Stand-off With Ex-Cop Ends Peacefully
On September 30, 2010 a former North Haledon police officer was involved in a standoff with South Hackensack officers after he allegedly held his girlfriend against her will.John Nicosia, 39, surrendered to police without incident following a standoff that lasted most of the morning, Chief Michael Frew said.
The woman was visiting Nicosia’s Garfield Place apartment on Wednesday when the couple got into a fight, Frew said. She told police that she tried to leave around 6 p.m. but Nicosia held a wooden board to the door to prevent her from doing so. The next morning, she was able to kick the wood out of the way and get out of the house.
Her ex-husband had called police before 7 a.m. Thursday to report that she had been abducted, an allegation that she initially repeated, Frew said. But the chief said it turned out that she had voluntarily gone to the apartment. Nicosia was charged with false imprisonment and transferred to Oakland, where he was wanted on an outstanding warrant stemming from a prior domestic dispute with the woman.
In December 2000, Nicosia resigned from the North Haledon Police Department after he was among 89 people charged in a $3 million car insurance scam. He served one month in federal prison. He was sentenced to three years probation in November 2002 in connection with the break-in of an elderly couple’s home in North Haledon, where he had once investigated a burglary.