A New Jersey police chief was busted on Thursday for trying to buy cocaine and then having it sent to his post office box, officials said.
Michael Coppola, the 43-year-old top cop of the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police Department, thought he was ordering cocaine through the internet and was having it delivered to a mail spot in Passaic County, Bergen County prosecutors told The Record.
In a probe that also involved U.S. Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, investigators filled a package with fake cocaine and put it in a post office box owned by Coppola, officials told WKXW-FM.
He picked up the package before agents stopped and arrested Coppola on Route 80 in Ridgefield Park, officials said.
He’s been charged with alleged attempted possession of cocaine.
Coppola’s 28-officer department patrols an 11-mile stretch of the highway between the George Washington Bridge and New York state line.
The chief was reprimanded earlier this year when prosecutors found he ran incentive programs for his cops to write more tickets.