Emergency Services Unit Armorer, Juvenile Division Detective Receives ‘Chief’s Award’

Det. Matthew Traiger, a member of the Fort Lee Police Department since 1995, is the recipient of the department’s monthly “Chief’s Award” for June, Fort Lee police announced this week.

Traiger is a lifelong resident of Fort Lee and a graduate of and Rutgers University. He began his law enforcement career with the Fort Lee Police Department after graduating from the New Jersey State Police Academy in Sea Girt, according to the department.

Traiger worked in uniform patrol for seven years and has served as a member of the Emergency Services Unit since 1998—currently as the unit’s weapons armorer. He also accepted an assignment to the Detective Bureau in 2002 and worked in General Investigations for more than a year. Traiger is currently a detective assigned to the police department’s Juvenile Division, conducting investigations involving suspicious deaths, sexual assaults, child abuse, robberies, burglary, fraud, weapons offenses and narcotics, property, vehicle and identity theft. He is also responsible for the Megan’s Law registrants living in Fort Lee, according to the police department.

Traiger was recently assigned to a firearms committee established by Fort Lee Police Chief Thomas Ripoli—a committee that was responsible for choosing a replacement duty pistol for Fort Lee police officers.

A former Chief of the Fort Lee Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Traiger said that among his career accomplishments, he is proudest of helping stabilize and prolong the life of a fellow police officer shot in the line of duty until doctors could save the officer’s life.

Ripoli created the “Chief’s Award” shortly after he took over the duties of Fort Lee Police Chief in 2004. The monthly award honors individual officers for their years of commitment to the department, as well as their contributions to the community. Each month, Ripoli issues one administrative award to a member of the Fort Lee Police Department.

“I pick an officer who has time on the job,” Ripoli has said of the monthly award. “I look at his awards, his work ethic, sick time, his loyalty to the town and the extra that he does. It’s a hard decision honestly, because there are a lot of candidates, and you try to pick from that. And you miss people along the way also.”