Capt. Stephen Jones is class act in dealing with media.
There were two memorabilia centers at New Jersey State Police Headquarters in West Trenton.
The official museum has vintage uniforms, guns, patrol Harleys and cruisers, exhibits on everything from the Lindbergh baby kidnapping to crime-solving sciences.
The unofficial memorabilia collection was the desk and workspace of recently retired Capt. Stephen Jones, 55, who was head of the State Police Office of Public Affairs.
If his name sounds familiar, it's because Jones was the guy behind the press releases, and the face at the microphones or in front of the cameras.
"Managing media is difficult," said Col. Rick Fuentes, who has been in charge longer than any previous state police colonel. "You need a seat-of-the-pants knowledge to balance the public's 'right-to-know' while protecting our interests, like ongoing investigations.
"Stephen brought our transparency to a new level and created a renaissance of social media," Fuentes said. "We get thousands of hits a day (on Facebook and Twitter), and it gets our stories and important information out to the public."
Jones said there's been more than one occasion when the posts "solved crimes."
"We put a suspect on our Facebook page and the calls start coming in," he said. "One guy said, 'I'll turn myself in, just get me off Facebook.' "
Nora Muchanic, a 30-year veteran reporter with WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, called Jones "the poster boy for police dealing with press."
"He showed it doesn't have to be an adversarial relationship," she said. "He was articulate and forthright. He told you what he could tell you - and what he couldn't - so you weren't hanging around all day hoping for information that wasn't going to come."
Some of those press dealings were easy. Jones has security lanyards from the fun events - things such as Pope Francis' visit in 2015 and the Super Bowl at MetLife Stadium a year earlier - when the state police handled much of the security.
Others were hard, such as line-of-duty deaths. Sean Cullen, Anthony Respa and Eli McCarson died in car accidents in the past two years alone.
Jones wrote the press releases when troopers made big drug and weapons busts, and when troopers fell on the wrong side of the law.
"We have to try to be transparent," Jones said. "All of law enforcement is moving in that direction. We do good things but, like any big agency, we're going to have people who mess up."
And, of course, there is the inevitability of the media fixating on the mess ups.
The state police high-speed escort of exotic cars down the Garden State Parkway dominated the headlines as "Death Race 2012" in April of that year. Six months later, when the state police made 250 emergency rescues from the Seaside Heights vicinity during the brunt of Hurricane Sandy, there was nary a word.
Jones understands that's just part of the game.
"My frustration level (with the media) is very low," he said. "Generally, people in the media have been receptive to good stories."
Jones' story of how he became a trooper is a pretty good one in itself.
He did not come from a law enforcement family and wasn't a criminology major. He studied communications and TV production at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and was working in public information for a South Jersey utility.
But, as a spiritual man, he said he reached a point where he wanted to make changes in his life.
"I prayed for discipline and God chuckled and said, 'Okay, I'll put you in the State Police Academy,' " Jones said.
God's instrument in this was Jones' neighbor in Williamstown, state trooper Bill Addis.
"He told me these stories and I thought it was a pretty cool job," Jones said.
Jones took the test and passed by half a point. Then came the physical challenges and he did surprisingly well.
"I wasn't an athlete in high school," he said. "But I trained a little by doing the shuttle run in the street in front of my house."
Jones spent the early part of his career deep in South Jersey, patrolling the towns along the Delaware Bay, and then was assigned to the auto unit in North Jersey. In 1999, he led the investigation into the state's motor vehicle division that exposed a license-selling operation to illegal immigrants. After 9/11, he tracked the fraudulent licenses of some of the hijackers.
Jones hit the mandatory retirement age recently and now his 21-year career has come to an end.
As he packed up his desk last week, his pride about the force was apparent. He filled a few cardboard boxes with vintage uniform patches, patrol signs, commemorative coins, ash trays, coffee cups, a trooper bobble head and toy cruisers.
He had a half-dozen "G Men & Heroes of the Law" bubble gum cards from 1936, so well-preserved, you can still smell the candy's sweetness on them. Two brass safely patrol badges from 1940s. And an old comic book about the Lindbergh baby.
Some of the coins in the commemorative collection were his idea.
"He wanted to do a series of eight copper coins of state police history," said Mark Falzini, archivist at the museum. "So I found the old photographs for the designs."
The result were coins on the first superintendent Col. Norman Schwarzkopf; the motorcycle, mounted and K-9 divisions; the first barracks; and others.
Such was Jones' reverence toward state police history.
And now he is part of it.
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.