Camden Cop Balances Pro Boxing and Law Enforcement Careers - TAPinto.net
CAMDEN, NJ – A Camden County Metro Police Department officer is balancing the weighty demands of his law enforcement job with his super featherweight-class professional boxing career.
Officer Vidal Rivera, a trim 29-year-old who stands at the 5-foot-9, trains recruits at CCPD’s academy by day. In his free time between shifts, he has participated in hundreds of boxing matches. His pro record career includes eight wins and one loss and five knockouts.
But Rivera says his most notable boxing accomplishment came from his amateur days, when he won the 2011 Philadelphia Golden Gloves championship, one of the biggest amateur competitions in the region, with the help of his coach Chris Williams.
Rivera, who grew up in downtown Camden and has been on the force since May 2014, started boxing when he was 14 years old. A friend’s uncle brought him to the North Camden Community Center’s ring where he met Williams.
For Rivera, who never knew his father, Williams was an important role model who kept him from getting involved in the street life that dominated the neighborhood he grew up in.
Rivera, now a father of three, returns to the community center every Thursday to help coach the city’s aspiring young boxers. The evening youth boxing program has been going on five days a week for decades, but CCPD just started bringing officers to the gym once a week in September.
“We thought it would be cool for the youth who attend to see police officers in a good light,” said CCPD’s Capt. Vivian Coley.
Eugene Bradley has been a coach with the community center’s boxing program for 25 years. He remembered when Rivera first began training at the gym and described him as an “inspirational” fighter. “He was a determined guy.”
Other top fighters have come through the community center’s doors, Bradley said. Jason Sosa, who won the World Boxing Association’s super featherweight title in 2016, and professional kickboxer Theresa Thoulouis both participated in the program.
Coley expects that kids who get the opportunity to train with Ramirez will carry the lessons they learn for the rest of their lives.
Rivera said there are numerous ways kids benefit from learning how to box. In addition to self-defense, he said the regular training endows kids with a sense of discipline and that the fast pace of the sport teaches them how to think rationally in stressful situations.
He uses these skills regularly on the job as an officer. While being able to defend oneself is obviously a good skill to have when dealing with criminals, Rivera emphasized that his quick thinking and ability to stay calm actually help deescalate situations that could become violent.
“It’s not the easiest task,” Rivera said when asked how he balances his two careers on top of fatherhood. Right now, he said his police work takes precedence over boxing.
But luckily his work with the department includes a daily morning run and other exercises with his trainees. After work, Rivera said he heads to the gym for two to three hours to do bodyweight exercises and cardio.
When the pandemic began all the fights scheduled were canceled, which Rivera said became a financial issue for many boxers. At the time, he was happy to have his main police officer gig to fall back on.
Now that things are getting back to normal, he plans to continue showing up at the boxing clinic at the North Camden Community Center from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. every Thursday.
source: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden/articles/camden-cop-balances-pro-boxing-and-law-enforcement-careers
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