known him for 30 years. Never had anything against him.”
Guido is the second Bordentown cop to point the finger at Nucera for assaulting a handcuffed Timothy Stroye, then 18, during a call at the township Ramada Inn on Sept. 1, 2016. Police responded after a worker called saying two people were swimming in the pool without paying for a room.
Guido said he was about to escort the black Trenton teen down a stairwell to an awaiting police cruiser when Stroye stopped and began shouting and cursing at officers near the doorway.
He gave Stroye a “nudge” to get him moving. Suddenly, he felt a “force from behind” and saw out of his peripheral Nucera’s arm push Stroye, who no longer posed a threat after being pepper-sprayed and subdued following a fight with Lt. Shawn Mount.
The teen struck the doorway, Guido said, though he wasn’t sure what part of Stroye’s body collided with it.
Guido called the police’s chief actions “uncalled for” and “embarrassing.”
“I immediately was like, ‘What the hell was that?” he said. “Where did that come from?”
Guido’s description of the alleged attack differed from that of Sgt. Nathan Roohr, the police dog handler who testified this week he saw Nucera grab the teen’s head “like a basketball” and slam it into a metal door jamb.
Roohr has been hailed a hero in some circles for piercing the blue wall of silence by turning over 81 secret recordings to the FBI that captured Nucera making racial slurs about minorities, including one at police headquarters of the police chief calling Stroye the Nword.
Roohr also testified Nucera ordered him to unleash police dogs to intimidate minority spectators at high school basketball games.
Prosecutors have alleged Nucera harbored a “deep animus against African Americans,” comparing blacks to ISIS and insisting he could mow them down on a firing line, which led him to lash out Stroye that day.
Guido, at times appearing to equivocate or downplay the chief’s actions in his testimony almost as if he were still afraid of getting the chief’s ire, acknowledged hearing Nucera use racial slurs like the N-word in the police station but not in interactions with the public.
However, he said Nucera often derisively used the term “you people,” in public when speaking with African Americans.
“He used to refer to them as ‘you people,’” Guido said. “You people shouldn’t stay in our town. You people don’t come back here.”
Guido twice denied seeing the assault when Roohr confronted him about it on the secret recordings.
Asked about his denials by assistant U.S. attorney Molly Lorber, the frightened cop said he “wasn’t going” to admit what he knew.
He didn’t put anything about the assault in a police report about the incident, as required, and initially withheld information from FBI special agents who showed up at his doorstep one morning sometime before Christmas, while he was showering.
He told the federal investigators he transported Stroye’s girlfriend to a police cruiser. Guido then went to work and reported the discussion with the feds to Nucera, as required by department policy whenever a township cop had interactions with another law enforcement agency.
Later that morning, Guido and Stroye watched dash-cam footage of the incident that showed Guido actually escorted Stroye to the police cruiser. That night, Guido got back in touch with, and met special agents at a township diner to correct his mistake. Then he spilled about the assault.
“Conscience got the best of me,” Guido said. “I knew it was the right thing to do. It had to be done. Should have told the first agent.”
Guido explained he was afraid to “cross” Nucera, with whom he had a “great” relationship over the years.
Guido was born and raised in Bordentown and didn’t want to leave the police force in his hometown.
He saw what Nucera did to officers who challenged him, and did his best to keep his head down and get his work done so his highly demanding boss would leave him “alone.”
“It was the chief of police,” Guido said. “I was afraid to cross him. I made a decision a long time ago to stay on his good side. If you cross him, it’s tough to come back from that. … I didn’t want to be one of those other officers. I didn’t want to have to leave to go to another department or retire early.”
Terri Cowen, the former manager of Ramada Inn, also re-took the stand Friday after her testimony was delayed earlier in the trial for personal reasons.
She called the police on Stroye and his girlfriend after she thought they used the swimming pool without paying for a room.
Cowen said she filed a complaint against Nucera with the former mayor after he asked her “what kind of people are you renting rooms to” during the Stroye incident. She thought his remark was geared toward blacks.
“I was just caught off guard,” she said, adding her complaint fell on deaf ears. “I was angry.”
Cowen claimed Nucera made it difficult for her hotel to attract black clientele, requiring permits and police security detail for large parties. Defense attorney Rocco Cipparone Jr. said on cross examination those were township ordinances, not his client’s personal policies.
The defense has attacked the credibility of the cops who worked under the expolice chief, making the case they were out to get him because he was a harda** boss who kept his fingers on the purse strings.
Nucera also doubled as township administrator, and rank-and-file complained he was stingy with overtime assignments and was a hardline negotiator in contract discussions.
Roohr said police officers felt it was impossible to negotiate with their “disciplinarian” fearing they’d face retaliation.
Previous investigations, including a federal probe in 2007, failed to net charges against Nucera. And there was a strong belief the police chief had the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office “in his pocket,” fueled in part after Nucera, then a lieutenant, survived a previous excessive force allegation brought by former cop Evan Jones in the early 2000s.
Jones alleged Nucera stood on top of the neck of a handcuffed suspect. The suspect denied the claim, the allegation was deemed “unfounded,” Cipparone said, and the case was closed.
But one retired Bordentown police officer says the case should have never been opened in the first place if he had his way.
Brian DuMont, who attended Nucera’s trial Friday, said he conducted a background investigation on Nucera in the 1980s. Nucera had poor references and “lousy” financial records, DuMont said.
DuMont, who retired in 2003 after 31 years on the force, recommended not hiring Nucera, also claiming he failed a psychological exam.
“What I found out was detrimental to his character,” DuMont, who once was Nucera’s sergeant, previously told The Trentonian. “I don’t know how you put your finger on it. It didn’t rise to the level where he should have been arrested or charged with falsifying his application. It just wasn’t good.”
Nucera appealed and was later hired, according to DuMont, a Vietnam veteran from Hamilton who plans to write a book about his experiences.
DuMont admitted he and another cop sued the department over allegations of age discrimination when Nucera leapfrogged him for a promotion to lieutenant. He said he received a settlement from the township but wasn’t at liberty to say how much due to a nondisclosure agreement.
The Trentonian approached Nucera outside the courtroom for comment on DuMont’s claims. But his attorney put on the clamps.
“He should be careful about his claims,” Cipparone said about DuMont, gesturing for Nucera to stay quiet. “I’m not going to allow Frank to answer any questions. He’s not answering the question. He’s on trial.”
Cipparone dismissed DuMont like he has the witnesses who pointed the finger at his client in the courtroom.
“My instinct tells me he’s maybe somebody with an ax to grind,” the attorney said. “I don’t know the guy. I’m not putting him in any category. Never met him, never heard from him, never heard of this guy.”