A sergeant from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office office stole more than $10,000 in camera equipment from a photographer who had to abandon her bag after she was injured during clashes outside an immigrant detention center in Newark, the New Jersey State Attorney General’s office said Thursday.
The alleged theft happened as New Jersey State Police cracked down on protesters outside Delaney Hall, the metro area’s largest ICE detention facility, which has been the focus of ongoing protests since Memorial Day weekend in the days after detainees inside announced a hunger and labor strike.
“When an officer does what is alleged in this case, it is a disservice to the profession and the public,” state Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a statement.
The photographer was injured by a piece of wood and could barely walk in the commotion as state troopers moved to clear the roadway of protesters late Saturday night, her attorney, Wylie Stecklow, said. She’d tucked her bag aside so she could seek medical help, Stecklow said, asking that his client’s name be withheld.
The photographer’s bag was clearly labeled with her name, and her keys were airtagged. After a friend unsuccessfully tried to retrieve the bag later that night, they were able to monitor the airtag traveling to the house of Sgt. Darryl Brown of the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, according to Stecklow.
Federal agents use pepper spray against demonstrators outside the Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, May 28, 2026. Credit: Rosalind Adams/The City Reporter
The attorney general’s office of public integrity obtained a search warrant and found some of the camera gear still at his house Wednesday, Davenport’s office said in a statement.
Brown is facing charges of third-degree theft and is due in Newark Municipal Court in July. A criminal complaint wasn’t immediately available. Nor was information on a lawyer for Brown.
Essex County Prosecutor Theodore Stephen said Brown had been suspended without pay while the case is pending.
“There’s a lot of talk about the protesters being violent,” Stecklow said. In this case, he added, “it’s someone on the law enforcement side that is absconding with the First Amendment equipment that is impacting their ability [to get] the story out.”
Video of that evening showed the photographer in a wheelchair with other reporters begging to be let through the barricade of State Police officers with riot shields. Eventually she got through and was able to go to the hospital, Steklow said.
Protests erupted outside Delaney Hall on Memorial Day weekend in the days after detainees inside announced a hunger and labor strike, demanding the immediate release of medically vulnerable detainees and the eventual release of everyone else, among other demands.
Hundreds of protesters squared off against federal agents outside the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, May 28, 2026. Credit: Rosalind Adams/THE CITY
The labor strike continues, according to advocates, with many detainees refusing to work for GEO Group, the center’s private operator, for several dollars a day, cooking and cleaning. While the protest action was initially described as a hunger strike by detainees and advocates, most were eating snacks and food from the commissary, and skipping group meals in the mess hall.
For days ICE agents lined the perimeter of the property, beating demonstrators with batons and dousing them with pepper spray any time vehicles moving detainees entered or exited. Tensions escalated both inside and outside the facility, with guards pepper spraying men on two units that had been participating in the protest.
By Friday, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill called in state police, who used mounted officers, tear gas and projectiles to disperse protesters at nightfall.
By Monday Newark Mayor Ras Baraka stepped in, criticizing the state’s response, and Newark Police have manned the perimeter in the days since. New Jersey has sued in state court to try to force ICE to allow state health inspectors to fully inspect the building.
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