Bridgewater Police Chief Departs for 'Other Opportunities'

The day after Bridgewater Chief of Police Richard Borden marked his 31st anniversary with the department Tuesday, he returned to his office to begin cleaning it out.

Borden, 58, retired this week, with an eye toward new opportunities that he's long wanted to pursue.

"It's been my honor and privilege to have had this job," he said about both his seven-year stint as chief and the full 31-years in the department that started when he was just out of college. Instead of following his plans to become a teacher and coach at that time, the Jersey City native became a police officer in a town he wasn't very familiar with.

"I sort of took that road and this is where I ended up," he said. "It's been a great thing."

Borden, a Bridgewater resident, said those opportunities could include a second career in academia—but he expects to continue to referee basketball games on weekends as he's done for years.

Looking back on his time in the chief's office, Borden said he's particularly proud of efforts he lead to make the department more professional through regular training opportunities for officers and a formal promotion policy.

"We take great pride in the training," he said. "We tried to address some of the the needs we think are important for a police officer."

And when the department received accreditation by the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police and The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies earlier this year, Borden said one of his goals when he first became chief was completed.

"It's not a big accomplishment for me—it's for everyone involved here," he said, noting the effort required the department to withstand intense inspections of its policies, practices and patrols.   

His long career in Bridgewater has its low points, times when police were tested by strings of crimes or other events. Borden said he remembers well the period in 1996 when a period of violent crimes left a mark on the new lieutenant in the detective bureau.

"I remember I was having dinner with my mother in Bound Brook when I got the call there'd been a murder in Martinsville," he said. It was the 1996 murder that led to the conviction of Walter Tormasi. 

Another murder occurred not too much longer, the double murder of Dorothy Stetson and Edward Kennedy, that ended when officers followed the single lead they had on the case: Stetson's debt card was used at four ATMs in the area.

"In 1997, they didn't have cameras and there weren't too many people using ATMs that much," Borden said. So officers simply watched the locations being used, and when they confronted Andrew Jacobsen after he used the ATM at the WaWa on Route 202 on March 23, 1997, Jacobsen pulled a sawed-off shotgun and shot Lt. Richard Ike in the leg. Ike was able to return fire, killing Jacobsen at the scene. "It was quite a case because we didn't have a clue who did it. Luckily, we got him."

But Borden said possibly the most challenging episode he witnessed in his time wearing a badge was last year's Superstorm Sandy.

"That was the most stressful incident I've seen in my years," he said. 

The breakdown in the "moral code" in the difficult days after the storm, as hundreds became increasingly violent waiting in gas lines and living without electricity kept police plenty busy—and Borden noted the officers were also dealing with the same issues in their personal lives.

"They're coming in here, dealing with everything—then going home and dealing with all the same issues at home," he said. "It was nothing like anything we've ever seen."

By Friday, Borden's office in the police headquarters will be cleared out, his citations and family photos, framed newspaper articles and copy of the famous photo of Mohammed Ali tower over a knocked-out Sonny Liston, gone from the walls.

The department will move on—the recent promotions, his training efforts, and Acting Chief Manny Caravela will assure that—but Borden's experience, confident leadership—and resonate, bass voice—will be certainly missed.