Traffic Officer Talks About Investigating Fatal Accidents

On Christmas Eve, Police Officer Robert Lyons had just finished Christmas shopping with his sons when he ducked into Burger King to grab dinner-to-go and came back to find six missed phone calls in a matter of minutes.

“That’s never a good sign,” he said. And it wasn’t. At 5:30 that evening, the borough saw the first of two fatal accidents that occurred just one month apart.

As Traffic Officer for the Franklin Lakes Police Department, Lyons is charged with investigating any accident involving serious injuries.

“You have to investigate in a manner as if there will be serious criminal charges,” Lyons told Patch. “A lot of times there are no charges, but you don’t know that at the time.”

Lyons is one of two accident reconstructionists on the Franklin Lakes force. When a serious accident occurs, it’s his responsibility to secure the scene and coordinate all aspects of the investigation — gathering, documenting and photographing evidence and ensuring proper protocol is followed, just in case it will be used in court. He also follows the investigation — and all of its accompanying paperwork — through to completion.

When securing the scene of a fatality, like the one that claimed the life of 50-year-old Larry Sephton on Christmas Eve, Lyons said it can be especially worrisome, because you need to do a full investigation, which involves the county Prosecutor’s Office, but you also want to be swift out of sensitivity to any family members who may stumble upon the scene.

Prior to this accident, Lyons said the department saw about a half-dozen serious accidents a year and this was his first fatality while working in the Traffic division.

Yet, just one month later, a second fatality occurred on his watch. Three young men on their way home from Campgaw hit a train at the Pulis Avenue crossing. The front seat passenger, Marcus Ruta, 20, was killed when the Jeep he was driving in hit the locomotive of a freight train at the Pulis Avenue crossing. The driver, Jeffrey Cohen, sustained serious injuries and a second passenger in the car was also injured in the collision.

At both accident scenes, Lyons said it was amazing to see how seamlessly the borough’s emergency workers pull together and work as a team.

“With these tragedies, when it is over, you look back and you’re surprised at how well everything comes together,” he said. “Everyone is on the same page, everyone knows what they are doing, and they’ve been doing it a long time.”

In the days after the accident, Lyons said it becomes a waiting game. “You go from work, work, work at the scene, from gathering information and then doing reports, and then there’s nothing you can do but wait.”

Toxicology reports take over a month if expedited; it can take months if the case isn’t high priority.

“Until the results are in that determine what, if any, charges will be, so you wait,” he said.  

From the City to the Suburbs

Lyons, a police officer for 15 years, was raised in a suburb of Philadelphia and worked in the City of Hampton, Virginia for his first 18 months on the job. Working as a police officer in a city of 140,000 is vastly different than in a borough of 10,000, he said.

 “We don’t have shootouts or prostitutes walking the streets in Franklin Lakes,” he said. “But we deal with all aspects of life that city officers don’t have to.”

For instance, a big city employs EMTs and Fire Departments. As such, police deal with crime, fire departments deal with fire and the EMTs handle accidents and emergencies. In a small town, police respond to every call, often as first responders to accidents, injuries and heart attacks.

“It was eye-opening,” Lyons said. “I had never done CPR before coming to Franklin Lakes.” 

However, the added human aspect of the job is one he enjoys. "I became a cop because I wanted to help people," he said. "I really enjoy it."

Overall, being the Traffic Officer isn’t much different than being a patrolman, he noted, with the exception of paperwork. The traffic division deals with training, scheduling crossing guards and tracking the use of grant money, like the “Click it or Ticket” program.

 Making sure traffic enforcement equipment is in proper working order also falls under the purview of the traffic division. As such, Lyons is responsible for the calibration of radars and speedometers to ensure everything is accurate and certified, as well as the monthly maintenance of the Alka Test breath machine, a high-tech machine that replaced the old-school breathalyzers a few years ago.

“Traffic enforcement is a big part of the job in Franklin Lakes,” he noted.

Speaking of enforcement, Patch had to ask: Is there any truth to the rumor that police have a quota of tickets to fill each month?

Absolutely not.

“It is illegal to have quotas,” he said. “There is no pressure to write summonses. It is at the discretion of the officer.  We are not expected to write a certain amount of tickets.”