Heights Police Carry Torch in Annual Special Olympics Run

This Friday, Hasbrouck Heights Police officers joins other departments from all over Bergen County in the annual Torch Run which raises money for the New Jersey Special Olympics.

The run will begin at 9:47 a.m. on Friday, June 7 starting at Oak Grove and Williams avenues and then moving south on the Boulevard.

The Heights Police fundraise for the Special Olympics year round. Most recently police officers and others got in the dunk tank at the Hasbrouck Heights Street Fair to help raise funds towards the Special Olympics.

The Torch Run was started by Steven Vitale, a Port Authority Police Officer who was killed in a road rage incident in 2006 at the age of 55. In 1982, Vitale, also a student of photography, was asked to take photos for a Special Olympics competition.

That experience moved him so deeply, that he asked other police officers to volunteer their time with him to help at the Special Olympics Summer Games. And so the Torch Run was born in 1984 to raise awareness and money for New Jersey's Special Olympics.

The original course went from Liberty State Park in Jersey City to Rutgers Stadium in New Brunswick, running 43 miles through eight towns and raising $7,000. From that first year, the Torch Run took off and it now raises over $2 million dollars with more than 3000 police officers statewide running or volunteering in events to raise money for the annual summer games of the New Jersey Special Olympics.