Crime & Safety
Fanwood Chief Prepares to Leave Top Job
Donald Domanoski has served the department for 34 years.
After 34 years in service to the Fanwood Police Department, Chief Donald Domanoski is now preparing to say goodbye.
Domanoski's last day at the department is this Friday, Jan. 29. The following Monday, Feb. 1, Lt. Richard Trigo will officially take over.
Domanoski recently sat down with Patch to reflect on his time in Fanwood and to talk about what's changed over the course of his years in law enforcement.
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"The bottom line is that it's been a long career," he said. "I've enjoyed it, but it's time to move on. I just turned 54 in October, so I said, 'let me see what else is out there.'"
Domanoski announced his retirement from the department in September. Fanwood is where he got his start in law enforcement, and it's where he rose the ranks throughout his career.
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He came on board as a patrolman in 1977, shortly after graduating from the Middlesex County Police Academy. Prior to Fanwood, he worked for Rutger's police and as a security guard at Sears.
In 1984, he advanced from patrolman to traffic safety officer, and then in 1989, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He eventually moved on to become a lieutenant and to serve as commander of the Operations Division. He served as commander of the patrol division and as a captain prior to his appointment of police chief in 2002.
Over the course of his 34 years, Domanoski says the nature of the business has transformed, but that not one bit of it has burned him out. He has also served as commander of the Union County Emergency Response Team since 1997, and between that and all of his other roles, the chief says he feels that he's gotten to do everything he could ever ask for in his career.
"Walking out the door, I don't feel like I have to look back and say 'geez, I wish I had done something else,' or feel like I missed something or didn't get to the goals in my career," he said. "I'm truly fortunate. I had a lot of good people around me and was able to do a lot of the things I set my sights on."
While law enforcement is a popular career in his family, Domanoski was the first to join the field. His brother is a lieutenant in Middlesex County, his son is a Westfield police officer, and his cousin is a cop in Piscataway. He also has an uncle who was a New York City police officer.
Domanoski says he was inspired to go into law enforcement after his experiences as a security guard at Sears. Working with cops who were moonlighting with him there helped give him a sense of the job and convinced him it was something he wanted to do.
Now, after all his years in Fanwood, he cites those who came before him as those who best prepared him for the job of chief.
"I really had a couple of good chiefs before me to learn from," he said. "And the fact of the matter is, whether it be statewide or here in Union County, or in the prosecutor's office, there's just a wealth of knowledge out there. You have to be flexible and you have to listen. "
"We used to go out with a radio car and a nightstick, a hat and a ticket book, and that was it," he continued. "When I first came on it seemed that especially on the night shift, you wound up with domestic violence calls, drunk driving, traffic crashes, criminal mischief, but as time goes on, more and more we're dealing with more severity in the calls themselves. Whether it's the economy or people getting involved with drugs, I don't know. When I first came on marijuana was it, but as time goes on more and more people are using drugs and there's the need for money and things like that."
While the demands of the job are routinely changing, Domanoski insists the quality of service being provided by Fanwood has been a constant throughout his career.
But the work hasn't always come easy. The biggest challenge the department has faced during his 34 years, Domanoski said, was the layoffs they suffered in 2008.
"We really had to strategize how we were going to deal with that manpower loss," he said. "It's difficult because you get used to it, from 1973 to 2008, we were 21 men, then we lost the three guys. Bringing in civilian dispatchers and getting them all trained up and scheduling and all that, it was an issue for us to deal with and we still are. I think we are stretched as thin as we can go."
The layoffs didn't affect the front line so much as what goes on behind the scenes, according to the chief. As a patrol division-oriented department, he says the focus is still on the requests from residents for calls of service.
"We're on the scene within a minute, minute-and-a-half," he said. "It's the other things that were impacted —investigative division, traffic safety, or administration. That's where we really have people multitasking now. We would never sacrifice anything on the street with residents getting a police officer on location."
Recent incidents like the wave of vehicle break-ins on the south side of town in December are often enough to prompt residents to question their safety. But while Domanoski admits that the service calls his department receives have increased and changed right along with Fanwood's population over the years, he says his team has maintained its level of service by staying in close contact with residents and having a read on what the community needs.
"It doesn't matter if it's a bank robbery or car burglaries or whatever the case might be, routinely we have an individual or a few individuals that come in and target a particular area or a couple different communities, and we wind up getting hit like that," Domanoski said of the recent vehicle break-ins. "There's nothing we can do to prevent something like that. These are mission-oriented people. There's a strong possibility right now that an individual Cranford arrested may be related to our situation. So soon enough they're out there, they do enough of them, somebody catches them and then you work the case. It's a tough situation. There are times we walk away and have an egg on our face, but we just keep our heads up and go on."
"The bottom line is it's like anything else," the chief said of his job overall. "Every year is different and you adapt and make adjustments and you charge on. I didn't really find any part of my career, whether it was any of the other ranks I had or as chief, overwhelming because you have so much out there to be able to resource so you can deal with it."
So where is the chief headed next after he leaves Fanwood PD? Stay tuned for a story tomorrow on his plans after retirement and what he thinks is ahead for the department.
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