This story is filled with so many ironies, it's hard to know where to start.

So let's start at the beginning.

In 1997, then-Gov. Christie Whitman signed a law that allowed retired police officers to carry concealed weapons.

The intent was to enhance public safety in an increasingly dangerous world. The catalyst was the 1995 murder of John Deventer, a retired Hanover Township police chief, who was shot in Newark's Fairmount cemetery when he interceded in the carjacking of an elderly couple.

Which leads to Irony No. 1. One of the officers who chased the killers was John Kotchkowski, then a young University Hospital cop.

Kotchkowski, now 55, went on to become a highly decorated University Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey police sergeant. But when he retired in 2011, he was denied a right-to-carry permit.

The reason? He was a campus cop.

And this is where things get murky, as they often do with New Jersey's arcane gun laws.

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New Jersey statute 2C:39-6 (l) currently lists eligible retired police as federal, state, county or municipal officers, sheriff's officers, corrections officers, park police and county prosecutor investigators. It specifically includes any former "full-time member of a state law enforcement agency."

The State Police have responsibility for administering the law - meaning permit approval is their call - and say the statute needs to be clarified to include public university police.

"We're following the statute," said Capt. Stephen Jones, the State Police spokesman. "If the Legislature includes campus police, then by all means, we would be more than happy to approve them."

"There seems to be discrepancy in whether (state) university police are viewed as working for a state agency," said Thomas Roughneen, the Chatham attorney who is representing Kotchkowski and Robert Dunsmuir, 48, another retired UMDNJ sergeant, who also was denied a right-to-carry permit.

"We're arguing (on appeals) that clearly they are. How are UMDNJ police not a state law enforcement agency? By that logic, that makes the entire Rutgers police force - which is one of the largest in the state - ineligible. And that flies in the face of the intent of the law, which is to increase public safety."

Another irony is the arbitrary manner in which the permits are approved.

Kotchkowski, who lives in Whippany, saw his appeal denied last week by Morris County Superior Court Judge Salem V. Ahto and is deciding whether to appeal again. Dunsmuir, of Red Bank, is making his first appeal in Monmouth County later this month.

"We know of plenty of cases where campus police were approved, including two recent cases in Middlesex and Burlington (counties)," Roughneen said.

Ironic, too, is that New Jersey university officers often have more crime experience than small-town cops or park police.

Dunsmuir and Kotchkowski both said they worked at UMDNJ because of the action, and anyone familiar with UMDNJ knows campus police there aren't security guards who carry nightsticks in some bucolic college setting.

University Hospital is the gunshot wound capital of New Jersey. Rolling through the emergency room doors with those gunshot wounds is a cauldron of emotional craziness, from angry friends and family of the injured to killers looking to finish the job.

Dunsmuir came close to shooting a man waving a gun around in the emergency room parking lot.

"I drew down on him," he said. "I kept telling him, 'Drop the gun, drop the gun.' He finally he did."

Both chased armed robbery suspects into Georgia King Village and James Baxter Terrace, two crime-plagued housing projects since torn down. Kotchkowski was shot at in Georgia King.

"The hospital was in the territory of the Grape Street Crips," Kotchkowski said. "When calls (from Newark police) went out, we went out."

Both Dunsmuir and Kotchkowski were, at times, "loaned" to Newark police. Both spent time on the fomrer Essex-Union stolen car task force, working with Newark and Elizabeth city police and state troopers, and were involved in high-speed chases and crashes.

Kotchkowski chased down, tackled and disarmed a gun-toting carjacker. A heroin addict stabbed him with a needle.

When Dunsmuir was sent to Camden after the UMDNJ force became part of the Rutgers University Police Department, he patrolled and made gun arrests on the streets of that city.

"Carjackings. Armed robberies. Domestics," Kotchkowski said. "We did everything city cops did."

Which leads to yet another irony.

Kotchkowski, who can't carry a concealed weapon in New Jersey, is an "active shooter instructor" at the Essex County Police Academy, certified by both the FBI and Homeland Security. Under the statute, retired officers must be range-certified twice a year to keep their right-to-carry permit active.

"I'm training guys who have a permit when I don't," Kotchkowski said.

Active-shooter drills go right to the heart of state and federal laws that allow retired cops to carry guns. In America today, you never know when an active shooter is going to pop up on college campuses, in movie theaters, or at office Christmas parties. The more trained eyes and ears - and guns - the better.

Those types of shootings moved the federal government to pass the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004, which allowed retired officers from a broad spectrum of agencies to carry concealed weapons.

New Jersey and the other 49 states have reciprocal agreements so, for example, if a retired Penn State cop has the right to carry in Pennsylvania, he can carry in New Jersey. But Kotchkowski, Dunsmuir and other state university police cannot. Go figure.

"It's made me feel like my whole career was a sham, like they're saying I wasn't a real cop." Kotchkowski said.

"I feel the same way," Dunsmuir added.

Beyond embarrassment is the bottom line. These two officers, with all their urban experiences and nearly 50 years on the job between them, can't get work as armed guards or in armed security because they don't have the right-to-carry permit.

Only in New Jersey? Only in New Jersey.

"If they moved out of state," Roughneen said. "They wouldn't have a problem."

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.