RICHARD NORCROSS: I believe in justice and serving people. My job today is really to come up with new product ideas that help with victims of crime. I became a police officer when I was 18 years old.
April 20, 1995, we were executing a search warrant on a suspected child molester. The suspect opened fire on us, killed the lead detective, Jack McLaughlin, hit me seven times. My brother's partner heard what was going on, on the radio. They responded in, and my brother was killed.
My brother was my best friend, and it was a very, very difficult situation to overcome.
And having been a police officer, I had never looked at things from the victim's perspective before.
Then, when I became a victim, I thought I understood the system, but then when I was on the other side, I didn't understand it.
When I went into the private sector, working with the state advocates association, we were able to develop a portal page that helps the victims receive their notifications in a timely manner, and also communicate directly with the victim advocates.
And now we have created tools that give people the information that they need, so that they can understand how the court system works and what are the rights of victims. And we've engaged all 21 counties in New Jersey and the Attorney General's office in this endeavor so that we could do it statewide.
The app came out of the portal because we have a generation that is now living on their phone exclusively. Also, we built out a section where they can find different resources--homeless shelters, food banks, domestic violence shelters. We'll map them to it.
We're aiding the victim advocates here in New Jersey, and we're giving them more time to provide services, counseling, and resources. They can do their job without having to sacrifice spending time with the victims. We were able to create a great product that helps people, and we're very proud of that.
