NEW JERSEY COPS ■ AUGUST 2014
Lawn, Paramus and other Bergen County towns responded to the
scene within minutes because they all knew Goodell as the consummate police officer: uniform always immaculate, shoes
shined, hair cropped neatly, always in top shape. He walked the
walk, too.
“Everything he did, he excelled at,” said Waldwick Sergeant Jodi
Zuzeck, Goodell’s field training officer when he came out of the
academy and immediate past president of Local 217. “He was
being groomed for big things. If he kept going the way he was
going in both the department and the Local, he would have
ascended to a very high level.”
‘He never stopped caring’
Waldwick Lieutenant Doug Moore also knew Goodell since he
was a kid, when he was a bit of a mischief maker. According to
McBain, Moore was the one who protected them while growing
up in Waldwick and has as much to do with them becoming cops
as anybody.
“He loved doing his job and that was contagious,” Moore commented. “As an administrator in the department, you always want
a guy with a positive attitude to rub off on other guys, and that
was Chris.”
McBain said that they were “class clowns” together at Waldwick
High School, not beyond egging a couple of houses on Halloween. When they graduated, McBain went to college to play
basketball; Goodell went to community college and to work at a
local hardware store where Moore said the Waldwick cops got to
know him and like him.
Then, 9-11 happened. Goodell found that to be a calling and
joined the Marine Corps. He went to Iraq, and that all changed his
life.
“He came back from the Marines a man,” McBain explained.
“From that point on, he was always what the Marines call
‘squared away.’ His uniform was always pressed. He was in great
shape.”
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He came back and took the Civil Service test to join the Waldwick Police Department. This was a sign of how his career would
unfold: Goodell scored No. 1 on the exam, and went to work as a
dispatcher for Waldwick waiting for a job to open.
He went to the academy, graduated as a distinguished firearms
instructor and within five years, he was handling firearms training for the department, as well as managing its pistol range.
Goodell also became a tactical officer, a leader in teaching other
officers about MorphoTrust fingerprinting, and tried to take any
assignment he could.
“Every time we had something to do, the chief and I would find
ourselves looking at Chris,” Moore said. “He never stopped working, never stopped caring.”
Added Zuzeck: “He wanted to learn everything. He was like a
sponge. And he was good at everything.”
Local 217 State Delegate Vince Rizzo met Goodell when he was
13, and as he watched his close friend ascend, he knew what separated Goodell from other officers, really from other people in
general.
“There was never a moment when he said, ‘Oh man, I have to
go to work tonight,’” Rizzo said. “He cherished every second of
every shift.”
‘He’s still motivating me’
McBain was working road patrol on this night shift shortly after
Goodell’s death in a usual spot on Franklin Turnpike where Waldwick turns into Ho-Ho-Kus. The speed limit is 25 mph on that
stretch. A car came by doing 41.
“It was late, and for a moment I thought about letting him go,”
McBain added. “But then I thought about Chris and I stopped the
car. He’s still motivating me to do my job better.”
Word on the streets of Waldwick was that Goodell could find
a couple of violations in any car he stopped. He knew the Motor
Vehicle 39 laws backward, and Rizzo said he had a knack for seeing a car and “knowing that he would stop them, check the car
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