When there are only 2 customers in the store one of whom is you and the other is a uniformed police officer, that’s a bad time to test out your I’m going to swipe something from this guy without him noticing skills.
On Monday at 12:27 p.m., the officer momentarily put his cell phone down on a counter in the East Coast Catering deli at 769 Avenue A, Bayonne police Lt. Janine Foy said. When he went back to look for it, it had gone missing.
At that point, the officer addressed the only other patron in the store — a man later identified as Alvaro Raul Ortega, 34, of West 28th Street — about the missing phone, Foy said.
Ortega then admitted to taking the phone, removed it from his pocket and gave it back to the officer, she said.
That, of course, is an arrestin’ for theft, which is exactly what happened without incident after no further investigation whatsoever.