Manchester Resident Honored For Missing Persons Work

MANCHESTER, NJ — Erin Micciulla, a detective sergeant with the New Jersey State Police, has been honored as a recipient of the 2024 National Missing and Unidentified Persons Conference Service Award.

Micciulla, a Manchester Township resident who has been with the New Jersey State Police since 2005, will be honored during the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Conference, April 16-18, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada, the National Criminal Justice Training Center of Fox Valley Technical College announced.

The Missing and Unidentified Persons Conference Service Award recognizes the extraordinary efforts and outstanding achievements that have been made in contributing to the search, investigation, recovery, identification, and reunification of those who go missing.

Micciulla is being recognized for consistently demonstrating compassion, service, leadership, innovation, and commitment to missing and unidentified persons case issues, according to a news release from the organization.

Micciulla has been assigned to the assigned to the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit since 2013. She led efforts to create legislation that allows the State Police Missing Persons Unit to issue administrative subpoenas, and to request that a court issue subpoenas, warrants, court orders "or other relief" when auhorities are searching for a high-risk missing person.

The law was signed May 15, 2023. Before that New Jersey did not have a provision in its laws to allow for search warrants and other legal processes in missing persons investigations.

"Her commitment and perseverance in understanding that law enforcement and prosecutors needed the necessary tools to find missing persons before they met injury and/or death, and the critical investigative leads to capture an offender resulted in the passing and signing into law Bill P.L.2023, c.59 (A-3147/S-2081)," the organization said

The legislation expands the powers and duties of the Missing Persons Unit within the New Jersey State Police, providing the Unit with explicit authority to issue administrative subpoenas and to request that a court issue subpoenas, warrants, court orders or other relief concerning any case involving a high-risk missing person.

Under the new law, a law enforcement agency is required to contact the applicable county prosecutor if the agency believes that a person reported missing is a "high-risk" missing person.

If the prosecutor determines that the person is a high-risk missing person, and the Missing Persons Unit does not discover any evidence to the contrary, the law establishes as rebuttable presumption that the person is missing as a result of, or in association with, criminal activity, and the Unit may then request that a court issue subpoenas, warrants, court orders, or any other appropriate relief.

"(Micciulla's) tireless persistence and determination exemplify how instrumental and invaluable she is to the New Jersey State Police and all those communities she serves," the organization said.

For more information about our 2024 National Missing and Unidentified Persons Conference visit ncjtc.org/MUPC