Bridgeton police say warrant arrest ends with officer bite, suspect jailed

Bridgeton police said a warrant arrest at 1:16 a.m. Tuesday at Walnut Street and Cedar Street turned violent when Romero Flores-Silva bit an officer during the attempt to take him into custody. Flores-Silva, 37, was described by police as a homeless Bridgeton man.

The arrest grew out of an earlier encounter on May 7, when officers found Flores-Silva walking near Irving Avenue and Walnut Street after he allegedly damaged the front door of a residence. Police said he resisted arrest in that case and a brief struggle followed, leaving him with an active warrant that officers were trying to serve again on June 9.

Taken together, the two incidents show how quickly a warrant pickup can escalate when officers are dealing with someone already accused of resistance and damage to property. In this case, the June arrest added a new allegation of direct violence against police, turning a neighborhood-level enforcement call into a more serious criminal case.

The episode also lands in the middle of a larger housing and homelessness picture in Cumberland County and across New Jersey. Cumberland County’s population was estimated at 157,148 on July 1, 2025, and New Jersey’s 2025 point-in-time count found 13,748 people in 10,408 households experiencing homelessness on the night of Jan. 28, 2025. That statewide total was up 8 percent from 2024 and was the highest recorded since 2014. The count also found 1,995 unsheltered people, a 14.9 percent increase from the prior year.

For Bridgeton, the arrest is likely to renew attention on how police handle warrant service involving homeless residents, especially when prior confrontations already exist in the case history. It also comes against the backdrop of past scrutiny of the Bridgeton Police Department: in 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice said officer John Grier III admitted to violating a person’s civil rights by using excessive force during an arrest.

That earlier federal case was separate from Flores-Silva’s arrest, but it gives added weight to any new use-of-force allegation in Bridgeton. With the June 9 encounter now on the record, the practical questions are whether the officer needed treatment, what charges move forward, and how often these kinds of warrant pickups are colliding with broader homelessness pressures in the city.