A Bergen County Police Department dispatcher helped avert disaster after a drunken Westwood NJ man called and threatened to kill himself with a loaded handgun.

Veteran dispatcher Cindy Seidel took the call at the Bergen County Public Safety Operations Center in Mahwah, New Jersey. The caller was a distraught 52-year-old man.

Ms. Seidel kept her cool and continued talking to the caller while alerting police. Westwood police officers rushed to the caller’s Dean Street home, where they were assisted by police officers from River Vale and Hillsdale.

The tense negotiations lasted roughly 15 minutes. Eventually, the suicidal man put down his gun and surrendered. At the scene, officers discovered that the man had positioned several loaded firearms in a path leading from his front porch into the house.

According to authorities, all of the weapons were legally registered. However, if police had learned that any of the man’s weapons were not legally registered, he could have been charged with unlawful possession of a weapon. In New Jersey, unlawful possession of a weapon is addressed by N.J.S.A. 2C:39-5, which classifies the offense as a second degree felony, a third degree felony, or a fourth degree felony, depending on the kind of weapon. A conviction for fourth degree unlawful possession of a weapon can result in a sentence of as many as 18 months in state prison.

After police subdued the man, he was taken to the Bergen Regional Medical Center.

To learn more about this incident, read the NJ.com article entitled “Man with 20 Guns Talked Out of Suicide by Police Dispatcher.“