By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, October 26, 1990
The Record (New Jersey) | One Star | NEWS | Page B01
The chief suspect in more than 40 cat burglaries in four Bergen County communities over the past two months had been arrested on burglary charges in one of the towns in July and freed on bail.
Celious Lee Harmon of Teaneck, who was arrested Monday night on burglary charges, had spent nearly a month this summer in the Bergen County Jail after being arrested on burglary charges in Englewood, police said.
Harmon, who was captured Monday as he tried to flee from police at the Port Authority’s George Washington Bridge bus terminal in Manhattan, is fighting extradition to New Jersey, said Fort Lee Police Chief John Orso.
Police say that after Harmon posted $5,000 bail on the Englewood charges, he began burglarizing homes in Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, Fort Lee, and Tenafly in early September.
Orso said Harmon, 28, often rode the bus from New York City into affluent sections of the communities, broke into homes and stole valuables, and then rode the bus back across the bridge to the bus terminal, where he sold the stolen goods to support a crack cocaine habit.
Capt. C. Kenneth Tinsley of Englewood said that when the four-town burglary spree began Sept. 5, the Englewood Police Department knew who its chief suspect was. So did the Fort Lee Police Department.
“We knew who we were looking for because we had a set of footprints and a set of fingerprints,” Orso said. “We also knew he was traveling by bus between New York and New Jersey. “
The four communities formed a 30-person task force to track him down, but he eluded them. By the time he was captured Monday, he was suspected of more than 40 home burglaries in the four towns.
He was arrested after a chase by two Fort Lee and two Port Authority police officers at 180th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.
Tinsley said that Harmon’s arrest in Englewood in July came after a chase. He allegedly had broken into a home in the East Hill section of city. Police also found property stolen from a residence on Gloucester Street strewn along the path of the chase.
Harmon was arrested in Fort Lee in 1985 and sentenced to five years in prison after conviction on three counts of burglary, two counts of receiving stolen goods, two counts for possession of burglary tools, and two counts of resisting arrest. He was also a suspect in 18 other burglaries in Fort Lee, Orso said. He was paroled in 1988.
ID: 17321028 | Copyright © 1990, The Record (New Jersey)
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