Hopewell Township Police Chief Lance Maloney has 20 years of experience in the department.
By Scott Morgan
When Lance Maloney joined the Hopewell Township Police Department fresh from college in 1994, he didn’t give much thought to becoming the chief of police some day — he was happy enough being a young man who’d realized his boyhood dream of being a police officer.
But 20 years later, Maloney is Hopewell’s fifth full-time chief of police, having taken over from former chief George Meyer, who retired in December after 38 years with the department.
Two months into his new position, Maloney, 43, says he is enjoying the job, as well as the kind of perspective only afforded those graced with the wisdom experience brings. He likes it, no question, though he admits he misses the beat sometimes.
The culture of the Hopewell P.D., after all, is big on community policing. On getting to know people directly, on talking to residents and maintaining good relationships with as many residents as possible, he says. So, once in a while, even a chief of police likes to get out and walk the streets a little.
Maloney grew up in Florence Township and attended Holy Cross High School in Delran before heading to Trenton State College, now The College of New Jersey. He doesn’t remember wanting to be anything but a police officer, and as a young man pursuing his bachelor’s degree in law and justice, he wasn’t focused on where he would serve. He just wanted to be in uniform.
After graduating from college, Maloney applied to the handful of towns in the area that were looking for officers at the time, and Hopewell happened to be among them.
“I was a little familiar with the township because of Washington’s Crossing,” he said. “We would go there on weekends sometimes.”
But that was about all he knew of Hopewell. He admits with a laugh that he didn’t realize until after he applied just how much area there is in Hopewell Township to cover.
The township is 60 square miles, and the sheer scale of the quiet suburbia surprised him. But he settled into his position as a patrolman soon enough, and said he never gave much thought to the idea of advancement.
“It didn’t really dawn on me until I had a few more years on,” he says. “I certainly wasn’t thinking ‘Ooh, I’m going to be the chief one day.”
It wasn’t until Maloney made sergeant that he started thinking about advancement. That was 2003, after stints in the department’s patrol division, traffic unit, and detective bureau.
Three years later, he was promoted to lieutenant and given control of the operations division that oversees the patrol division.
Maloney’s progress up the Hopewell department’s ladder has made him thoughtful. More than just technology has changed since he first put on his badge. Back when he was a patrolman, police cars didn’t have cameras and computers—those didn’t show up in Hopewell until about 1999.
The nature of his everyday life on the job has grown and matured with him.
“As you move up in rank, things change,” Maloney says. “As a patrolman, you don’t know day to day what you’ll get. It could be a domestic disturbance, an accident, or any number of things.”
Then comes advancement, and with that comes maturing into a supervisor of other officers. Maloney got married and had kids while working on the force, so it’s easy for him to draw comparisons between the two roles.
Maloney and his wife, Suzanne, have two children: a 17-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn, and a 9-year-old son, Patrick. They live in Lawrence Township.
When you move up, you take on responsibility for more than yourself,” Maloney said. “Like a parental kind of thing.”
On the force, Maloney’s parental feelings are a matter of being a solid role model. The officers serving under him when he was a sergeant and a lieutenant, he said, were always on his mind—were they safe? Were they conducting themselves professionally?
But effective leadership comes from the top, he said. Officers in any department behave as their superiors behave.
Although Maloney misses the action of being out on the streets, he enjoys what his leadership roles have brought him. As chief, he’s not just the top officer, but the top role model for the department. He’s a teacher and mentor to younger officers and those wending their way up the ranks, and he finds this quite satisfying.
But yes, he does miss being out there. As a patrolman, he says, you’re nothing but out there, talking to people, responding to calls. The “boots on the ground” connection to the community is direct and palpable, he said.
As a sergeant, especially one in charge of patrol officers, Maloney still got out a lot. Even as a lieutenant he would occasionally be out there on the streets and in the neighborhoods.
But as a chief, not yet. He hopes to, preferably at one of the school district’s games, which he loves covering because he gets to talk with a lot of residents at once. But there’s still some settling in to do.
Getting to know the community is a big deal, by the way. See, where Maloney plans to take the department is based largely on where it’s been. Maloney was hired under the department’s second chief, Robert Ferrarin, who served as chief between 1982 and 1995. Thus, Maloney says, he has a pretty good handle on how the department should be run and what the department stands for.
“It’s important to know what came before you,” he said. “We’re a very community service-oriented department. We respond to all calls. Some other departments may not have that luxury, but we respond to everything. I really want to keep that tradition going.”
Outside of being a chief of police, Maloney coaches his children in softball and baseball, a job that keeps him busy from the January clinics until the end of the seasons in June, then again in the fall leagues. His son has said that he may want to be a police officer just like dad, but Maloney will wait and see. Patrick, after all, is 9, and 9-year-olds want to be everything.
However, if neither of his children want to follow him into policing, he’s fine with that. Maloney is the only member of his family to ever become an officer anyway, though interestingly, the first full-time chief of the Hopewell P.D. was named Mathew Maloney. But there’s no relation.
Beyond his family, Maloney tries to run as often as possible, though he laughs when he thinks how little running this winter has afforded him. Still, he runs, sometimes alone and on Sundays with friends. And other than running, Maloney is a five-year member of the Lawrence Council of the Knights of Columbus, where he serves as deputy grand knight for Council 7000.
Maloney counts himself among the lucky for getting to live out his lifelong ambitions, and he is grateful for the opportunities that lie ahead.
“I’m very fortunate to be in this position,” he said. “These are very good people in a very good department and I love this community.”
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