The council should look to make cuts to the Rockaway Township's higher-ranked officers, sergeants and detectives as another source of potential savings, said the committee member who asked to remain unnamed about the report. They are also certified to give first aid instructions over the phone.
McParland said his dispatchers handle 911 calls as opposed to using a county call center, which he said is safer because of familiarity with local landmarks. The committee said the Rockaway Police Department has “an inordinate amount of people in the dispatch department.” Randolph pays $228,100 and Mount Olive pays $202,200, but it's unclear how many dispatchers they employ. Rockaway Township has seven dispatchers for a total salary of $380,000. Jefferson has four and pays $291,850. Police dispatcher salaries - listed as “other expenses” in the report - are also being scrutinized. If they are running around for things like heart attacks, they can’t do investigative work.” You don’t do that with a limited amount of officers. There is a law enforcement component to this, making arrests, being vigilant and getting drugs off the street. We don’t want to reduce our police we want to enhance our police,” Puzio said. “We are one of the few places around that doesn’t have school security. Mayor Michael Puzio said there are many reasons he would like to see police numbers increase rather than shrink, among them the opioid epidemic and school security. The impact of new construction on the population was not factored into the report, committee members said. In 2017, the population estimate for Rockaway Township was 25,494, for Jefferson Township 21,314, for Randolph 25,893, and for Mount Olive 29,253, according to the U.S. “Some people say they want less cops, but there is only so much that they can do, and now that you are increasing residents, it’s hard to do more with less,” Kelley said.
If anything, Kelley said, the department needs to grow just to keep up with the commercial and residential building in town. At any given time there are only four officers patrolling the town’s districts, along with their supervisors. Kelley said the Police Department is already spread too thin. Jefferson has 39, Randolph 30 and Mount Olive 47, according to the report. Rockaway Township has 47 police officers (51 officers by the committee’s count). In addition to the existing population of 24,277 listed in the report, new developments on Green Pond Road and off Route 15 will be bringing “thousands more” to the township, Kelley said. Wittig, who is the committee chairman, said that although the comparable towns are “not always apples to apples,” the common traits such as the size of their footprints and population gave the committee enough to “draw comparisons.”Ĭouncil President Tucker Kelley said the committee missed the mark in a key way when it compared the population in Rockaway Township with neighboring towns.
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