Wildwoods’ Top Police, Fire Officials Address Chamber

WILDWOOD – The Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual ‘State of the Cities’ luncheon Feb. 12 at the Bolero Resort, Wildwood. 
The Wildwoods’ top police and fire officials provided updates on their departments.
Wildwood
“In 2019, we handled over 67,000 calls for service,” said Wildwood Police Chief Robert Regalbuto. “That’s almost 6,000 or 7,000 more than we did the year before.” 
The momentum from a busy year for the Wildwood Police Department carried into 2020, with President Donald Trump’s rally Jan. 28. Regalbuto thanked the neighboring departments for their help with the visit.
“Everybody who was involved in it was amazing. That speaks to the caliber of officers that you have, and the caliber of firefighters and EMTs that you have, serving your county and your community,” said Regalbuto.
“We handled 66 calls in the fire, EMS (emergency medical services) fields in the venue alone. That doesn’t count the calls we dealt with on the street,” said Deputy Fire Chief Ernie Troiano III, calling the event “an opportunity for our department to grow. It was an opportunity for our department to work with the best of the best. It was an unbelievable experience for this island.”
Arrest numbers were down for 2019, despite the spike in calls.
“We also had over 1,500 arrests (in 2019), which was less than we had in 2018,” said Regalbuto. “We were just under 2,000 arrests in 2018.” 
“How do you have more calls and fewer arrests,” he asked, adding the department is doing more service calls than before. “If you see our crime reporting over the past four or five years, we’ve had a reduction of almost 40% of our major violent crimes.”
Troiano had his own idea of that trend.
“This has been probably the most civil Memorial Day Weekend we have had in our careers. I think that says a lot about the turn that the island is taking as a whole,” Troiano said.
Troiano touched on the September deck collapse that reportedly left 22 injured, including one trapped under two large decks who had to be extricated.
“One of the most significant incidents we had last year was the deck collapse, which occurred on firemen’s weekend. Anyone in law enforcement, fire or EMS knows the absolute worst time to have an incident is on firemen’s weekend. Everybody wants to help and they usually have superman powers because they’ve been feeling it for the majority of the weekend,” Troiano said, adding, “The incident was handled very well.”
North Wildwood 
In North Wildwood, technology has been helpful to the police department, particularly the increase in affordable home security.
“We’ve been assisted by these Ring cameras,” said North Wildwood Police Chief Matthew Gallagher. “People up in Philadelphia will call and say there’s someone trying my door, trying to get in. We’ve actually closed some cases out; people have supplied the footage.”
The city also relies on its own cameras, which cover a lot of the popular public areas.
“We have cameras everywhere, in all of our parks. Presently, they’re in the bar area, the boardwalk,” Gallagher said, who added that driving while intoxicated incidents were down, attributing that to the increase in rideshare apps.  
“We designated Uber and Lyft loading and unloading between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.,” Gallagher said. “Anybody can use it. All of New Jersey Avenue is clear of traffic between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., and it’s strictly for pickup of anybody in the bar area.”
The North Wildwood Fire Department was excited about the purchase of a jet ski to help them in water rescues.
“We’ve been conducting water rescues, land-based rescues in the inlet more and more over the last 10 years, especially in the off season when the lifeguards are not there,” said Fire Chief Dominick McClain. “We are excited to have a wave runner now, that will give us a quicker response to our victim in trouble.”
Wildwood Police Chief Robert Regalbuto was a little jealous.
“How do I get on the wave runner?” he asked, adding he hopes that will be one benefit of the potential shared services being considered by the Wildwoods’ fire departments. “Then, we can go together,” Regalbuto said.
“It was a good year in all. No major incidents. No major injuries,” added Gallagher.
Wildwood Crest
Wildwood Crest Police Capt. and Officer-in-charge Robert Lloyd spoke of how unique the Trump visit was for Wildwood Crest.
“It was the first time, that I know of, or that anyone in the department knows of, that every officer in the police department was scheduled to work at the same time,” Lloyd said.
Community outreach was the theme of Lloyd’s remarks. He spoke of a new program where residents can, once a month, have coffee with Crest officers, ask questions and get to know them.
He added that he’s instructed officers to walk through at least one business a day, to speak with business owners and workers at the business. The purpose is to get contact information for the business, and so business owners can get to know the officers.
“We just want to make it easier for everybody to communicate with our officers,” Lloyd said.
The police department has also been more active on Facebook to communicate better with the community.
“We’ve been expanding our social media presence quite a bit. We’ve been focusing on Facebook more often,” said Lloyd. “I don’t use social media, but I’m starting to learn a little.”
Fire Chief Ronald Harwood, from the Crest’s volunteer department, said this was the first time someone from his department, made up of 29 volunteers, was invited to the luncheon.
Harwood said he also heads up the Crest’s EMS department, which employs full-time workers 24 hours a day, every day of the year.  
West Wildwood
West Wildwood Police Sgt. James Dodd made preparedness and proactively circumventing potential problems the focus of his address.  
“If you hear the sirens during a weather event, it’s already too late. Have a plan in place. Be prepared,” Dodd said.
He noted West Wildwood would be hosting community events to enrich residents’ knowledge of public safety issues. He talked about officers going out in the community to look for potential problems on private property and then discussing them with property owners, using an example of a ladder leaning up against a house.
“We’re going to show our community members how to protect themselves by securing their wireless data systems. Everybody has WiFi now. Our officers go out and randomly test areas within the municipality, looking for unsecure wireless networks to potentially address that data breach with those particular individuals,” Dodd said.
Police Chief Jacquelyn Ferentz was in attendance, but did not speak.
To contact Shay Roddy, email sroddy@cmcherald.com.