Ocean City authors Jim Plousis and George Ingram will be exhibitors at the 19th annual Collingswood Book Festival on Saturday, Oct. 2, to promote their book, “Jersey Lawman,” with proceeds going to the U.S. Marshals Survivors Benefit Fund.
The festival, whose purpose is “to celebrate literacy,” will feature book signings, poetry, contests, workshops, entertainment, and many authors, including writers of children’s books, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“Jersey Lawman” is a first-person narrative that tells the story of Plousis and his more than four decades in law enforcement — from rookie cop in a rough Pine Barrens town to the youngest elected county sheriff in America at that time; and from his appointment as U.S. marshal to his job as chairman of the New Jersey Parole Board.
The book was awarded second place for best nonfiction in the 2020 competition of the Public Safety Writers Association.
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Plousis was a police officer in Woodbine and Ocean City before being elected Cape May County sheriff at age 32. He served in that post for five terms, earning national recognition for his innovative approach to law enforcement and public safety.
President George W. Bush appointed Plousis as U.S. marshal for New Jersey in 2002. In this position he brought the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Safe Surrender program to Camden and other New Jersey cities while working on high-profile cases here and abroad. For seven years afterward he was chairman of the state’s Parole Board. He now chairs the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in Atlantic City.
In the book, Plousis also relates personal endeavors that included driving a bus filled with food and camping equipment for poor youngsters in Georgia and joining a humanitarian mission to Haiti after the devastating earthquake there in 2010.
Plousis and freelance writer George Ingram agreed at the outset that the U.S. Marshals Survivors Benefit Fund would be the beneficiary of the book’s sales. It is a private, nonprofit corporation formed “exclusively for charitable and educational disbursements of its funds to the surviving family members of active United States Marshals, Deputy U.S. Marshals, Marshals Service Employees, and Special Deputy U.S. Marshals who are killed in the line of duty.”
Fund chairman Daniel J. O’Donnell called the offer “a generous contribution to help the families of slain U.S. marshals.”