The NJ Police Chief Magazine - Vol. 27, Number 1 | Page 8

From the NJSACOP Archives….July & August
The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | July/August 2020
1933
New Brunswick Chief Michael O’Connell, a prominent member of the NJSACOP, died 5 weeks
after being stricken with a heart attack while on duty.
1935
The 1935 annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police was held in July
in Atlantic City, NJ. Serving as host was IACP President Siccardi of the Bergen County (NJ)
Police Department. Homer Cummings, U.S. Attorney General, addressed the conference delegates,
and began with these words:
Since I last had the honor of addressing a convention of the International Association of
Chiefs of Police in the autumn of 1934, consistent progress has been made in the
attempt, in which all of us are engaged, to deal with the problem of crime on a more
rational, more efficient and better integrated basis than has hitherto been practicable.
On account of its active participation and interest in what is being done, I need not
recite for your membership the various steps that have been taken during the past
several months to combat the criminal menace. Members of this Association were
present as delegates at the Conference on Crime that met at Washington from
December 10 to 13, 1934, and your distinguished President, Chief Peter Siccardi, was a
member of an Advisory Committee that I appointed to submit recommendations
respecting one of the most important actions taken at that Conference.
Chief Michael O’Connell (New Brunswick
PD) and Chief Peter Siccardi
(Bergen Co. PD)
That action, I need not state, was the approval of the establishment at Washington,
D.C. of a scientific and educational center, permanent in form and structure, to provide
national leadership in the broad field of criminal law administration and the treatment
of crime and criminals.
Thus the establishment of the “FBI Police Training School” – now more famously known as the
FBI National Academy – announced to the assembled chiefs. Three weeks later the first session
was held in Washington with a total attendance of 23 students. Chief Siccardi served as
“Chairman” of this first session, and can rightly be claimed as one of the institution’s founding
fathers.
Chief Henry Harrington (Carteret PD)
Chief Daniel Cady (Bayonne PD)
Chief Fred Roff (Morristown PD)
1940
The Annual NJSACOP Conference held at the Berkeley-
Carteret Hotel in Asbury Park on August 29, 1940, was
truly a training conference in every sense of the word. The
agenda was packed with presenters, beginning at 9:15
a.m. and running until the banquet at 7:00 p.m. Following
remarks from Governor A. Harry Moore and the President,
Chief Henry Harrington of Carteret, there were
presentations from Bayonne Chief Daniel Cady on “Police
Radios,” State Motor Vehicles Chief Inspector G.W. Ziegler
on “Accident Prevention,” Morristown Police Chief Fred Roff
on “Police Schools,” Hudson County First Assistant
Prosecutor William George on “Cooperation between
Officials and Chiefs,” Col. Mark Kimberling, Superintendent
of the New Jersey State Police on “Statewide Service and
Communications,” IACP Executive Secretary Edward Kelly
on “Improving Relations between Police Agencies,” and a
half-dozen more.
1973
On the morning of August 6 th Woodbine Police Chief Philip DeSantis was stabbed to death when
he stopped and questioned a robbery suspect. The suspect had earlier that morning stabbed a
gas station attendant in a neighboring town. Chief DeSantis had served as Chief of the
Woodbine Police Department for more than 20 years, and was due to retire in about 8 months
when he was fatally wounded.
NJ Governor A. Harry Moore and
Col. Mark Kimberling
(NJ State Police)
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