Summer 2003 Edition  

Looking Back:  After the Officer Was Murdered   Fair Lawn's Sgt. Bob Boyle answered these questions from Fair Lawn News readers about the murder of Officer Mary Ann Collura.   Has the Department changed?  Basically the men and women of the police department are a little more cautious now. It's been drilled in to their heads from day one at the police academy that it can happen anywhere. But of course with Officer Collura's death, the reality really hit home. The department as a whole hasn't implemented any changes yet. Did she die due to a lack of training?   No.  She did not die due to lack of training, either hers or Officer Farrell's. Mary Ann had attended an in service training course in "street survival" for two weeks at the Police Academy that the department sent her to and she had also attended seminars by a company run by retired police officers in officer survival at her own expense while taking vacation time. Mary Ann had also purchased with her own money videotapes, produced by this company for training purposes. In addition she was a firearms instructor. She took of all of the training offered by the department, as well as additional training on her own time and at her own expense. Not all murders of police officers are preventable. We don't go to work expecting to be murdered, but we all have it in the back of our minds, that it could happen to us. There is a certain amount of danger inherent in this job, yes, even if you work in Fair Lawn and we accept that. It comes with the territory. If you're not willing to take the risk, you're in the wrong occupation. The truth is, the persons responsible for this murder was Omar Marti and the people who made it possible to continue in his chosen occupation by purchasing drugs from him.   Did Officer Collura have the proper equipment?  As far as equipment goes, we just received more powerful guns as well as new leather gear after the Mayor and Council approved it.  This occurred prior to Officer Collura's murder, she was armed with the new gun. What would have happened if she used her gun and the guy she was chasing was unarmed?  Something to think about for those of you members of the public. If Marti was unarmed, and officers approached him with guns drawn, some of you may have thought that the officers overreacted. Some of you may have even accused the officers of profiling since Marti was of Hispanic descent and both officers were white. In a dark alley beside a church the officers had only a split second to react if Marti moved suddenly in the shadows and it turned out he was unarmed, the officers careers would have been ruined, they may have been criminally prosecuted and perhaps subject to a multi million dollar lawsuit. No doubt the news media would be all over it, sticking their cameras into his grieving relatives faces as they explained what a good boy he was. That is in the back of every police officer's mind also. For those of you who don't think so, recall the Spath case in 1990 that occurred in Teaneck and what that officer had to go through being unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Florio Adminstration under tremendous political pressure. They wanted him so bad, they even took the local prosecutors office off the case and the medical examiner when they didn't like his autopsy report. Ultimately justice prevailed and he was found not guilty and federal government declined to prosecute on federal civil rights charges but it ruined the officer's career.For an example of how quickly things can get ugly, go to the following link real stories of the NJ State Police. Then scroll down to the story titled "and then I felt the impact". It's a first hand account by a New Jersey State Trooper who was shot in the line of duty. Fortunately, the trooper survived, unfortunately, he was seriously injured, like Officer Farrell. Does this show us that serious crime can occur anywhere?     I cannot begin to recall how many times people would criticize us for treating someone "like a criminal" when we used the defensive tactics that we were trained to use. People have told me "What do you think this is, the South Bronx? This is Fair Lawn" As if it was impossible that a Fair Lawn Police Officer could ever be attacked. The truth is a police officer can be attacked anywhere and we are trained a certain way to try to successfully defend these attacks. So the next time a police officer stops you for a minor traffic violation late at night and seems to be overcautious in approaching your car, don't be offended, he or she is not doing it to degrade you or intimidate you, they are doing it because they want to go home in one piece at the end of the night and they have no idea whether you are just an ordinary citizen who made a minor mistake or a heavily armed criminal. There is also a perception that only an out of towner would attack a police officer. This is false, I've been attacked by Fair Lawn residents on domestic disputes, bar fights (with weapons) as well as by some of our homegrown burglars, drunks and drug addicts. Most of the people of Fair Lawn are good people, but we do have some bad ones right here in town also.   What was Mary Ann really like?    Everything good you've read about Officer Collura is true. She really was a wonderful person and a fine police officer. I knew her over 20 years when she first rode with me as a reserve police officer. I worked on the same shift as her for many years as her supervisor until the summer of 2001. Our very last conversation occurred the day before her death. She had heard from another firearms instructor that I was not yet completely comfortable with a new gun that the department had just issued us. I had qualified with it, but I still wanted to bring my score up even higher. She offered to work with me to improve my score the next time she was at the range. She had walked up to me and approached me on her own initiative, not mine. That's the type of person she was. Always willing to be helpful. I think Father McCrone, the Roman Catholic priest who conducted her funeral mass hit the nail right on the head. She might have been taken from us physically, but her spirit is still alive and well. She will be sorely missed.     How did you feel about Fair Lawn's outpouring of support?    The outpouring of support for Mary Ann's family and the department from the people of Fair Lawn has been absolutely overwhelming. Often we have a cynical view of the public because we deal with undesirables so much. Even when we deal with the "normal" people they are at their worst such as someone who just had his new car totaled in a traffic accident. The support we've received from the public at this very difficult time has been very much appreciated. Residents gathering at Officer Collura's spontaneous memorial on the front lawn of the municipal building as well as the vigil, residents who lined the funeral procession route with signs of support, strangers walking up to us on the street and offering their condolences and residents who have contacted us with offers of donations to her family or the scholarship fund made quite an impression on myself as well as the other officers. Thank you.