Edison residents continued their education in the structure and procedures of the Edison Police Department at the latest weekly Civilian Police Academy class on Oct. 29, held in the municipal building off Route 27.
That night, residents learned about how the township reacts to emergencies, both natural and man-made, how police handle domestic violence cases, and how local emergency personnel maintain communications with one another.
The Civilian Police Academy, which began this year on Oct. 15, is a series of classes held by the police department designed to build community relations by informing residents about the nature of police work in general and the Edison Police Department in particular. Each class will focus on a different part of the police department.
The first to come in was Capt. Mark Anderko, coordinator for the Office of Emergency Management. Anderko explained how the OEM came about, how it works and what it does.
“If you want to wrap up emergency management in one word, it would be ‘relationships,’ ” said Anderko.
The OEM coordinator explained that he likes to think of emergency management as an umbrella. The pole represents the township that holds everything together. The arms off the top represent entities such as police, firefighters, emergency medical services and various volunteer groups within the community. The covering, according to the metaphor, brings the arms together and creates the protection one ordinarily associates with an umbrella.
Without a solid relationship with a person or group, Anderko asked, how can anyone know whether someone can be counted on in a crisis? So, Anderko said, much of the OEM’s time is spent building relationships by reaching out to various public and private entities, coordinating how they will work together when tragedy strikes.
This is part of the overall goal of preparing for disasters, so that people can react effectively when disasters happen. This involves meeting with township and private entities, drawing up plans, and running simulations, such as when the OEM worked with the school district on an “active shooter” drill last fall. Anderko cited things like floods and blizzards as examples of when the OEM’s preparations might be needed.
After a short break, residents were greeted by Lt. Greg Formica and Barbara Turanicza, a civilian employee, who talked about domestic violence and how the police and volunteer organizations coordinate their efforts to prevent and react to it.
Turanicza opened a presentation board filled with photos. Most eyes tend to immediately go to the photo at the bottom, Turanicza noted, as she gestured toward the picture of a woman with a black eye and various bruises. Fewer people notice the photos of what one might, from outward appearance, call “happy family,” though she noted that outward appearances do not preclude domestic violence.
“These could all be victims,” Turanicza said.
She said the Domestic Violence Response Team, for whom she was speaking, has many resources for people in violent relationships, such as shelters and financial aid, but that people’s reluctance to speak out keeps many victims in bad situations. This can be due to many reasons, she explained, including a person’s upbringing, since someone raised in a violent home might think such behavior is typical.
“Sometimes these victims don’t even know they’re victims… they think it’s normal,” said Formica.
It could also be due to financial or legal constraints, such as fear of one’s children being taken away, or a lack of resources to move out.
“These women feel they have nowhere to turn, and they have this ominous relationship, and [believe] ‘that’s my life,’ ” said Turanicza.
Turanicza said abusive relationships tend to follow a pattern of paranoid attempts at control. Such patterns manifest as the victim’s partner always wanting to know where the victim is at all times of the day, making attempts to spy on her (or him) and actively working to isolate the victim from social bonds outside their relationship. This behavior, she said, has lately begun to be seen in the relationships of younger people, extending beyond domestic situations and into dating violence.
She noted that abusive relationships tend to follow a cycle of tension, characterized by, among other things, moodiness, yelling, sulleness, property destruction and general “crazy making,” followed by explosive behavior where the physical abuse takes place. Then there is a so-called honeymoon phase, where the batterer apologies and begs forgiveness. Denial on the part of the victim works at each stage.
Formica said that in situations such as this, if the abused person must stay, that person should document everything. Meanwhile, the abused person should also pack a suitcase and keep it with a friend, so that the victim will at least have somewhere to go if the situation worsens.
If possible, a restraining order should also be sought.
“It does not stop everyone. We’ve got to live in the real world. … But it does protect the majority of people, believe it or not,” said Formica.
The last to speak was Sgt. Ken Schreck, who talked about the department’s communications system, which he called “the center of the universe for the township.”
Schreck said the communications system in the township serves not only the emergency services such as police, fire and emergency medical services, but every township entity, such as public works. He noted that occasionally, sewer emergencies occur, too. Each year, the communications system handles about 24,000 calls to the main police or fire line and about 4,000 calls to 911. He said that on Lincoln’s Birthday last year, the system fielded 1,000 calls in three hours.
“We are your lifeline. We are here for you all the time,” said Schreck.
In addition to the police officers who staff the communications room, the system also employs 33 civilians who are people’s first point of contact when they call about an emergency.
While the increasing popularity of cell phones has been problematic for emergency communications workers, because it’s more difficult to pin down the cell phone user’s exact location, through technology upgrades workers can usually tell where someone is within about 100 feet by tracking the signal through the cell phone towers.
Schreck pointed out that the communications dispatchers, who are trained and certified according to a rigorous state standards program, also need to be familiar with police and fire procedures in order to effectively help the people who call. He noted, for example, that people often call and say they have been robbed, but the operator needs to know whether what happened was a burglary (break-in, etc.) or a robbery (mugging, etc.).
“People don’t realize all these specialties the dispatcher needs to know,” said Schreck.
Dispatchers, he said, also assist in the event of medical emergencies. Not only do they need to calm people who may be on the verge of panicking or have already begun to panic due to their circumstances, the dispatchers can also instruct callers on what to do while they are waiting for an ambulance to arrive, such as how to clear someone’s blocked air passage or begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
This is all done from the communications center in the lower floor of the municipal building, where up to nine dispatchers, working in teams, spend hours answering calls and assisting people through the use of sophisticated computers with access to vast databases. These databases provide details such as areas where there are people who have special needs, areas with a history of incidents, license plate information, and more. Dispatchers, Schreck said, work a 10-hour day and all take turns dispatching for police, fire or EMS work, so they will be familiar with all protocols and be able to cover for each other.
“They don’t go home — they work Christmas, they work Thanksgiving,” said Schreck.
The Civilian Policy Academy will continue on Wednesday with a discussion of the traffic bureau and a demonstration by the S.C.I.T. (Special Crash Investigation Team) and Edison Fire Department on how they attend to and investigate a serious car crash.
Contact Chris Gaetano at sentnorth@
gmnews.com.