Three Kearny police officers were promoted Aug. 15 — one from sergeant to lieutenant and two from police officer to sergeant — at a meeting of the Kearny mayor and Town Council.
Lt. Kevin Arnesman
Arnesman, ascending from sergeant to lieutenant, was first up.
“Kevin does a lot of things for the department that really are those thankless jobs,” Police Chief George King said after the trio were sworn-in. “Kevin does works in administration and does a lot of the behind the scene things and I’ll tell you all he does your pay and your overtime. So that’s something you can all you can all thank Kevin for.”
Arnesman is a graduate of Kinnelon High School. He then went on to get a bachelor’s degree from Montclair State University and became an EMT.
He became a Class 2 officer in the Essex County Sheriff’s Office and volunteered more than 2,000 hours of his time before he was hired to become a full-time Kearny cop.
In 2013, he went through a second police academy and then was assigned to the patrol division.
“There was a short stint in the evidence room and the Detective Bureau and then ultimately he was assigned to the chief’s staff doing a lot of administrative work,” King said. “When COVID hit, a lot of things changed. And we had COVID funding, we had grant resources, grant management and Kevin was tasked with managing all of that. And we were very successful in our grant program, very successful in managing COVID, managing the money and the funds that we got. So most of that was due to Kevin’s hard work.”
Sgt. Ryan Stickno
Stick, elevated from patrolman to sergeant, was born and raised in Kearny and is the brother of another officer, Alan Stickno.
King joked as he first spoke of Ryan, who is tall in stature.
“It’s always tough when I have to put a badge on somebody that makes me look kind of really short, so I thank you for that tonight,” the chief kidded.
Stickno went on to St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City and then St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, both Jesuit institutions. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business admin and joined the Kearny PD in 2017.
“Ryan, you very quickly distinguished yourself as somebody who you could rely on, you could use for other things and you could use as a training officer,” King said of Stickno. “He was a mentor and he quickly became a field-training officer. So we task field-training officers with the responsibility of training new officers when they come out of the police academy. They rotate through a series of officers and they’re responsible for the initial training those officers received. And Ryan has done an exceptional job. He he distinguishes himself there. He’s one of the officers I can say anytime we assign somebody to him, they come out a good officers, pretty squared away.”
Stickno is a firearms instructor and is a member of the Hudson County Regional SWAT team. In 2022, Stickno was selected by his peers as the Police Officer of the Year. He is also known for his work in rifle and active-shooter training for other members of the department.
“I know you’re going to be a great supervisor, and I wish you all the luck” King said.
Sgt. Michael Andrews
Andrews, promoted from detective to sergeant, was born and raised in town and is a graduate of Kearny High School, and played on a state championship soccer team in his days as a Kardinal. He went on to Kane University and he played soccer at the college level.
In 2005, Andrews took the civil-service test and began his law-enforcement career in corrections.
After going to the academy a second time, he was assigned to the Kearny PD’s patrol division. He became a detective in the Vice Unit a short time after.
“And I can tell you Mike did a ton of work in the Vice Unit, thousands of investigations and arrests during his time there. So those guys did a great job working a lot of undercover, a lot of narcotics work at the time,” King said.
In 2015, he was the Police Officer of the Year.
In 2018, King formed the Street Crimes Unit, which was designed to go out and and address quality of life issues throughout town.
“Mike was one of the officers that were selected for that. Tough job to do, especially nowadays, in today’s environment to be proactive, do the job. But you know at that time, he stepped up, did the job, a lot of it, again, a lot of arrests, a lot of good work and the work that they did helped to make community safer place,” King said.
After that, he was put into into the Detective Bureau.
“While he was in the Detective Bureau, he also wound up handling all of our firearms,” King noted. “So we had an issue with some backlog in the firearms and as anyone knows who is involved today, there’s a lot of people who want guns. We had a lot of applications. Mike got tasked with that. He cleaned it up, took care of the backlog, handled all of our firearms.
“So again, Mike, I wish you all the best — congratulations — I know you’re going to do the job well.”
King’s offers thanks for support
King also took time to laud all who were present for the promotions.
“There are officers from many different departments (here) and I want to thank you for coming out and thank you all for everything that you do every day,” King said. “The image that you give to law enforcement — we enjoy great support in Kearny and it doesn’t come from one person, it comes from the department, community policing, etc. We all know it’s not just the unit, but it’s a concept and all of you, every day, go out, do your job, and you do it well. And you represent the uniform and the badge the way it’s supposed to be. I personally thank you for that. You make my job easier.”
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Kevin A. Canessa Jr. is the editor of and broadcaster at The Observer, an organization he has served since 2006. He is responsible for the editorial content of the newspaper and website, the production of the e-Newspaper, writing several stories per week (including the weekly editorial), conducting live broadcasts on social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, and X, including a weekly recap of the news — and much more behind the scenes. Between 2006 and 2008, he introduced the newspaper to its first-ever blog — which included podcasts, audio and video. Originally from Jersey City, Kevin lived in Kearny until 2004, lived in Port St. Lucie. Florida, for four years until February 2016 and in March of that year, he moved back to Kearny to return to The Observer full time. Click Here to send Kevin an email.