2016 Out of Darkness Walk
Sayreville Local walks to share
a lesson learned
The Out of Darkness Walk can be a time of reflection for
those walking to remember and honor a loved one lost recently. And a time to heal.
The 2016 walk was time well spent for members of Sayreville Local 98. They came out to remember Brother Matt
Kurtz who was lost to suicide on March 21 of this year. The
Local had 16 strong honoring Kurtz, many from the midnight patrol shift he worked.
One of those was Local 98 State Delegate Steve Maslowski,
who shared some of the lessons learned from losing Kurtz.
“Your awareness is definitely up,” Maslowski shared.
“We’ve gotten closer, and we’re probably talking about different things that we wouldn’t have talked about before this.”
Local 98 came out to honor the contributions Kurtz made
to the community and to the Local. They walked thinking
about the good times they all shared and to confirm that
Kurtz was a good man, a good person and a good law enforcement officer.
“He was a cop’s cop and we all miss him,” Maslowski added.
Local members have been attending to Kurtz’s wife and
his two small children, stopping by their house regularly and
handling many of the household chores. And they are advising all members to do more.
“That we take the peer liaison training and that we keep
an eye on everybody,” Maslowski asked. “It’s kind of hard. He
didn’t give any indications. So we all have to stay on top of
everyone and take care of everyone.” d
Members of Sayreville Local 98 and
their family members participated in
the Out of Darkness
Walk to honor their
brother they lost to
suicide this year.
Local 105 taking steps toward
awareness and prevention
The 2016 Out of Darkness Walk offered the next steps on a
very personal journey for State Corrections Local 105.
State Delegate Ray Heck and Vice-President Sean Sprich
joined the masses not only to represent a faction of law enforcement that has been hit particularly hard by suicide, but to raise
awareness for their plans to promote suicide prevention within
their ranks. Sprich reported that Local 105 is currently working
on having a peer liaison trained in the Question-Persuade-Refer
method taught by Cop2Cop at each of its facilities.
Heck hopes this will be the first step in ensuring that he, and
all Local 105 members, will never have to go through what he
has felt losing two of his colleagues where he works at the state’s
Adult Diagnostic Treatment Center in Avenel.
“I can still remember. I can see, I can feel and I can taste the
day that I received those phone calls,” he recalled. “Then I started thinking what created the environment that put them in a
position where they had to choose to take their own lives. It’s
one of the things you really can’t define in words. When one officer dies, it takes a piece out of every one of you.”
Local 105 is also working with Princeton House Behavioral
Health to set up services from its Local headquarters in Trenton
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to have Director Dr. Michael Bizzarro, who assists with the State
PBA’s Clinical Services, and former Peer Liaison Chair Kenny
Burkert, its law enforcement outreach coordinator, on hand to
help members. The services will be free and confidential.
Sprich is especially devoted to seeing this help come for his
members. He knows how much the counseling can help having
come through Princeton House last year to resolve his own issues.
“That’s my own story, and hopefully I will be able to connect
with our members by them knowing I’ve been through some of
this stuff,” Sprich added. “We’re going to be looking and trying to
spot officers who need us to be there for them. Our first step is
being available for people.”
And another big step for Local 105 was coming to the Darkness Walk.
“It’s important to see the networking of support,” Heck noted.
“The key is to look at our officers every day and see if we can
catch any kind of factors that are changing their lifestyle. If there
is, we’ve got to try and identify it. And have a conversation about
it. We’re going to try to find out what works best, and that starts
by being here.” d