A Secaucus police officer was suspended twice in 2024, once for inflating his overtime and another for using a GPS tracker to track his girlfriend, the department’s annual major discipline report says.
“On November 14, 2023 Police Officer [Kiril] Petrov submitted an overtime slip for an Extra Duty Job that falsely represented the time he actually performed the work, which allowed him to get 1.5 hours additional pay based on that misrepresentation,” the incident description says.
He received a 30-day suspension after internal affairs sustained charges of of not showing obedience to laws and ordinances, as well as not adhering to rules and written directives.
The second incident, which occurred less than a week later, was far more severe and warranted a 210-day suspension.
“On November 20, 2023, Police Officer Kiril Petrov, while on duty, utilized an application on his personal cellular telephone to electronically monitor a woman’s whereabouts and location, who he was in a dating relationship with, via a GPS tracking device he placed on her personal vehicle, without her consent and/or knowledge,” the incident summary says.
“This is the second occasion that Police Officer Kiril Petrov placed a GPS tracking device on
this woman’s vehicle to monitor her whereabouts and location. Self admittedly Police Officer Petrov observed her location remotely, at least five times, while he was on duty on November 20, 2023, presumably distracting him from performing his legitimate police duties.”
The description continues that after Petrov’s shift ended, he used the GPS to locate the woman and “conducted covert surveillance” and observed her in North Bergen for an hour-and-a-half.
Petrov then surveilled “a male associate” of the woman and followed him “at high rates of speed” until he confronted him at an undisclosed location in Bergen County.
The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has mandated that all law enforcement agencies post their annual major discipline reports online by January 31st annually after the records became public for the first time in mid-2020.
Many still just submit to the AG’s office through an online portal and the state’s annual database has also not been updated with each department’s major discipline report yet.
HCV previously reported on the 2024 major police discipline reports for the Hoboken, Guttenberg, Bayonne, and Kearny Police Departments.
The North Bergen Police Department has not uploaded their report yet.