Trenton cop under FBI probe loses mind, flips bird at Hamilton Police during car stop
By: A mouthy “idiot” Trenton police officer already under FBI investigation tried using her clout to get professional courtesy during a car stop, footage shows.
Veteran cop Tara Dzurkoc “flipped out” on Hamilton police officers who pulled over her new cop boy toy, Mercer County sheriff officer Matt Sickler, on Whitehorse-Hamilton Square Road last month over suspicion of domestic violence.
Officers stopped Sickler’s Chevrolet Silverado on Aug. 20 just before 8 p.m. after a woman flagged down officers, telling them she saw a man in black pickup assault a woman and shove her back into the vehicle, according to a police report obtained by The Trentonian through a records request.
Dzurkoc feistily denied that the two were involved in a physical entanglement and grew increasingly angry as the couple refused to provide their names to officers, footage shows.
“Are you sh**ting me?” she said when officers told her they needed the couple’s names so they could file a report.
“What if I say no? I don’t want to give my ID,” Sickler said. “Just asking out of curiosity.”
Dzurkoc went on to profanely berate cops as “a**holes,” demand that they bring a supervisor to the scene with whom she was buddy-buddy and repeatedly flipped them the bird.
The second time she threw the finger was in front of their supervisor, Sgt. Thomas DeVictoria, who was brought to the scene to calm down the out-of-control city cop.
“I’m f**king done with this bullsh*t. I didn’t do a godda** thing wrong. They’re talking to me like a piece of f**king shit,” an animated and irate Dzurkoc told DeVictoria. “I told them if he was to assault me he’d be under the fucking bridge not me. Not f**king me.”
“I know. I’ve seen you in action,” DeVictoria replied, trying to soothe the agitated cop.
“I’m the victim here, and they’re a f**king a**hole to me,” Dzurkoc said, before clarifying herself as “so-called victim” while using air quotes.
“Listen to me, Tara. I know you. I’ve backed you up before on jobs, “DeVictoria said. “Look it. Relax. Your boyfriend takes off and doesn’t stop. Now we’re thinking we’re in a car pursuit. I’m here to calm everything down. I wanna get you out of this, but you gotta understand where these officers are coming from.”
Cooler heads eventually prevailed with DeVictoria making the call to cut the couple loose without any charges.
But it did them little good, as they ended up getting hooked and booked on simple assault charges at a Best Western in Bordentown Township hours later, records show.
A police report in that case revealed that Dzurkoc allegedly pulled a hotel clerk down by the hair and kicked her while her boyfriend mixed it up with another man as everyone was checking into the hotel.
Dzurkoc’s aggressive tactics already caught the attention of the FBI.
The Trentonian reported last month that the city cop is being looked at by the feds for beating up a slight Guatemalan woman in 2020, while Dzurkoc was assigned to the U.S Marshal’s New York/New Jersey Regional Task Force.
The victim, Gloria Ramirez, filed suit against Dzurkoc, claiming she knocked out her teeth while wailing on her as she had a 3-year-old draped on her.
Ramirez, who pictures show was beaten black and blue, cooperated and provided a statement to the FBI, implicating Dzurkoc with using excessive force.
Some of Dzurkoc’s task-force colleagues were summoned by the FBI to give statements about what happened during the Jan. 7, 2020 flap.
Trump-loving Dzurkoc – an attorney suing the cop butchered the pronunciation of her name as Dee-Zer-Cock – was on injury leave from TPD following an on-duty crash.
She has since been suspended without pay following the encounters with Hamilton and Bordentown cops, as the department decides whether to fire her.
Her boyfriend Sickler was placed on desk duty.
Police sources previously described body-camera footage as ugly for Dzurkoc.
And footage shows her losing her mind several times while officers tried getting to the bottom of what occurred between the always-arguing couple.
Dzurkoc immediately identified herself as a Trenton cop while insisting Sickler never laid hands on her as she spoke to Hamilton Police Officer Nicholas Episcopo outside the pickup.
“You’re going to write your report for being flagged down? God bless you and waste your time. See ya later,” she said before getting back into Sickler’s pickup.
That’s when Episcopo called for a supervisor and told Dzurkoc she wasn’t free to leave. She later re-engaged with Episcopo.
“I’m a cop. I want to leave so let me leave with my boyfriend,” she told him, asking what pedigree information he needed from her to let the couple be on their way. “What more do you want? I don’t want nothing to do with you. The cops in general, in Hamilton. I’m sorry.”
Dzurkoc offered to jot down her name but Episcopo said he could handle it.
“You know why I’m irate? Because I’m being pulled over by you people. I’m a cop. And I don’t want to be pulled over from a f**king cop. I’m not even driving,” Dzurkoc said.
While waiting for DeVictoria to arrive, Hamilton cops chatted among themselves about the combative Dzurkoc as she shouted at them from the window, at one point telling them to bring over her Hamilton Police supervisor friends to get her off the hook.
One of the cops shot back, “They’re not gonna help you. You did this.”
Episcopo’s partner, Officer Brian Buchalski, then let colleagues know what he really thinks of the couple’s story and Trenton Police.
“His story sucks. He doesn’t want to talk to us. Something happened,” Buchalski said. “They tried to get away from us. They’re both full of sh*t. Whatever you don’t want to talk. No signs of injuries. No complaints. Nothing we can do about it. All we can do, but then we getting flagged down.
“Don’t tell me you’re from Trenton, who is in the news like every week for domestics and doing f**ked up sh*t and breaking rules and f**king everyone going to jail. Don’t use that over my f**king head. Not my f**king problem.”
As Dzurkoc continued bantering with officers, cops said she was “acting like an idiot” and “a f**king a**hole.”
Episcopo recounted for colleagues how he tried reasoning with Sickler, who he knew from law-enforcement circles.
“I tell him listen, man, she’s not f**king helping us. I’m asking her information and she tells me to go f**k myself and walks away. What would you do?,” Episcopo said.
“She’s obstructing, man. I’m gonna let that slide on camera? You tell me. He says you had discretion with obstruction. OK, all right. If nothing happened, nothing happened. It’s fine. But I can’t let her violate a law in front of me, dude, on camera.”
Dzurkoc later told DeVictoria what she really thought about Episcopo.
“The guy with the glasses, f**k him. I’m sorry. I know I’m on camera. I don’t give a flying sh*t anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to see that kid one more time in my entire life.”