2016 NJSPBA
Valor Awards
M
ice
erito
rious Serv
Michael McCabe
Gloucester County Local 122
Going beyond the
breaking point
Valor means going above and beyond…the pain.
Valor can flow in a matter of life-changing seconds.
Valor is not an individual distinction.
So what Woodbury Heights Officer and Gloucester County
Local 122 Officer Michael McCabe experienced and endured
on April 13 could be a classic definition of valor.
McCabe had parked his patrol vehicle at the end of the shift
when he heard a call from the neighboring Deptford Police
Department of a burglary in progress. Woodbury was actually
closer than Deptford to the Hope Valley section of the county
where the suspect had been reported, so McCabe took off for
the scene.
Upon arrival, he found off-duty Deptford Officer Amanda
Meyers wrestling with the suspect. The suspect ran. McCabe
ran after him.
“We hopped over a couple of fences, and one of them, I didn’t
realize how steep it was,” McCabe recounted. “I landed wrong
and my leg got caught up in a bunch of chairs and tables. He got
up fine and ran off. I felt something like a tear in my leg.”
But McCabe pulled himself up and felt a rush of adrenaline.
He continued the chase and caught the suspect.
“I didn’t realize until the day after that I broke my leg,” he
explained. “I told my chief I think I did something to my leg. I
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NEW JERSEY COPS
■ DECEMBER 2016
went to urgent care, and they sent me to a hospital for an X-ray.
They told me I had a broken fibula.”
So McCabe ran down a suspect on a broken leg. Valor to be
sure. Almost superhero-type stuff, really.
But there’s more to this story.
McCabe was about to turn off the ignition on his car when
he arrived at headquarters. Another split-second and he would
have. And he would not have responded in time.
But there’s more to this story. McCabe reasoned that Meyers
deserves much of the credit for apprehending the suspect.
“She did a hell of a job. She was actually fighting with the guy
for a good minute,” McCabe added. “He was probably all tired
out by the time I got there. None of this girl-versus-a-guy thing.
She’s a marine. She knows how to fight.”
Still, how do you give chase on a broken fibula and catch up
to somebody who has a pretty good head start?
“They were having a rash of burglaries in Deptford,” disclosed McCabe, who has been on the job for four years. “I was
sick and tired of hearing about these burglaries and those guys
getting away with it.”
Perhaps there is only one word to describe such conviction
and intensity: Valor. d