www.njcopsmagazine.com
control, he went back to his office.
Even though the officers who
responded to the scene were friends of
Stevens, they didn’t recognize him because
he was so bloody. The license plates documented the car as being undercover but
had no authorized user.
“It wasn’t the car usually assigned to
him,” Fiocco related. “The paperwork said
John Stevens, and nobody realized it was
him because they all knew him as Scott. It
wasn’t until they found his portable radio
that was ejected from the vehicle. When it
was turned on, his badge number came up
and then we knew who it was.”
Surtees had been in his office for about
five minutes when his lieutenant walked in
and told him, “It’s Scott.”
“I had no idea what he was talking
about,” Surtees admitted. “I asked him,
‘Scott who?’ When he told me it was Scott
Stevens, I thought, ‘Oh my God. What
about Dawn?’”
Lacey Township Police Chief David
Paprota had just told Dawn about the victim and escorted her to the hospital. Surtees headed to the scene of the accident.
He lives about a mile from the site. When
he arrived, he couldn’t tell what direction
Stevens had been heading. Nobody witnessed the accident. Nobody knows what
caused it.
■
FEBRUARY 2015
“I don’t know if we ever will,” he added.
“Nobody knows why it happened.”
The initial exam showed Stevens had
very few broken bones but he did suffer a
head trauma. Nobody knew how severe at
first. A combination of Ocean County officers from Local 171, Lacey Township Local
238 and other parts of the county set up a
round-the-clock detail at the hospital.
“It wasn’t as bad as they thought, so we
were hopeful for a recovery,” Fiocco reported. “We saw there was actual trauma to the
brain and as time went on, nothing really
changed. They tried to bring him out of an
included coma, but they had to put him
back under sedation. That was a sign that
things weren’t going all that great.”
At 3:32 a.m. on Jan. 21, one week before
his 45th birthday, Detective John Scott
Stevens was pronounced dead.
“We
sometimes talk about how only the good
die young,” Surtees exclaimed. “In this
case, it’s true.
Number 77
Scott emerged as something special
even at a very young age. Local 238 State
Delegate John Cernek remembers him as
an enthusiastic kid whom everybody knew
because he was involved in so many activities.
NJ COPS TRIBUTE
31
Sports was his greatest venue prior to law
enforcement. He stablished a legacy as a
wrestler and football player. Surtees does
not recall Scott’s exact position or specific
accomplishments.
“His uniform number was 77,” Surtees
noted. In the world of sports, recalling a
uniform number 30-plus years after the
fact might be as high as the praise comes.
He left his athletic career behind to attend
Seton Hall University where he graduated
with a degree in Business Administration
in 1992. The boy who impressed everybody
with his physical stature also was known as
a smart kid, which he proved by becoming
a certified public accountant and working
at renowned global manufacturer Ingersoll
Rand. He started his law enforcement
career with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, and spent five years there
before moving to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.
Beyond the job, Scott’s passions
emanated from his family. He loved coaching sports, and even at 10, Little Scotty, as
his son is known from Forked River where
the Stevens live to Lacey Township, has
become quite the football player and
wrestler under dad’s tutelage. Scott’s other
passion was