A guy walked into a police Emergency Service Unit garage in Newark at three in the morning, popped a bay door, climbed into an eight-ton armored truck built to survive gunfire, and drove off with it. That alone would make a decent story. The fact that the vehicle in question was a Lenco BearCat worth roughly half a million dollars, and that the whole adventure lasted barely two hours before it ended in a residential street in Irvington, makes it one of the stranger property crimes New Jersey has produced this year.
Christopher Bruton-Frazier, 39, of Maplewood, now faces 14 charges tied to the theft and to items investigators say they found in his bedroom two days later. He remains in Essex County Jail as of this week, with no attorney listed in court records.
What Actually Happened Inside the Ferry Street Facility
Bruton-Frazier arrived near the NJ Transit Police Emergency Service Unit headquarters at 703 Ferry Street shortly after 2 a.m. on July 14, dropped off by a Lyft driver who would later help identify him to investigators. Surveillance video allegedly shows him getting out of the car, walking to a gas station on Raymond Boulevard, attempting a purchase, then heading back toward the facility. He entered the building around 3:10 a.m. and, according to the affidavit of probable cause, simply walked through it until he found the garage bay housing the armored truck.
Roughly 50 minutes later, at 4 a.m., surveillance footage allegedly shows him climbing into the BearCat. He didn’t drive out cleanly. Court documents say he first steered into a dead-end section of the facility, smashing the truck into a parked ESU pickup and into fencing around the police K-9 kennels before finding the exit and leaving the property at 4:07 a.m.
What a BearCat Actually Is, and Why It Makes a Terrible Joyride
The vehicle is a 2018 Lenco BearCat, built on a Ford F-550 chassis by Lenco Industries in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. These trucks are designed for high-risk warrant service, barricades, and active-shooter response, not for covering ground quickly or quietly. Lenco’s own spec sheets describe the BearCat family as all-steel armored construction with a high ballistic protection rating, four-wheel drive, and seating for up to a dozen fully equipped officers. None of that adds up to a vehicle that handles like a stolen sedan. A BearCat is tall, heavy, hard to see out of, and built around survivability rather than speed, which is presumably why this one didn’t get far before someone noticed it idling in Irvington…