This 30-year cop’s not looking to retire, just take more guns off the streets of Trenton

He’s been a Trenton cop for over 30 years and can retire whenever he wants.

Nobody from his police academy class is with the department, and only one other Trenton officer has more years on the job. Many with his seniority are plotting what they’ll do in retirement, or working an inside post – “driving a desk.”

Sgt. Anthony Manzo, though, is in the thick of it, on the streets and in the alleys, ferreting out guns and gangsters – and loving every minute of it. He fears retirement.

When he’s not on foot, he drives with his windows down, so he can hear what’s going on in the neighborhoods. Plus, he’ll tell you, he wants everyone to see him.

“Hey Manzo!” he’ll hear. Sometimes it’s just “Zo!” He has fans.

Manzo is arguably Trenton’s most well-known officer, by sight and reputation, and he’s once again been tasked with supervising a unit of officers tasked with disrupting street crime. He tracks their successes on the number of guns they seize – 13 in the past two-and-a-half weeks.

The latest unit is called Violent Crime Rapid Response, and began after a spike in violent crime and the daytime murder of a young man in a city laundromat last month.

He’s led similar units over his career – each has a different name – but the mission is the same, highly visible, proactive policing that aims to reduce gun violence. Sometimes it’s responding to gun calls or shootings, and sometimes it’s going to a neighborhood when a retaliatory act might be brewing.

So why, at this stage in his career, after all these years, does he still do it?

“I was put here to do this job – it’s my passion, my purpose, and this might sound corny, but I feel the city needs me, I really do.” The streets of Trenton are Manzo’s natural habitat.

Sitting in the safe confines of the city police director’s office recently, so the brass can listen in, Manzo admits he’s not built for much else: “I think of this stuff when I’m at home.”

He’s called officers in the unit at 3 a.m. with ideas. “It’s 24/7 to me. I don’t know if that good or bad, it’s just a fact.”

“I use every legal means necessary to take guns and violent offenders off the street, and in turn we save lives,” he adds.

He contemplated retirement a few years back, filed the papers, then pulled them back. “It’s not in me, this is what I’m meant to do,” he said.

This current unit might last months or years, and when it concludes, Manzo will likely return to being a patrol sergeant. As long as he’s on the streets, mentoring and leading younger officers – even helping kids cross the street to get to school. Being out and about in the city, “is my comfort zone.”

It’s where he can be, well, just Manzo – a sort of one-name character he’s created since he hit the streets in the mid 1980s, and during his stint as a homicide detective in the late 1990s to early 2000s.

And it comes with critics. Aside from defense attorneys, they’re mainly his policing peers, who bristle at his brash and bravado.

He admits to his ego, and enjoying the attention and respect he receives on the streets. He works out four times a week to stay in shape for policing, and will show you his tattoos. He enjoys it when kids in the city literally look up to him and think he’s some sort of a professional wrestler – that once happened, he said.

Manzo’s been known to drop one liners, like, when talking about hunting illegal guns: “I hunt sharks, not minnows,” and follow it up with a hearty laugh.

He’ll talk to anyone, good guys and bad, and says he’s always sharpening his mental index of who’s doing what in the city’s neighborhoods. “Know the players, and know the game” is one of his mantras.

All of it, though, he’s backed up with high-profile arrests and a resume of gun arrests that’s led a string of police directors to task him with battling violent crime in specialized units. Sure, he’s been in the department’s penalty box here and there.

He’s such a personality, even his arguments even have a way of making it to the local media. In May 2017, he and former Director Ernest Parrey squared off in “spirited” difference of opinion about Manzo’s reassignment back to patrol.

Parrey, though, a retired city police captain, would not besmirch Manzo’s work, telling NJ Advance Media at the time that Manzo was always someone he could count on to “arrive early, stay late, or get out of bed in the middle of the night to get things done.”

Earlier this year, Manzo and three other supervisors were honored with departmental merit awards for their leadership in organizing the emergency treatment of 22 gunshot victims at the Art All Night shooting in 2018.

This year alone, Manzo, while in patrol, led the arrest of a bank robbery suspect minutes after a heist in May. The man fled into a neighborhood, and Manzo told his officers to check a corner store. Sure enough, a man had just bought a new hat and gloves, and they arrested him moments later wearing them – and holding $3,300 from the bank.

In August, Manzo responded to a call for a child that fell, who later died, and as EMS tried to save the little girl, he ordered a number of people at the scene detained, knowing the injuries were a crime. One was the suspected abuser, who’s been charged with murder.

And in September, when gunshots rang out in a laundromat, Manzo and another officer were first on scene, finding two wounded, one who later died. When they looked at security footage, Manzo identified one of the suspected shooter by sight - an older woman he’d arrested a few years back.

Manzo gave detectives her address; they arrested her on attempted murder a day later.

The maximum age for being a police officer in New Jersey is 65. Manzo doesn’t give his age. He knows you can do the math, but that might be when he hangs it up.

For now, he says while sitting at the department’s conference table, nodding to the window: “I just want to be right out there, and getting into it.”

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevintshea.

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