Here's a good piece of free advice. If you're a mall cop and you plan to impersonate a police officer by flashing a night stick and badge while harrassing people to the point of chasing them around a parking lot in your car - all for taking "your" parking spot ... try to not do it to two real cops who had your act figured out from the start. ; )
Woodbury — Kristopher P. Maldonado of Yonkers took his holiday security job at Woodbury Commons very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he showed up to work earlier today wearing an illegal night stick and collapsible baton in his duty belt.
He flashed the weapons, along with his oak leaf colonel clusters, handcuffs, and traffic jacket with the letters POLICE on it, to a couple who beat him to a parking spot just as he arrived for work. An argument ensued, during which Maldonado, who is 26, told the husband "I'm a police officer, and I demand your license and identification," said Sgt. Clifford Weeks of Woodbury.
The husband handed over his identification to Maldonado but not without some suspicion. As it turns out, the man and his wife, who was driving their minivan, were real police officers from Maryland.
They noticed Maldonado was driving a red Hyundai, not a patrol car, so they asked him for his ID, Weeks said. When Maldonado refused, the indignant husband grabbed his drivers license back, got into the minivan with his wife and drove off, never letting on about their true jobs.
Insulted, Maldonado chased them.
The couple alerted Woodbury police, who stopped Maldonado about a half mile from the mall. Officers arrested him for first-degree criminal impersonation, a felony, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon (for the illegal night stick and collapsible baton), a misdemeanor.
He was arraigned before Justice David Levinson, who sent him to Orange County Jail in lieu of $3,500 cash bail.
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