Jersey City now has its first Filipino policewoman.

Concepcion ‘Connie’ Cacnio was among the 44 police recruits who graduated from the Jersey City Police Academy on December 18 at the New Jersey City University.

A former journalist, Cacnio, 28, is only the second Asian-American woman to have joined the Jersey City police force. The distinction of being the first belongs to a Chinese American who earned her badge in April 2006.

“It hasn’t hit me yet,” the Manila-born Cacnio said of her becoming a policewoman. “Only when I see people in need, then I become aware that I am a police officer now – that I have to do something to help them.”

Cacnio came to the United States when she was a baby, barely a year old, in 1978. Her father, Alfredo Cacnio, is from Pampanga while her mother, the former Nieves Ruiz, is from Pangasinan. She is the youngest of 10 children.

Cacnio, a former reporter for The Filipino Express, said she began to think about becoming a police officer when 9/11 happened.

“I was living in New York then, at the Village,” Cacnio said. “That night, I saw the suffering first-hand. I wanted to help, and not just watch helplessly.”

At about the same time, a policeman putting up recruitment posters for the city police department encouraged her to apply.

“We have no Asian-Americans in the force,” Cacnio quoted the policeman as telling her.

On her first night as a policewoman, Cacnio already had her first brush with danger.

She was driving around Route 440 in south Jersey City with her training officer when she heard the police radio blurt out: “Shots fired! Shots fired!”

“That was the first time I actually smelled burning tires,” Cacnio said, describing how her training officer had to drive fast in responding to the radio call.

It turned out it was a carjacking incident. One cop was running to the back of a house along Van Nostrand Avenue. Cacnio also had to pull out her gun.

As for her immediate plans, Cacnio said she wants to go back to school, and enroll in either Sociology or Criminology.

She also wants to be assigned to a special unit, “maybe the juvenile squad,” she said.

“I grew up in Jersey City, and this community strongly needs Asian women in law enforcement,” Cacnio said in 2005, when she was still applying for the police force.

Cacnio could only laugh when she related that old neighborhood stores that she used to frequent when she was growing up would tell her: “Oh, you don’t have to pay. You’re doing a lot for the community.”

“No, no, no,” Cacnio said. “I am still the same old Connie,” she would tell the store owners as she insists to pay for the things that she is buying.