NJ Cops June2018 | Page 40

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