Police Unit y Tour
State Corrections
Her father’s daughter
For Ana Miglio, nothing defines unity
in law enforcement quite like the Police
Unity Tour. Ever since she rode in her
first Tour, Miglio has committed to rid-
ing for those who died — especially since
she’s riding for one who is family.
Miglio’s father, Eugene, was killed in
the line of duty as a Wildwood Crest Po-
lice Department officer in 1995, when
she was only 7 years old. The legacy that
her father left behind and the stories that
she’s grown up hearing about his com-
munity policing are what inspired Miglio
to follow in his footsteps and join law
enforcement. Her pride in carrying the
legacy of her father as a survivor has en-
hanced each of the four times she’s rid-
den into the National Law Enforcement
Officers Memorial with a group of first
responders who have become her family.
“It’s about your brothers and sisters in
blue coming together and remembering
the fallen,” shared Miglio, a sergeant at
Bayside State Prison. “We get to remem-
ber people like my father and Officer
[Fred] Baker. We keep their memories
alive so the new generations coming up
understand it.”
Her journey to the memorial with
Chapter II of the Tour was especially
memorable this year, as she rode along-
side her fiancé and Middletown Town-
ship Local 124 member, Dylan Young, for
the first time.
“He had such a strong ride,” Miglio
said of Young’s first Tour. “And the great
part is, he started [his career] at Wild-
wood Crest PD. He knew who my father
was before he even knew me.”
The crowd of Unity Tour riders that
filled the memorial reminded Miglio of
the pride that she has in law enforce-
ment and its mission to keep the memo-
ry of heroes like her father alive.
“It’s amazing that so many people
come together to do this because it’s
not something that we have to do, but
it’s something that everyone genuinely
wants to do,” she expressed. “We all want
to represent the people that we’ve lost.
To me, that’s a sense of pride and honor
that’s hard to put into words.”
Amber Ramundo
State Corrections Local 105
Lessons from the road
State Corrections Local 105 members
who work juvenile justice would like
to give their fellow officers – and their
inhabitants – a viewpoint of riding the
Unity Tour. Nicholas Keshecki, an officer
at the juvenile facility in Bordentown,
observed the impact of making his first
Tour this year.
“You have a single-file line riding, then
another line comes up next to us, and you
say, ‘Good morning. Where you from?’
They say, ‘California, where you from?’
‘New Jersey.’ And you talk like you have
known each other forever,” Keshecki re-
counted. “And you can be out there with
20-mile-per-hour headwinds, knowing
how brutal it is for two hours and not say
a word to each other. At the end, you give
each other a nod because you know what
you’re out there battling for.”
Juvenile Justice put together a team of
40
NEW JERSEY COPS
■ JUNE 2018
seven riders and one support person for
the fifth time that these Local 105 mem-
bers have ridden together behind the
leadership of member Frank Rizzo. Bat-
tling through the downpour that greeted
the Tour heading into Delaware was a
long way from that first year when three
members rode, and Rizzo had to borrow
a bike.
Officer Marco Hernandez was one of
three juvenile corrections officers mak-
ing his first ride this year. His opportuni-
ty to participate helped bring a lesson he
used to teach to recruits at the academy
to life.
“On the first day, I used to put the
number on the wall, which at one point
it was 20,000 and change,” Hernandez
explained. “I would ask, “Does anybody
know what that number is?” And nobody
would know. And I would tell them, ‘This
is the number of law enforcement offi-
cers that are on the Memorial wall who
can’t be here. Their families would give
anything to be in the spot that you are in
now. So remember that number. It’s mo-
tivation to train you guys and to look out
for your guys to make sure they never be-
come a number on the wall.”
Mitchell Krugel