Orange County remembers Tuxedo Park officer killed in 1997 crash

Stephanie Conklin of Monroe still remembers the moment her family’s life split in two: the call saying her younger brother, Tuxedo Park Officer Jason D. Conklin, would not come home. Nearly three decades after his death, that loss still anchors Orange County’s law-enforcement remembrance at the courthouse in Goshen.

Jason Conklin was 22 when he died on Aug. 21, 1997, after only two months with the Village of Tuxedo Park Police Department. Born Oct. 29, 1974, in Suffern, he had graduated from Monroe-Woodbury High School in 1993 and was pursuing an associate’s degree in criminal justice at Rockland County Community College. He was killed in an automobile crash while trying to stop a speeding vehicle; reports say his Ford Expedition left the roadway and he was ejected.

For Stephanie Conklin-Cole, the memory is personal as well as public. She recalled being at work when her brother called with the news that Jason would not be coming home. She and Jason were among six children, and the two often shared the routines of young adulthood in Orange and Rockland counties, traveling together from Monroe to classes at Rockland County Community College and working side by side at a Pizza Hut in Ramsey, N.J.

That family story has become part of a wider county ritual. The Fraternal Order of Police Jason Conklin Memorial Lodge #957 was formed shortly after his death and says it has grown to well over 600 members representing 35 federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies. The lodge has erected two memorial walls at the Orange County Courthouse entrance in Goshen. The first was dedicated on Sept. 13, 2004, and a second wall of honor followed on May 11, 2012 after the first ran out of space.

The annual memorial service at the courthouse, open to the public and held outdoors rain or shine, brings together officers, families and community members to remember those killed in the line of duty. Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler, Sheriff Paul Arteta, County Clerk Kelly Eskew and Emergency Services Commissioner Brendan Casey attended this year’s ceremony, a reminder that the tradition still carries institutional weight across a county that spans 839 square miles and includes 3 cities, 20 towns and 19 villages.

The numbers tied to the memorial have changed over the years, with county notices citing 32 fallen officers and later 38 officers, troopers and federal agents, while the lodge’s website says the courthouse walls list 28 members of the Orange County law-enforcement community. However it is counted, the message is the same: Jason Conklin’s death remains part of Orange County’s public record, and part of its civic duty.