President’s Message – July 2009

Dear Members,

As the summer season approaches the Italian American Police Society of New Jersey remains very active.   Our Exective Board is hard at work planning a number of important events.   Our Annual Family Summer Picnic/Pool Party is being planned and as this newsletter reaches your homes the Society will have participated in another Special Olympics New Jersey Summer Games.   Our organization remains a Platinum Sponsor of the Law Enforcement torch Run for Special Olympics.   I am so happy to report that our brother member and friend Sgt. Scott Simonetti of the Belleville PD is swiftly recovering from his life threatening illness.   We are very thankful for the members who gave the Simonetti family so much concern and care during a very difficult time.   We are so fortunate to have so much support for the very successful fund raiser for Scott. Please keep him in you prayers as he continues to recover.    Our organizations member-ship continues to grow and expand in Central and South Jersey and the Executive Board always looks for programs that the membership finds valuable to develop.   Our organization is always there to support our members and I invite you to take a more active role in the Society’s events and committees.   I invite all members that do not regularly attend our meetings to come to one meeting and meet our Executive Board in person to introduce yourself. I ask that you have a friend or colleague join our organization during 2009 to make us even stronger.   Recently I had  legislation introduced by our friend Sen. Anthony Bucco of Morris County placing a member of our organization on the NJ Police Training Commission.   This important Commission makes many important decisions regarding the training and status of law en-forcement officers and I feel that our large organization should have a voice in these decisions. I look for-ward to this legislation mak-ing progress in the coming months.       Finally I would like to applaud our Executive Secretary Patrick Minutillo who serves as the editor of this outstanding newsletter.    In addition Pat serves as the Chairman of the Law & Legislative Committee and is always vigilant on track-ing matters of  interest.     I would like to wish all members and their families a healthy and happy summer and look forward to speaking to you in person at an upcoming event.

Be Safe!
William Schievella
President