Ex-stripper sues police chief
The nearly 11-year veteran of the force earlier in 2010 was elected president of the National Latino Peace Officers Association (NLPOA), the largest national group of its kind. The association, founded in California in 1974, was created to promote the hiring, welfare and unity of Hispanic law-enforcement agents in a broad spectrum of local, county, state and federal capacities nationwide.
It was in that capacity that Maldonado recently met with Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill at a function in Washington, D.C.
Maldonado founded the NLPOA’s New Jersey chapter in 2003, citing a lack of organization and unity among the state’s many Hispanic police officers. That chapter today includes a healthy roster of eight subdivisions, including groups representing the State Police and Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Mercer, Monmouth, Morris and Union counties. The detective, whose parents immigrated here from Puerto Rico, grew up on Watchung Avenue just steps from police headquarters.
Maldonado was a police cadet here at age 14, and the 1986 Plainfield High School graduate joined the local force in 2000 after graduating from the Union County Police Academy. Today he is attending Fairleigh Dickinson University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in public administration, and is the recipient of three meritorious duty awards, five excellent duty awards, five commendation awards, one life saving award, nine perfect attendance awards and multiple letters of commendation in his law-enforcement career.
The former stripper, Justina Cardoso, filed suit on Dec. 22 claiming Col. John Whiting violated the rights protecting her from illegal searches and granting her due process. The 21-year-old Cardoso, who lives in Pawtucket and performed at the Satin Doll strip club in Providence, is seeking $250,000 in damages from Whiting.
Whiting, of North Attleborough, Mass., has been suspended without pay from his job as North Providence police chief since his September arrest. He pleaded not guilty earlier this month to charges he stole the money from Cardoso's Coach pocketbook and then tried to cover it up. His next court date is Feb. 16.
Whiting was driving to work in an unmarked police vehicle on Aug. 28 when he activated his police lights and began chasing Cardoso's Ford Explorer in Pawtucket, police say. Whiting, 57, told police someone inside the Explorer threw an object at his vehicle as he was trying to pass it. The SUV, in which Cardoso was a passenger, had slowed down to try to get around a fallen tree, police said.
The chase ended when the SUV crashed into a parked car and the people inside fled.
Whiting later admitted to a Pawtucket officer that he stole money from a pocketbook "loaded with cash" that he found inside the SUV, investigators wrote in an affidavit. The Pawtucket officer said Whiting gave him the money and told him to spend it in Las Vegas and not discuss it.
Cardoso's lawsuit claims Whiting illegally went through her SUV and took her money, which police say she earned at the Satin Doll and from a man who paid her for "her company." She also claims Whiting violated her privacy.
Her civil attorney declined to comment on Tuesday. Messages also were left Tuesday for Whiting and his criminal defense attorney.
After the car chase, Cardoso was arrested on a warrant for an unrelated criminal matter. She pleaded no contest last month to three charges in an extortion and blackmail case and to one count of marijuana possession.