Crime Blotter: Weird New Jersey

First Nerve Manor stands a mere ten miles from the New Jersey Meadowlands, a featureless expanse of dreary marshland dotted with industrial warehouses, big box retailers and fast food outlets. It’s home to Teterboro airport, a general aviation field where private jets routinely skid off the runway and which Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger famously declined in favor of an emergency landing in the Hudson River. It’s home to Giants Stadium—the new one scheduled open next season as well as the old one, now being demolished, where the remains of Jimmy Hoffa are said to be buried under one end zone and where drunken Jets fans routinely badger women to “show us your tits.”

Deep in the heart of this charmless area, in the neighborhood of ImTech Graphics, Beta Plastics, and the Yoo-Hoo Chocolate Beverage Corporation, is a perfume distributor called In Style USA LLC. It trades in such high-end brands as Hermès, Calvin Klein, Dolce & Gabbana and Versace. Yesterday evening, before the big snowstorm blew in, In Style USA was robbed in a most unusual manner.

Marlene Naanes and John Gavin of The Bergen Record have the story:

Authorities have arrested two Brooklyn men in a brazen Tuesday night heist in which five armed men stormed into a Gotham Parkway perfume warehouse and tied up 11 employees, forcing them into an office, police said.

. . . the alleged robbery team bound the workers hands behind their backs with plastic ties before forcing them into the office. The crew then backed up a box truck — one of at least six they brought with them — to the warehouse, where day laborers hired in the Bronx began loading perfume products.

The day laborers, allegedly under the direction of Morales, loaded four trucks that left the scene with perfume products before one of the warehouse employees was able to call 911 about 9:30.

Most of the armed men fled before police arrived, [Detective John] Cleary said, but officers found 15 day laborers locked in one of the trucks that were left behind.

. . . Police estimate the value of the stolen fragrances at $50,000.

What can you say? Like all of New Jersey this is wrong at many different levels.

Catch you at Rutt’s Hut and we can discuss it over rippers and a Coors.