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State troopers caught waving a Puerto Rican flag in a photograph along with evidence from a Camden drug bust received 20-day suspensions. (File photo)

TRENTON -- Five state troopers who celebrated a Camden drug bust by waving a Puerto Rican flag in front of a camera were given 20-day suspensions after the photos became public, documents show.

The discipline, disclosed for the first time in a recent State Police report, came five years after the 2009 photos were taken. Meanwhile, another trooper claims he was wrongly blamed for leaking the images and remains suspended without pay.

The photos, which were obtained by The Star-Ledger in 2012, show a haul of drug paraphernalia, money and guns on a table -- the apparent proceeds of a State Police investigation in the city, where nearly half the residents are hispanic.

In one photo, a trooper gives the thumbs up sign while holding the flag. In the other, he is joined by four other troopers in the celebration. At the time, prominent Latino leaders in New Jersey called for an investigation, noting that the State Police had struggled in the past to recruit hispanic members and until 2009 had been under federal monitoring for racial profiling.

The incident resurfaced earlier last year in a lawsuit in which a Puerto Rican trooper, Kenneth Franco, alleged he had been targeted in a series of bogus internal investigations, including one into the leak of the flag photos.

The five 20-day suspensions were disclosed in the most recent annual report of the State Police Office of Professional Standards, an internal watchdog created after the federal oversight was lifted. The report provided summaries of "major discipline" for violations including insubordination, making false reports and on-duty substance abuse.

This photo apparently depicts a New Jersey State Police trooper holding a Puerto Rican flag after a 2009 drug and weapons bust in Camden. State Police said they are investigating this and other photos.

The report, released at the end of 2015, also contained four entries that stated a member of the force "pled guilty to acting to the discredit of the Division in an official capacity by appearing in a photograph with another enlisted member who as holding a national flag in front of a table displaying narcotics and weapons seized during a criminal investigation."

A fifth entry referred to the trooper who waved the flag.

It continued: "The flag was neither evidence nor part of the criminal investigation and there was no justifiable or legitimate reason to display the flag in the photograph."

The report did not identify the troopers by name.

When asked about the incident, Capt. Stephen Jones, a State Police spokesman, said the division "takes very seriously any incidents of misconduct that damage our public reputation and negatively impact our relationship with the community that we work so hard to build."

He declined to identify the troopers, calling the incident an internal personnel matter. But the flag-waving trooper was identified by the Attorney General's Office in a recent court filing as Kenneth Sirakides.

Angel Cordero, a Camden activist and ally of Gov. Chris Christie who complained to the governor's office about the photos when they became public, said he was satisfied with the punishment.

"I didn't want them to lose their jobs," Cordero said. "I just wanted them to know that what they did was wrong. We take our flag very seriously. Just like we love the American flag, we love the Puerto Rican flag."

But Cordero took issue with the fact that after State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes pledged a full report on the investigation into the photos, he learned about the suspensions from a reporter. He also said State Police investigators who questioned him about the source of the photos wrongly blamed Franco, whom he had never met, for the leak.

In court papers, Franco claims he became a target after Sirakides accused him of having an affair with his estranged wife, Georgina, who is also a trooper.

Franco and Georgina Sirakides earlier last year filed an explosive lawsuit in state and federal court claiming they've been suspended without pay from the State Police for several years because of bogus allegations made about their behavior during a 2011 prostitution sting in Atlantic City, where the two were working on a vice detail.

They claimed Kenneth Sirakides and other troopers harassed them and made false allegations of impropriety stemming from Georgina Sirakides' undercover work, in which she posed as a prostitute.

That suit, first reported by MyCentralJersey.com and later Fox 29 in Philadelphia, is currently stalled pending an administrative review. Their attorney, David Azotea, balked when informed of the punishment given to the five troopers in the Camden photos.

"They get a slap on the wrist with a 20-day suspension, and my clients are in this indefinite exile because they want to clear their names," he said.

The report that disclosed the punishment also noted a 10 percent increase in the number of complaints filed against state troopers between 2013 and 2014.

Jones, the State Police spokesman, noted that while the overall number of complaints had gone up, the number of substantiated complaints -- those found to have merit and result in discipline -- had declined. He also said more complaints were being generated internally, suggesting the division was being more vigilant about correcting misconduct in-house.

The OPS logged a total 720 complaints against the division in 2014, as well as 600 compliments from members of the public, the report said.

Read the full report here:

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.