Patch Fair Lawn, NJ --Capt. Glen Cauwels, a Fair Lawn native and Marine Corps veteran, will take over command of the Fair Lawn Police Department come April.
A 19-year Fair Lawn police veteran, Cauwels will replace Chief Erik Rose at the beginning of next month and carry an interim tag until Rose officially retires at the end of the year, borough manager Tom Metzler said.
Cauwels, who has been the administrative division commander since 2010, said he was very excited for the opportunity, but acknowledged that restoring the officers' trust in departmental leadership would be a huge task.
"It’s going to be a big job to do, but I’m willing to do it," Cauwels said Thursday. "I’m willing to try to get everybody to work together around here.”
Both Metzler and Michael O'Brien, the Fair Lawn Policemen's Benevolent Association president, said they had confidence in Cauwels to do the job.
O'Brien commended Cauwels for always maintaining an open door policy with the rank-and-file, something some officers have said Chief Rose failed to do.
Cauwels agreed that a lack of communication had hurt the department and said he believed re-opening those lines with officers would go a long way toward raising their morale.
"You got to be able to listen to what your officers are saying because most of the time they’re right," he said. "Sometimes bad information, rumors, stuff like that go out into the rank-and-file and I think if you just tell them the facts, don’t hide anything back, no surprises, I think that’s what we need to do.”
For at least the time being, Cauwels said he has no major shakeups planned for the department, although like Rose, he wants to expand the department's community policing and traffic divisions by hiring new officers.
"To have an effective police department, I believe the community has to buy into that," he said, lamenting the loss of the DARE and Citizens Police Academy to budget cuts in recent years. "If your community doesn't trust your police department you're going to fail. But if you can have some of these programs where they can see that we're out there, not only to do enforcement, but to teach and to help, I think that's a win."
Cauwels, a Fair Lawn High School graduate, still lives in town with his wife, Kim, and their two young children, Brandon and Cassidy. His kids attend Warren Point Elementary.
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