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NEW JERSEY COPS ■ FEBRUARY 2015
as part of his family.
Nevil shared.
Fiocco seemed to capture what everybody who came in contact with Stevens
loved about him:
In 2000, the advent of E-Bay and similar
internet sites brought a flourishing computer crime and financial fraud wave. Nevil
had been experimenting with efforts to
battle these crimes, and when a kid he said
was “crazy bright…super smart” came
along in the form of Stevens, Nevil’s superiors assigned the kid to him and let them
go after it.
“He was a bear,” Fiocco submitted. “But
beyond that rough exterior, he had a big
heart.”
While his friend went to college, Surtees
joined the military. After finishing his tour
overseas, he would often consult Scott for
advice to reconcile life and focus on
becoming a good cop. The guidance
helped Surtees make detective and left him
with a lasting impression of what made
Stevens truly special.
“He had no part-time morals,” Surtees
began. “He was firm, fair and compassionate and did the right thing for the right reasons all the time. He was the guy you
wanted standing next to you.”
Computer genius
Fiocco remembers an impact Stevens
made when he first joined the Ocean
County Prosecutor’s Office. Brought in to
apply his accounting expertise to the
emerging battle against electronic fraud,
Stevens had developed considerable technical expertise an affinity for all workings
related to computers.
One was put in front of him one day
that had been seized in a raid and smashed
with what looked like a sledge hammer.
Retrieving any data to help this case
seemed insurmountable, if not impossible.
“He was on it for hours and hours until
he figured out a way to get the information
out,” Fiocco said. “He just kept going until
he got it out.”
Lieutenant Mike Nevil, who retired
from the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office
the day after Stevens was laid to rest, spearheaded the county’s Computer Crimes
Unit. He took Stevens on to his team
because of his meticulousness. “He had a
process behind everything, from taking a
phone call to uncovering an evil person,”
“Every case he did, he would just keep
going,” Nevil commented. “I would say to
him, ‘Dude, enough already.’ But he just
wanted to keep digging and digging.”
Fortunately in the early 2000s, Stevens
kept digging on a case that would define
and distinguish the fight against computer
crime in Ocean County. At the time, chat
rooms were rearing their ugly side of sexual
predators chasing young girls. A school
resource officer brought such a case to
Nevil, and he handed it over to Stevens.
To cut through the chase, Stevens
coaxed the predator to a meeting at the
Ocean County Mall where he thought he
was seeing the young girl and busted him.
What really impressed Nevil, however, was
the way Stevens was able to interview the
girl with her parents and get her to give up
the suspect, the way he was able to get the
family to let him use her computer to
extract chats and replicate them to set up
the meeting and what happened after the
arrest.
Stevens found a bevy of VHS tapes in the
predator’s pick-up truck. They turned out
be tapes of him with other victims. Stevens
went through them all nearly frame-byframe and uncovered evidence that
revealed the man had been preying on girls
across the country, even getting on airplanes to go meet them.
The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office
seized the pick-up truck, and Stevens
drove it for a while as his county car for several years. Apparently it meant so much to
Stevens because, as Nevil revealed, it represented taking such a piece of garbage off
the street.
Nevil wants everybody to know that the
success of the computer crimes unit is due
to Stevens. And his colleagues want everybody to know that he brought the intensity
and tenacity to every case. He was most
likely headed to something related to
working with a Special Operations Unit on
a narcotics investigation when his car
crashed. A month before his death, he
received a Certificate of Unit Commendation for work helping to curb the heroin
epidemic in the county.
“He didn’t make any distinction
between cases you wanted to spike the ball
on after solving,” Surtees contributed.
“They were all cases like that to him. Scott
was more than good at his job. I wouldn’t
want Scott chasing me. No matter how
long it took, he would catch me.”
For Dawn and Scotty
Nevertheless, all of his friends and colleagues insist Scott’s legacy will be Dawn
and Little Scotty. The Local 238 members
know him as the guy who used to bring
Dawn coffee when she was on duty.
Cernek described them as “perfect whitepicket-fence family.”
Dawn is known as perhaps the best dispatcher throughout the county. If you have
ever seen the CBS drama Criminal Minds,
you might know the character Penelope
Garcia, the FBI analyst who is always finding warrants and other information
needed to further the case. Surtees says
Dawn could be the muse for Penelope.
Many friends and colleagues also say
that Little Scotty will eventually become
his dad. Others say he already has.
“His legacy will be Little Scotty,” Cernek
added. “So much love has poured out for
the family because of who they are.”
Among the speakers eulogizing Stevens
at his funeral was Dan DeMichael, his
brother-in-law. He completed his remarks
evoking Bruce Springsteen’s Terry’s Song,
words that perhaps capture how all of law
enforcement will remember Stevens:
…Love is a power greater than death
just like the songs and stories told.
And when she built you, brother,
she broke the mold. d