From the NJSACOP Archives... July & August
The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | Summer 2025
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:
Chief Siccardi
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.
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 – was announced in New Jersey 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.
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.
Governor John Moore
1941 The July 17, 1941, edition of the Courier-News reported that: City Judge Edmund J. Kiely will be a principal speaker at the New Jersey State Police Chiefs Association convention in Wildwood tonight recalled to several veteran policemen here that Judge Kiely’ s father, the late Police Chief Patrick S. Kiely was one of the founders of the organization.
Chief Kiely, together with Chiefs John C. Tenney of Elizabeth and Frank Monahan of Jersey City, laid the groundwork for the organization in 1912. Chief Kiely was president of the association in the third year of its existence.
Chief Patrick Kiely
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