Charles Fiore has taken on an “all-encompassing” role as Gloucester County Prosecutor.
By KRISTA CERMINARO
The Sun
Charles Fiore has gone from a staff of three to a staff of 107. Fiore, a lifelong Williamstown resident, was appointed Gloucester County Prosecutor this past November, and has goals to reassess the opioid crisis and gain back respect for law enforcement, among other initiatives.
“In the standpoint that there are only 21 prosecutors in the entire state, and to be nominated and then voted upon by the Senate, and then approved for that position — [it’s] quite an honor.”
Fiore has served as a municipal prosecutor in various towns over a 30-year period, worked as a pool public defender in Atlantic County early on in his career, and has been a solicitor in town for 23 years. The experience, according to Fiore, was a great training ground for the role he’s taken on.
“In my mind, I probably always was a prosecutor at heart. Early on in my career, before I became an attorney, I wanted to be a police officer,” Fiore said. “But, I chose to go into private practice. Thirty years later, I’m now involved in law enforcement, which I think is kind of a pretty awesome transition.”
The bottom line, for Fiore, is that it’s all about justice.
“People really lose sight of that. People ask what a prosecutor does — it’s not to put the bad guys in jail. It’s to just make sure you present the facts of the case to a jury, and the jury will decide. It’s the perfect system,” Fiore said. “Our role is just to present the facts, not to convict people. And you have to be compassionate, and you have to be sympathetic — because there are some defendants [with] cases [that] are really sad.”
In regard to the opioid crisis, Fiore said despite it being a nationwide issue, it seems to be “more magnified” in the Gloucester County area. Fiore hopes to reassess the prosecutor’s role in the particular crisis.
“We’re not just law enforcement, we’re community policing, getting involved, getting the various entities — the county and all the private entities together, to form a partnership to try to address the issue,” Fiore said. Part of addressing the issue, Fiore said, is also spreading public awareness.
“People, for the most part, think people who have addiction problems, or drug addicts, are criminals. They’re not. They’re regular people They’re our nieces, our nephews, our neighbors, our friends,” Fiore said. “People really have to recognize that.”
Another goal as prosecutor is to gain back the respect for law enforcement that has dwindled over the years.
“It was a very well-respected position at one point in time,” Fiore said. “Post 9/11, everybody was wearing police hats, NYPD hats … the country was just praising firefighters, first responders, EMS people and policemen — and now, it’s just taken a reverse role.”
“You only hear about the bad cases. You don’t hear about the good cases. Those bad cases are horrible — there’s nothing justifying that from my end, and from the prosecutor’s office, they’ll be investigated and they’ll be prosecuted. But, I think it’s kind of turning it around where police officers should be respected,” Fiore continued. “They’re on call every week, they’re going out in the middle of the night and they’re responding to overdoses, they’re responding to murders, they’re responding to everything in the world — but they have a family, too. They go home to a family, so they’re under a tremendous amount of pressure. And, I think the goal is to try to gain that respect back.”
Other initiatives include working closely with the school superintendents, municipalities and police chiefs to get on the same page in protecting the county’s school districts.
“There’s been so many episodes of school shootings that you almost become kind of immune to it,” Fiore said. “We all want to protect our kids — that’s the most important thing in the world. You want to protect the teachers, protect everyone that’s within the school district. So, we’ve been working on coming up with a best practices plan throughout this county.”
Fiore also noted a new countywide chaplain’s program has been implemented to deal with community and public relations as well as with internal problems that officers face, such as the stresses of being a police officer.
“There’s a couple municipalities in the county that have chaplains — they’re usually people trained to deal with not only issues that police officers may have personally, but they’ll deal with public relations. They actually ride along with police from time to time, if there’s a domestic situation after the officer does what he needs to do and diffuses the situation, he can provide counseling,” Fiore explained. “It’s really kind of cool.”
As of right now, Fiore said the main issue he faces is having a limited budget.
“As with any agency or business, you’re dealing with limited budgets. You’d always like to have more money from wherever your funding source is, but that’s not going to always be possible, so you have to try and go out and get as many grants as possible.”
Fiore also commended the county for a job well done with this year’s budget and allocating funds for additional assistant prosecutors and detectives.
Fiore also said ample initiatives were brought forth by the former prosecutor — initiatives he hopes to enhance and intensify.
“There are a lot of good programs that are in place. I’m fortunate enough to have phenomenal detectives, assistant prosecutors, the legal staff,” Fiore said. “I have a great, great support group. They’re all eager and willing to work.”
