Retired, 43-year Trenton police officer passes away

Michael Schiaretti Jr.

Michael Schiaretti Jr., 68, was a Trenton police officer for 43 years.Family photo

Michael Schiaretti Jr. was a different kind of police officer.

He never sought rank, choosing a life of patrol on the streets of Trenton. He clocked 43 of them and worked until the age of 65, turning in his shield when mandated retirement makes the decision for an officer. He would have worked until 70 if the state let him, he said not long after turning in his badge and gun in 2016.

Schiaretti passed away Sunday at the age of 68, after battling cancer for about 18 months.

"I enjoyed the people I worked with,” Schiaretti said in the summer of 2016. "Most cops get burnt out working on the street and start looking for a job inside (police headquarters).”

“I was a freak of nature because I really liked being out on the street,” Schiaretti said.

Along the decades of service to the city, Schiaretti racked up a countless friends, contacts, colleagues and arrests, small and large. He was active in the police officer’s PBA union, and two of his sons served alongside him. When his friends and family feted with a retirement party, well over 200 attended the celebration.

Michael Schiaretti III, a Trenton police detective, said his father doted on his friends and family til the end. He passed away following a multi-generational family dinner, and after catching a portion of the New York Giants last game of the season.

“He never complained, never felt sorry for himself, always worried about every else and worried that everyone would be OK,” the younger Schiaretti said.

His father loved Christmas, and every year the family traveled to Brooklyn, New York, to stock up on mass quantities of Italian specialties, from olives to cookies, for the holiday season, Schiaretti said. They gifted some and served some at gatherings.

The older Schiaretti gave so many food gifts away this year, the son had to make a second, rare trip to stock up again.

Michael Schiaretti Jr. was a graduate of Penn State University, and was an avid fan of the New York Knicks, Rangers, Giants and Yankees - a longtime season ticket holder of the latter two.

Schiaretti loved the City of Trenton and its residents, "but most of all the men and women of the Trenton Police Department whom he considered part of his extended family,” his family wrote in his obituary.

Schiaretti III said his father scored high on a federal law enforcement exam after graduating fro college, but declined the offer of being a federal agent when he found out he could not work his entire career in one city - Trenton.

“He just loved Trenton,” Schiaretti III said. The family has been buoyed by the many kind words of remembrances that people have already shared online, he said.

Michael Schiaretti Jr. enjoyed hosting weekly card games, having morning coffee meetings with friends in downtown Trenton, but his greatest enjoyment “was being with his family, and he especially loved spending time with his 6 grandsons,” his obituary says.

Among his large family who survives him is wife of 44 years, Ramona “Mona” (Boyce) Schiaretti.

Schiaretti will laid to rest Friday following an 11 a.m. Mass of Christian Burial at St. Raphael’s Roman Catholic Church, 3500 South Broad Street, Hamilton, NJ 08610. Calling hours will be from Thursday, January 2, 2020 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. at D’Errico Whitehorse Mercerville Chapel, in the Brenna Cellini Facility.

Memorial contributions may be made in his memory to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105-9959, envelopes will be available at the funeral home or online at www.stjude.org.

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

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