By Stephen Appezzato
SEA BRIGHT – A former Sea Bright police officer was sentenced to five years in state prison for various crimes targeting his ex-girlfriend.
According to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, from October 2022 to January 2023, Erich Bennett “engaged in a course of conduct that put the victim in fear,” including disabling her security cameras, slashing her car tires and keying her car, conducting unauthorized searches of the victim and four of her associates in a police database, and even threatening her with physical harm and sexual mutilation in person and through a fake social media account.
Bennett was arrested in January; in September he admitted to charges of computer theft, criminal mischief, hindering apprehension and stalking.
County Superior Court Judge Joseph Oxley sentenced Bennet last week to five years in state prison and ordered him to surrender his firearms, submit to a permanent restraining order with the victim and pay $4,800 in restitution. The 47-year-old former police corporal was also permanently barred from holding public office in New Jersey.
During the sentencing hearing, Bennett’s attorney, Mitchell Ansell, said the defendant was originally offered a plea deal in ex- change for probation. However, according to Assistant Prosecutor Melanie Falco, Bennett violated an order to have no contact with the victim by looking at her YouTube channel and subscribing to it on July 18. According to Ansell, this was simply curiosity and subscribing to her channel, which let the victim know Bennett looked at her account, was an accident.
Following the contact, the potential plea deal was scrapped, leading to the five-year prison sentence.
“To me, this doesn’t seem fair,” Ansell argued.
“This defendant swore an oath to keep the public safe from individuals capable of the type of conduct he ultimately committed, marking an egregious betrayal of the public’s trust,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond Santiago said in a release.
At the sentencing, Bennett’s former girlfriend read a statement for the record.
“We strongly commend the victim’s courage and fortitude in this matter,” Santiago said.
The article originally appeared in the December 14 – December 20, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
