New Police Mag Has Fugitives Covered
By John Lauinger Published: January 9, 2007
WATCH OUT, fugitive criminals of Suffolk County – police are publishing your mugs in a new magazine.
The inaugural edition of Long Island Fugitive Finder, a monthly magazine dedicated to helping police apprehend criminals on the lam, was published this month.
The magazine, which will be distributed free to hundreds of businesses in Suffolk and Nassau counties, is a joint effort of Suffolk County Police Department Crime Stoppers and D & S Advertising Inc. of Coram.
Each edition of the magazine – whose banner includes a likeness of Sherlock Holmes – will include the names of roughly a dozen of Suffolk’s most-wanted criminals, along with photographs and brief accounts of why each fugitive is wanted.
Each edition will also highlight a featured fugitive, whose mug will adorn the mag’s cover. Crime alerts and reference information for police will also be published. The print edition will have a companion Web site (www.lifugitivefinder.com), where updates will be posted once a fugitive is collared.
Dean Murray, president of D & S, which also publishes Long Island Job Finder, said the new magazine will be funded entirely by ad sales.
He said initial circulation is 25,000 copies – but he indicated that circulation could increase. He said he hopes to expand the publication to include most-wanted fugitives from Nassau.
Crime Stoppers Chairman Anthony Sce said the new magazine will help raise public awareness of Crime Stoppers’ criminal-catching mission.
“If we don’t make the public…aware of what it is Crime Stoppers does, then we’re not going to be able to help the cops in getting these bad guys off the street,” Sce said at a press conference yesterday.
The magazine’s first cover boy is Michael Galgano, 42, a parolee whose last known address was in Port Jefferson Station. In 1989, Galgano was convicted in California of raping two women and sentenced to 20 years in prison, said Laura Ahern, executive director of Parents for Megan’s Law, citing police records.
She said Galgano was paroled after 10 years, then failed to notify the parole board when he moved back to Port Jefferson Station.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Galgano was arrested for menacing two people while waiting to donate blood in Manhattan, Ahern said, but “because computer systems were down [due to terrorist attacks], he was not kept in custody and he absconded.”