“Look Left, Look Right”
A Reflection for National Police Week
When I was a recruit at Sea Girt, we were told something that stuck with me ever since: “Look to your left, now look to your right - one of you won’t be here by the end of the Academy.” It was a sobering warning of the physical and mental challenges that lay ahead. At the time, the message was about perseverance, grit, and survival in a tough training environment.
But as the years passed and I stepped fully into the profession, that phrase took on a much deeper, more haunting meaning.
No longer was it just about who would graduate. It became about who would come home.
One of the first Line-of-Duty funerals I attended in uniform was for Officer Vincent Brock of the Paramus Police Department. Vinnie died in a horrific crash responding to a false 911 call in 1993. I had grown up knowing Vinnie. His loss shook me - not just as an officer, but as a person. It was my first personal encounter with the raw truth that wearing the badge means stepping into danger every day.
And sadly, Vinnie would be the first of many.
In October 1997, while visiting my younger brother at the DEA Academy in Quantico. Virginia, I had the chance to visit the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. My older brother, a fellow officer in Paramus (now Chief of Police), and I walked the path of remembrance, stopping to honor Vinnie’s name etched in granite. That walk was filled with emotion - honor, grief, pride, and pain. I found myself asking a question I never wanted answered: When will the next Jersey Trooper pay the ultimate sacrifice?
The very next day, I got my answer.
My classmate, Trooper Scott Gonzalez #5059, was killed in a gun battle in Northwest New Jersey. Scott’s name card had been just a few seats away from me when we first heard that same phrase in the Academy - “look left, look right.” He made it through training, proved himself as a remarkable Trooper, and was one of the best at finding the bad guys. But in the end, his name, too, was engraved alongside more than 24,000 others on that sacred wall.
This is the meaning of National Police Week.
It is a time not just of remembrance, but of reflection. It’s a time when we pause to honor the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice - not as faceless names, but as classmates, partners, friends, siblings, sons and daughters.
Their stories are our stories. Their sacrifices built the foundation of trust that communities rely on. Their courage continues to inspire those who put on the uniform today.
So this week, and for that matter every week, we look left and right - not just to remember who stood beside us - but to commit ourselves to the values they died upholding: duty, honor, and sacrifice.
To those who serve, to those we’ve lost, and to the families who carry on their legacy: we remember you, we honor you, and we will never forget you.