A suspended New Jersey police chief was arrested Tuesday when he allegedly trespassed at a convenience store to spy on a neighbor, prosecutors say.
Benjamin Ruiz, the suspended chief of the Perth Amboy Police Department, had been confronted multiple times by workers outside the store on Smith Street between February 1 and May 18, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutors' Office.
He would tell the workers he was a police officer when in fact he had been arrested in an unrelated theft case and suspended from duty in December 2014, prosecutors said.
It's not clear why he was watching the unidentified neighbor.
He was arrested on charges of trespass and impersonating an officer.
Ruiz began working as a police officer in May 1988 and appointed chief in September 2012 before he was suspended.
Attorney information for Ruiz was not immediately available.
