Fired, Reinstated, Fired Again: The High-Stakes Legal Battle Over 2 Ousted Hackensack Cops Takes a Bizarre Turn
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Hackensack NJ, A rollercoaster legal drama surrounding two terminated Hackensack police officers is heating up once again. After a decade of alternating between active duty and unemployment, ex-officers Rocco Duardo and Victor Vazquez are taking the city back to court.
Armed with a new legal motion, the officers claim that a critical piece of the truth was concealed from the judges who stripped them of their badges. Now, they are demanding their jobs back—along with massive financial compensation.
The Scandal That Started It All: A 2016 Warrantless Search
The roots of this legal battle trace back to December 2016 at a residential building on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack. Duardo, Vazquez, and five other officers entered a third-floor apartment without a search warrant.
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The Officers’ Alibi: They claimed they were following a tip regarding local drug activity and stepped through an unlocked door because they believed an unattended child was inside.
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The Twist: An anonymous letter prompted an internal investigation. Surveillance video surfaced that heavily contradicted the officers’ official timeline and account of the event.
The fallout was immediate. The city suspended the officers without pay, and the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office dropped charges in eight active criminal cases linked to the officers due to compromised credibility. Following retirements, resignations, and terminations, a yearslong war in the New Jersey court system began.
The Reinstatement Rollercoaster
In 2021, the Civil Service Commission ordered the officers to be reinstated, a decision upheld by the state Supreme Court in May 2022. The city was forced to return Duardo and Vazquez to the force and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay.
However, the victory was short-lived. In 2024, three state Appellate Division judges ruled back in favor of Hackensack, instantly firing the officers again. The court decided that their permanent designation as “Brady Officers”—meaning prosecutors are legally required to disclose their history of alleged dishonesty to criminal defense attorneys—compromised their ability to serve, damaged department morale, and undermined public trust.
The Secret Patrol Factor: A New Motion to Overturn
Now, the ex-cops are fighting back using New Jersey Court Rule 4:50, a precise legal mechanism used to vacate a previous judicial decision.
Their defense attorney, Eric Kleiner, argues that the appellate court made its 2024 decision based on misleading information from the city. Specifically, the court was left with the impression that the officers were stuck in a “rubber room” or unable to perform field duties due to their Brady status.
In reality, Kleiner states that for two solid years between their reinstatement and their second firing, Duardo and Vazquez were actively out on patrol, conducting traffic stops, making arrests, and filing unrestricted police reports.
“The officers are now fighting back with the truth that was concealed in the past,” Kleiner stated. “During that time, there were no interrupted prosecutions or Brady notifications, as the city erroneously claimed.”
The defense maintains that if the judges knew the officers were successfully doing the exact job the court claimed they were unfit for, they never would have been terminated.
A Multi-Million Dollar Legal Gridlock
As the motion to vacate moves forward, the financial warfare between the city and its former employees has escalated into competing lawsuits:
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The Officers’ Suit: Duardo has an active lawsuit against Hackensack, claiming the city illegally withheld wages and attempted to dock his accrued pension time during his reinstatement period.
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The City’s Counter-Suit: Hackensack retaliated by filing a competing lawsuit aimed at clawing back more than $600,000 in salary and back pay paid to each officer during the prolonged litigation.
With millions of dollars, police credibility, and precedent-setting interpretation of Brady disclosures on the line, Bergen County courts are preparing for a massive showdown.
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