In the 24 years since Lieutenant Richard Furda joined the Plainsboro Police Department as a patrol officer, he has seen the township change and grow from a farming community to the bustling suburban community it is today.
And he has seen the department itself grow to today’s size of 46 members, both uniformed and civilian. Now as Furda is preparing to accept the reins from Chief Elizabeth Bondurant to become the department’s fourth chief in its 30-year history, he is anticipating more change — and welcomes the challenge.
The Township Committee has announced that it plans to appoint him as the new chief in October, when Bondurant is set to retire after 25 years of service. Furda joined the department in 1985, rising through the ranks as a patrolman, juvenile detective, and traffic officer. In 1989 he was promoted to sergeant, serving in the patrol division and then supervising the detective bureau. He was promoted to lieutenant in 2007, and has been in charge of administration.
For Furda, who grew up in Trenton (his father was a printer and his mother is a nurse), it has always been about public service. He had served as a volunteer with the Emergency Medical Services crew in the city for many years, and had been a volunteer since age 14 in the emergency room at the Helene Fuld Medical Center in Trenton.
Prior to being hired by the police department, Furda was working as a security investigator for Helene Fuld Medical Center when he saw an ad in the newspaper for the job. “When I saw the ad for Plainsboro, I didn’t even know where the town was,” he said, adding that he had to find it on a map. “I tested, and I was hired.”
Furda’s experience made him an ideal candidate for the chief position when Bondurant announced her retirement. He has either done or supervised every job in the department, and was also its first detective sergeant.
He also holds a bachelor’s degree in law and justice from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey), a master’s degree in human services administration from Rider University, and is currently working toward his PhD in human organizational development (a management degree) at Fielding Graduate Institute’s School of Human and Organizational Systems. Furda also serves as an adjunct professor of criminal justice at Mercer County Community College.
When Furda began working with the department, the force was made up of only about 15 officers. Now, there are 30 sworn officers, and 46 total members, including civilian, he points out.
“I can remember chasing cows back into the Walker Gordon farm,” he recalls. “The cows used to wander into Plainsboro Road.” A housing development, known as Walker-Gordon, now sits on the land where the farm was once located.
“The population has tripled since I started,” he says. “Housing developments have added calls to service,” in everything from ambulance calls to calls regarding auto burglary and domestic violence, he says.
He is now responsible for leading the department through another time of change involving a slew of retirements.
Two officers — Joseph Shedelbower and John Molnar — are retiring at the end of this month. Lieutenant Christopher Weidman is eligible to retire next April, and Lieutenant Thomas DeSimone will be eligible to retire in October, 2010. Sergeant Troy Bell will also be eligible for retirement soon.
Furda points out that just because someone is eligible to retire, it does not necessarily mean he or she will, but the department is still expecting that there will be some changes as a result of the retirements. And hiring new people, and preparing others to assume the important roles falls to Furda.
“One of the ways to mentor people into new jobs is to expose them to things they haven’t done before,” he says. “The corporals and sergeants will be working closely with the lieutenants to learn their jobs. We’re also going to be sending people to training in leadership skills sooner.”
He said that currently, sergeants are sent to level 1, and lieutenants are sent to level 2 in the certified public managers course to train for their jobs. Now Furda says, the department will be having the corporals attend level 1 and the sergeants attend level 2 to prepare them sooner.
Furda says right now, his responsibilities include many aspects of the job — from purchasing to budgeting, to scheduling, to training. “The new experience will be having the final say,” Furda says. “I do all those things now. What I’m looking forward to is mentoring the new officers and mentoring their growth to see them take over.”
“Right now, I’m an administrative lieutenant. I like seeing the smiles on the officer’s faces when they get their paychecks,” Furda jokes, explaining that payroll is also one of his responsibilities. Out of all the positions he has held, he says his favorite was a spilt between his time as a patrol sergeant and his time as a detective sergeant because they were both interesting in their own way.
Furda says he is also prepared to deal with the more challenging aspects of the job. At the helm of the police department, which has displayed some characteristics of unrest from time to time over the years, with anonymous letters occasionally sent to the media about perceived internal conflict within the department, he will have to also deal with resolving conflict.
“I think open lines of communication are imperative, but I also realize there’s nowhere where you can make 46 people happy at the same time,” Furda says. “Not everybody can be off on Christmas.”
“Those kind of situations lead to conflict with individuals,” he added. “I can’t control someone sending an anonymous letter. I can try to keep morale high and keep everyone interested.”
When asked if there are any specific personal goals he wants to accomplish or issues he wants to tackle as chief — like underage drinking, or drunken driving — he says he feels that Bondurant is leaving him “with a very sound platform to work from.”
“She’s done a good job of isolating the primary issues we have,” he says. “At this point, we’re pretty even-keeled. There aren’t many issues that need to be addressed other than internal issues,” like hiring and retirement, he says.
He is a strong believer in the philosophy expressed by many in the Plainsboro Police Department — that aggressive traffic enforcement leads to less crime. In order to do so, he says, the department aggressively pursues grant money to help them step up enforcement. In fact, he currently has a grant application his desk for $15,000 toward drunk driving enforcement.
He says Plainsboro police also work with Middlesex County to do checkpoints, and officers here do a lot of selective enforcement, in which they will be placed in specific areas to watch for those who violate any laws, like speeding, which can lead police to finding more serious violations.
“It’s not just the routine car stop,” he says. “It’s, ‘What’s really going on here?’ We encourage officers to be broad. It’s worked out well for us.”
He points to what he calls the “halo effect,” in which people slow down when they see an officer doing a traffic stop on the side of the road. The idea is that the more often and in more places they see police officers, the less likely they are to break the law. “It’s all about the presence,” Furda says. “Our goal is to be everywhere at all times.”
Township officials touted Furda’s experience as reasons they believed he will make a good leader for the department. “Given his experience, professionalism, and background in instruction, both within and outside the organization, Lieutenant Furda is uniquely qualified to mentor and prepare our talented young officers to assume leadership roles,” said Mayor Peter Cantu.
Committeeman Neil Lewis, who serves at the liaison with public safety, echoed the sentiment, saying his “breadth of experience” would helping him assume all the “responsibilities of chief.”
Furda, who lives in Hamilton with his wife, Cindy, a grant administrator, enjoys traveling, reading, downhill snow skiing, and fishing. “I’m just excited,” he said. “I appreciate the committee’s trust in me, and I will do my very best to do my very best.”
