08/30/2026
Past and present members of the Prosecutor’s Office will be gathering in Freehold this afternoon and tomorrow morning to pay their final respects and share fond remembrances of a man whose vision shaped modern-day law enforcement in Monmouth County: former County Prosecutor John Allan Kaye, whose 22-year term of service was the longest of its kind in state history.
In tribute, we’d like to share some background on it.
A New Jersey native, Prosecutor Kaye graduated from Penn State’s School of Law in 1968. He was appointed Monmouth County’s 26th Prosecutor in 1983 by Governor Thomas H. Kean.
During his tenure at MCPO, he oversaw the Office through a long period of significant growth and change, including the expansion of specialized investigative and prosecutorial efforts involving the targeting of organized crime, narcotics, gangs, school violence, hate crimes, and environmental offenses.
Kaye also worked to promote diversity in law enforcement and created multiple programs and advocacy campaigns to protect victims of child abuse and domestic violence, specifically by expanding the Child Abuse/Sexual Abuse Unit (now known as Special Victims Bureau, or SVB), helping to redesign the reporting system for child-abuse offenders who were parole-eligible, and creating bail conditions for accused abusers to be removed from their homes or restrained from contact. He also played a vital role in the passage of an amendment to the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act that dealt with the seizure of fi****ms during the aftermath of an incident of domestic violence.
Under Kaye’s leadership, the Office would host the first S.A.N.E (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) pilot program in the State, which was staffed by registered nurses with specialized training to care for people who had been victims of s*xual abuse or assault. Kaye would also play a vital role in the creation and development of the Monmouth County Child Advocacy Center (CAC), designed to provide a safe and non-threatening environment for child victims of s*xual abuse to be interviewed and cared for.
In 1989, Kaye formed the Bias Crimes Unit within the Office. He developed the Monmouth County Human Relations Commission, a model that was later adopted by the County Commissioners. The goals of the Commission were based on prevention: to educate and coordinate with members of the community, law enforcement, and schools to prevent and respond to hate crimes. At the time, the Commission was the first of its kind within the state, and it became a model for other counties.
In 1990, the Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) was formed to combat the rising and ongoing fight against narcotics distribution and usage within the county’s most impacted communities, such as Asbury Park, Freehold Borough, Long Branch, and Red Bank. An additional narcotics team was created specifically as a task force dedicated to the county’s Bayshore area. This marked the first time that teams comprised of local, county, state, and federal officers were centrally coordinated in an effort to aggressively target illegal narcotics activity.
Environmental enforcement was also a noteworthy aspect of Kaye’s tenure. In 1983, the New Jersey Attorney General referred an environmental prosecution involving International Flavors and Fragrances to Monmouth County. Kaye responded by assigning dedicated prosecutorial resources to environmental cases and establishing training initiatives involving state and federal agencies, marking the creation of the first Environmental Crimes Unit in a prosecutor’s office anywhere in the state.
John A. Kaye’s 22 years as Monmouth County Prosecutor represent a significant chapter in the more-than-200-year history of the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office. His career combined long-term leadership of the county’s chief law enforcement agency with involvement in statewide, national, and international prosecutorial organizations. Kaye’s professional leadership extended beyond just the scope of Monmouth County as well. He served as President of the National District Attorneys Association in 1996-1997, having also served as the Chairman of the Board and Assistant Treasurer of the organization. Internationally, John also represented the United States as an Executive Board Member of the International Association of Prosecutors from 1997-2005.
Away from the MCPO, Kaye was known as an avid fisherman and a hunter – so much so that in a 1983 Asbury Park Press article about his appointment as Prosecutor, he noted that “I was optimistic all the time. I’m a fisherman. And a fisherman is always optimistic that he’s going to catch the biggest fish.”
Kaye was also an avid traveler and accomplished painter; many of his own paintings not only hung on the walls of his office, but also within the Monmouth County Courthouse, and some were donated to the Freehold Municipal Building as well. Retired MCPO Deputy Chief Guy McCormick donated a number of Prosecutor Kaye’s paintings to the Prosecutor’s Office prior to his passing in 2023.
After leaving office in 2005, John joined the firm of Lomurro, Davison, Eastman and Muñoz in Freehold, specializing in victim’s rights, later becoming Of Counsel to the firm of Lomurro Law until his retirement from practice.
We offer our sincere condolences to former Prosecutor Kaye’s family, friends, and loved ones – and to all those who had the pleasure of working with him over such a storied career. To learn more about his remarkable life and career, read on here:
https://www.freemanfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/John-Kaye?obId=49338227
May he rest in eternal peace.
View John Allan Kaye's obituary, contribute to their memorial, see their funeral service details, and more.
