A NYPD cop has been arrested for stealing a safe containing over $50,000 in valuables from a childhood friend’s Bronx apartment and destroying security footage of the crime — and later looking up details of the criminal investigation in a police database, law enforcement sources said Wednesday.
Officer Luis Triunfel, 33, was charged Monday with burglary, grand larceny, computer trespass and tampering with evidence, police said.
Shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, Triunfel allegedly broke into his childhood friend’s apartment on Boynton Ave. near Bruckner Blvd in Soundview and loaded a safe into a shopping cart and wheeled it away, law enforcement sources said.
The safe contained $9,500 in cash, gold jewelry worth $38,500 and titles to the victim’s cars, plus the victim’s passport and U.S. permanent residency card, according to the criminal complaint against Triunfel.
Shortly after midnight on Aug. 31, Luis Triunfel allegedly broke into his childhood friend’s apartment on Boynton Ave. near Bruckner Blvd. in the Bronx and loaded a safe into a shopping cart and wheeled it away, law enforcement sources said. (Google)
Later that day, Triunfel returned to the apartment and disabled a security camera that had recorded the crime, the complaint states.
The night before the burglary Triunfel, while off duty, looked up the victim’s vehicle’s license plate in an NYPD database on his department-issued phone, the complaint states.
In the days after the robbery, Triunfel looked up the police report on the case multiple times while off duty without authorization — and on Monday searched the NYPD database for his own name, according to the complaint. He was arrested later that day.
Triunfel lives in the South Bronx and is assigned to the 28th Precinct, which covers Harlem. He has been an NYPD officer since May 2024, according to public records.
The NYPD’s 28th Precinct stationhouse on W. 123rd St. and Frederick Douglas Blvd. in Manhattan. (Mariela Lombard for New York Daily News)
A Bronx Criminal Court judge ordered Triunfel to surrender his passport and released him without bail during the officer’s arraignment Monday night. He was suspended from the NYPD without pay after his arrest.
Triunfel had no disciplinary history with the NYPD before his arrest, officials said. His lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment.