There is nothing like becoming a parent for the first time to change how you look at almost everything, and no one can agree with this more than Officer Michael Pitts of the West Windsor Police Department. Pitts’s son, Adonis Alexander Pitts, arrived exactly two weeks ago today. “Being a father gives you a whole new perspective,” he says. “It means so much more for me to get involved and help people. I want to be the best police officer I can be, and I would want other police officers to be the way I am.”
He has already started. Pitts, 29, has teamed up with fellow West Windsor officer Justin Insalaco to take over and revamp National Night Out, an event he describes as “a partnership between the community and the police department to strengthen neighborhood spirit, heighten crime and drug prevention awareness, and to let criminals know that residents are organized and fighting back.” The event, hosted by the West Windsor Township Police, is part of the 28th Annual National Night Out, and will be held on Tuesday, August 2, from 5 to 9 p.m. at West Windsor Community Park, 193 Princeton Hightstown Road.
“Justin is only 22 but his work ethic is incomparable, like that of a veteran instead of someone so young,” says Pitts in a phone interview. “Our police department is big on community events and community spirit, so when Sam Dyson, who ran the event, retired, we figured somebody needed to do something. Our youth academy had already been cancelled, and we wanted to make sure we didn’t lose this too.”
Pitts credits Officer Michael Bollentin for giving the project tremendous support as the liaison between the police and emergency services, and he also gives kudos to Sergeant Matt Kemp. “He vouched for us and told us, you do your thing and we’re going to let you guys run with it.”
And they certainly have. Traditionally the local National Night Out has been a low-key meet and greet with police and fire personnel at the community pool, but Officers Pitts and Insalaco were determined to go bigger and better. This year’s event, which will be kicked off by radio station 94.5 WPST, features giveaways, food, Rita’s Water Ice, games, pony rides, inflatable bounce houses and slides, an inflatable obstacle course, live music, dance performances, local bands, a clown, a magician, a face painter, police and fire demonstrations, and much more.
“It is sure to be a great event for the community and will be a jump start to how every national night out should really be,” predicts Pitts. Many local businesses are donating their products and services, and all raffle proceeds will be donated to the Angels Wings Foundation located in West Windsor Township.
They may be acting local, as the saying goes, but they are thinking national. Though they signed up too late to compete this year, next year the two team leaders are planning to enter West Windsor’s National Night Out in a competition for best in the country. “It’s not about being the biggest and the best, though that would be nice,” says Pitts. “It’s more about building a relationship between us and the community. As support increases, interaction increases, and that helps us do our jobs better. We can’t be everywhere and do everything so we want citizens to call us when they see something. This is our main goal. We want them to be able to trust us.”
This young police officer’s competitive spirit and drive to be the best goes back a long way. He was a four-year starter as a cornerback for the Monmouth University football team. He graduated in 2004 with an accounting degree. When he was captain of the football team he was dating the captain of the soccer team, Valerie, now his wife. She is a purchasing department manager in software equipment service, though she currently is on maternity leave.
While still in his senior year at Monmouth, Pitts took on a part-time job as a staff accountant for a firm in Freehold, which hired him full-time upon graduation. He climbed the ladder quickly, becoming a senior accountant in 2007. But he realized he wasn’t completely happy. “I started asking myself questions like, who am I helping, what difference am I making? I had lots of friends in law enforcement who said, you should do this, you will love it.”
Pitts says that there are typically two paths to becoming a police officer. “One way is to put yourself through Police Academy. The other is to apply for a job, get hired, and have the police department put you through.” He got lucky with West Windsor, which hired him in 2007 on the basis of a written test and a physical test. “There was a one mile run you had to run in under six minutes and then immediately to a full cycle of other challenges with no rest in between: 20 pull-ups, 50 push-ups, 50 sit-ups, dragging a 150-pound dummy across the gym, an obstacle course with oxygen tank in hand, and a lap in the swimming pool.” He passed the physical test with a perfect 100. “I’ve always really been into physical fitness; I’ve always been in shape,” he says modestly.
While at the police academy at Mercer County Community College from January to June of 2007, he earned the physical fitness award and the defensive driving award. After graduating as a patrol officer, he drove around with a field training officer for two months to learn the ropes firsthand.
“I absolutely love what I do. Every day I’m on the job I can help others out and make a difference. West Windsor is great, and it has a very community-oriented police department. We go over and beyond police in most other places. We go to lockouts — when people leave their keys in the car — and help them out; when people have a flat tire on a dangerous road, we will go there and change it for them; when people are on vacation we do house checks. It’s an affluent community so people expect a lot from us. We hire the best so we meet those expectations but our job can at times be stressful. Route 1 has lots of drug and weapons activity so if we want to be proactive, we go on the highway.”
Pitts was born in Bergen County. His parents were going through a divorce, so immediately out of the hospital, he was taken in by his mother’s parents. For the first two years of his life, they lived in Bergen County and then, when he was three, his grandparents moved to Greece, taking him and his two older sisters, just one and two years older than he was. When he was in third grade, they moved back to Bergen County. “All that moving around made me pretty good with people,” he says. In addition to his two older sisters, he has four younger half-sisters. “So you can understand why when I had my son, I was especially happy,” he says.
Pitts is like the Energizer bunny, constantly on the go and working hard to take on more education and improve himself. He recently completed his master’s degree in business administration online and is currently going for a master’s degree in public safety as well. “I want to prepare myself for the future,” he says. He confesses he misses accounting just a little, so about two years ago, he started up his own business, a green cleaning company for residential clients.
His sense of industriousness stands out at work, too. Earlier this year, he was selected to join the West Windsor Police Department’s tactical response team, an elite team of 12 similar to a SWAT team that handles responses to regional emergencies. For that, he had to go to FBI training for three weeks at Fort Dix, and every month he receives an additional 15 hours of special training. In 2009 he led the department in both drug and drunk driving arrests.
This reporter will not let Pitts finish the interview without just one more question. It’s one thing for Pitts to put pressure on himself but isn’t he putting tremendous pressure on his tiny son, Adonis Alexander Pitts, to live up to his name, as he is named not only for his Greek heritage, but also for the Greek god of love best known for his handsome good looks and physique?
“No problem, he’s pretty cute already,” proclaims the proud father. But he immediately turns serious as he brings up the story of young Leiby Kletzky, the Brooklyn boy who was kidnapped and murdered by a man he thought would help him safely home. “I’ve only had Adonis for two weeks, and I feel so fiercely protective; I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him. And then I look in the news and see what happened to someone else’s child, and it’s unbelievable and heartbreaking. This is just one of the reasons why I want to be the best officer possible and help people.”
National Night Out, West Windsor Township Police Department, West Windsor Community Park, 193 Princeton-Hightstown Road, West Windsor. Tuesday, August 2, 5 to 9 p.m. Annual program to promote neighborhood spirit and police-community partnership. Representatives present information about area emergencies, fire companies, community policing, tactical unit, K-9 unit, and CERT. Also, representatives from Twin W Squad and Womanspace. Child seat and fingerprint information. Music, DJ, inflatable bounce houses, a dunk tank, food, dance performances, a magician, face painter, pony ride, and more. No rain date. Free. 609-799-1222 or www.westwindsorpolice.com.
