NEW JERSEY COPS ■ JULY 2014
ophy and fanatical fraternalism that can
lift the organization through what he
calls the biggest fight in the history of the
PBA.
“I had a dream that I was PBA President last night,” Colligan quips when
beginning his first sit-down interview as
president with his official magazine.
“Then, I woke up, went to the bathroom
and said, ‘holy s_ _ _, I am President.’”
Know this about your new president:
He is clever, creative and committed.
And there’s a lot more where that comes
from.
“If you have read my articles, you
know I don’t hide too much; I’m a pretty
open guy,” Mr. President says. “I try to
keep my sense of humor no matter
what’s going on. You have to keep a smile
on your face. The union can be aggravating at times, but I try to look for the
silver lining. There’s always something
positive about everything in life.”
A word you will hear come up often in
conjunction with President Colligan is
“affable,” which makes him friendly, likable, personable, simpatico, goodhumored, good-natured, courteous,
gracious, approachable, amenable and
gregarious, among other executive qualities. It also makes him simpatico with
the theme that introduces the PBA’s new
leadership duo, for which we will make
you read through only one Butch Cassidy reference and that is to another
memorable line: “You just keep thinking,
Butch. That’s what you’re good at.”
“At the end of the meeting, Tony told
me, ‘You were brought here because of
your business sense and your personality,’” President Colligan related. “My personality is what helped me get here. I
have a lot more responsibility, but my
personality is not going to change.”
Timing is everything
So you want to talk about perfect timing: When the announcement was made
to the Board of Delegates that Pat Colligan was being named Executive VicePresident in the wake of Keith Dunn’s
resignation and, in effect, be the next
PBA President, he wasn’t even there.
That was the morning of June 24 in
Atlantic City. Wieners told Colligan the
announcement that he was being
named to replace Dunn would be made
that Tuesday at the Board of Delegates
meeting, and Colligan replied that his
daughter was graduating from high
school that morning.
“I told Tony that I would pass up the
graduation,” Colligan said, “but we
agreed that was not the way we wanted
to start this thing.”
Now, you really want to talk about perfect timing: When Colligan graduated
from the academy and joined Franklin
Township in 1992, he was assigned to a
patrol coach on his first day. His guy happened to be Darren Russo, then the
Local 154 State Delegate. That also happened to be the time when five Franklin
Township officers had been indicted and
were pending trial.
Colligan soon started writing letters
on the officers’ behalf that wound up as
editorials in the local paper. The handwriting was on the wall for him at that
point.
“Those guys were on the verge of
being finger-printed for prison, but
when I saw how the union got involved I
was like, wow, this is the right thing to
do,” he said. “I had an instant love for the
union. When I was at the academy, one
of the captains who hired me said I was
going to be the next chief. If I got in the
car with somebody else besides Darren
that morning, I might have gone to take
a promotional exam, worked my way
through the ranks and never realized
how important the union is.”
Patrolling with Russo provided a daily
lesson for Colligan in many aspects of
PBA works. In 2001, he became the Local
154 State Delegate. He joined the State
Executive Board and rose to Sixth Vice
President