Is it just a sign of the times that the Burlington County police beat a man to death?”
Yesterday morning, Jorge Rivera left his sky-blue duplex in rural Burlington County, walked past a roadside flower stand filled with pansies and daisies, and waited for a bus near a lush, green farm. Rivera, 32, was headed to the streets of North Camden, where wild flowers grow in the rubble of empty lots, amid mounds of trash and plastic drug baggies. Residents near 4th and York streets in North Camden knew Rivera as “Fatboy” or “Gordo,” but couldn’t agree on why he had taken a bus from Pemberton Township a couple of times a week to be there. To county and state narcotics investigators, he was a drug dealer. By 11 a.m. yesterday, investigators and angry residents were separated by police tape, and each group told contrasting accounts of how Rivera had died in police custody during a drug arrest near the intersection an hour earlier. “Four cops jumped on him and they beat him down,” said William Cruz, owner of a grocery store at the corner. “They kicked him in the face. I told them he
Yesterday morning, Jorge Rivera left his sky-blue duplex in rural Burlington County, walked past a roadside flower stand filled with pansies and daisies, and waited for a bus near a lush, green farm. Rivera, 32, was headed to the streets of North Camden, where wild flowers grow in the rubble of empty lots, amid mounds of trash and plastic drug baggies. Residents near 4th and York streets in North Camden knew Rivera as “Fatboy” or “Gordo,” but couldn’t agree on why he had taken a bus from Pemberton Township a couple of times a week to be there. To county and state narcotics investigators, he was a drug dealer. By 11 a.m. yesterday, investigators and angry residents were separated by police tape, and each group told contrasting accounts of how Rivera had died in police custody during a drug arrest near the intersection an hour earlier. “Four cops jumped on him and they beat him down,” said William Cruz, owner of a grocery store at the corner. “They kicked him in the face. I told them he
By 11 a.m. yesterday, investigators and angry residents were separated by police tape, and each group told contrasting accounts of how Rivera had died in police custody during a drug arrest near the intersection an hour earlier. “Four cops jumped on him and they beat him down,” said William Cruz, owner of a grocery store at the corner. “They kicked him in the face. I told them he couldn’t breathe.” According to the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, Rivera was having problems breathing because he was choking on a bag of drugs he swallowed while members of their office and state troopers attempted to arrest him during an alleged sale about 10 a.m. Rivera, who weighed 330 pounds – according to the state Department of Corrections – then struggled with the officers, authorities said. When he appeared to be in respiratory distress, he was taken to Cooper University Hospital in Camden and pronounced dead shortly after, authorities said.
