By SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated
Press–16 hours ago
PATERSON, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey
police officer sent a 12-year-old girl explicit photos of himself in uniform
and tried to set up a sexual encounter with her, days after meeting the girl
while assisting her family in an unrelated police matter, authorities said
Wednesday.
Woodland Park Police Officer Steven
Vigorito Jr. pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges ranging from attempted
aggravated sexual assault to luring and enticing a child. He was being held on
$250,000 bail following his arrest while on duty Tuesday night. A message left
after-hours for the public defender who represented him at the arraignment was
not returned.
Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia
Valdes said the girl's mother complained to the police department on Monday
that the officer had made inappropriate comments to her daughter, had given her
his private cellphone number and had asked her to text him. Woodlawn Park
Police Chief Anthony Galietti said they immediately contacted the prosecutor's
office, whose detectives posed as the girl and started exchanging texts with
Vigorito.
The texts became increasingly
explicit over the course of several days, prosecutors said. Vigorito eventually
texted the girl photographs in which he was exposing himself while wearing his
police uniform and arranged to meet her for a sexual encounter, prosecutors
alleged.
The girl was never in harm's way,
and never exchanged texts with the officer, Valdes said.
"What is so disturbing about
this, is the person who was to assist the family, ends up preying on the
family," Valdes said.
The 39-year-old Vigorito has been
with the police department for 12 years in Woodland Park, a small suburb about
15 miles from Manhattan. The town, known until a recent voter-approved name
change as West Paterson, is a bucolic, leafy borough of neatly landscaped homes
adjacent to Paterson, a grittier, more industrialized urban neighbor.
Vigorito, who New York television
station WABC-7 reported is a married father of two, was arrested Tuesday night
in the police station while on the night shift, according to Galietti, who said
the patrolman was suspended without pay pending the outcome of the
investigation.
The arrest of one of the 25 officers
on the force has shaken the small department, Galietti said.
"It's very upsetting, when you
have one of your own do something like this. It's very upsetting," he
said. Galietti added that department officials had acted immediately upon
receiving the family's complaint about the officer, and had no hesitation in
alerting the prosecutor's office.
"When this came to light we
went into it head-on. We didn't care if it was one of our own," he said.
"I'm the father of five kids, and this is wrong. It's a very inappropriate
situation. Unfortunately, he (Vigorito) had a badge at the time."