Police records room dedicated to late Point Pleasant detective

Detective Sgt. Hugh Hughes established, modernized Boro records department

Originally Published to the Ocean Star Newspaper on May 22, 2026

POINT PLEASANT — The police department’s records room was officially dedicated by the mayor and council to former Detective Sgt. Hugh Hughes, who died on June 10, 2009.

Hughes’s wife, Maryanne Hughes, accepted a customized plaque on her husband’s behalf at the May 18 borough council meeting. She was joined by her grandsons, Detective Sgt. First Class Thomas Boesch of the New Jersey State Police, Chief Brian Lee of New Jersey Human Service Police and Sgt. Ty Hughes of the Wall Township Police Department.

Boesch told The Ocean Star that Hughes did so much work revitalizing and modernizing the record keeping of the department that he is widely considered the person who started the records department.

“(Hughes) didn’t finish his career the way he wanted to, or the way he thought he would have, because he had to retire from a heart attack, but he saw a need in the records department,” Beosch explained. “There were no records back in the day. He started it and he worked there all the way up until around 2001 and then went into full retirement after that.”

Boesch said the idea to dedicate the records room to Hughes was a coordinated effort on his and Police Chief Chris Leonhardt’s behalf. “Obviously I grew up here in Point Pleasant and I’ve been friends with Chris Leonhardt my whole life, so I contacted him about six months ago and I brought (the idea) to him. He knew my grandfather was a police officer in town and I contacted him and asked him what he thought about dedicating the records room to my grandfather since he started it. He said it was a great idea and that he would bring it to the mayor and council to get it approved by them. It's been an ongoing thing the last couple of months and it came to fruition.”

Boesch said he is proud that his family’s legacy in the borough police department is now a part of local history. “I guess the best way to sum it up is that my grandfather's name is legacy. It will be on that wall long after we’re gone. I think it’s really cool that he loved being a police officer, he loved Point Pleasant, and now his name gets to be on the wall in police headquarters for an infinite amount of time. I know it’ll be up there long after I've gone.”

Chief Lee said, “My grandfather truly embodied the principles of community policing long before the concept became widely recognized in modern law enforcement. He believed that the badge represented more than the prevention of crime — it was an opportunity to build trust, strengthen neighborhoods, and become an integral part of the community through compassion, creativity, and problem-solving.”

After the meeting, Hughes spoke to the Ocean Star about her husband’s history with the police department. “We were married in 1954,” Hughes said. “I think he started in the force around the '60s.”

She said when they first married, he was in the Coast Guard, where he largely worked on ships engines, and then got a job with Exxon fixing trucks in Linden. Once the commute from Linden to Point Borough became too much, Hughes began looking for work in town. Maryanne said Hughes had multiple family members who were first responders and firefighters, and they were the ones who convinced him to take the test to become a police officer. She said he worked on the force until a heart attack forced him to retire for some time, after which he returned to work as a computer operator.

“The records room is dedicated to Hughy because after he had his heart attack, and he had to retire, they hired him back in the records room and he really took off from there,” Maryanne Hughes said. “He gave Point Pleasant borough the internet.”

Councilman William ‘Butch’ Stevenson, who previously worked in the borough police department, congratulated the family of Hughes, and spoke of his time on the force.

“I personally knew Sgt. Hughes when I worked with the police department. The very first police report I ever took was from a Middle School student who had his bike stolen. I was 20 years old and a few days later after I wrote the report, Sgt. Hughes comes out and tells me to pull up the report. He showed me what I did wrong and how to correct it. It was very nice, and after that he would come up just to make sure my reports were good and everything was accurate. He was a valuable member.”