Jersey City is aiming to pump up its police department with at least 100 officers next year after the number of officers has dipped below 900 for the first time in four years.
Public Safety Director Jim Shea and Police Director Tawana Moody made the declaration during a 90-minute 2024 budget hearing with city council members and the Department of Finance Thursday.
Shea noted that he and Mayor Steve Fulop set a goal a decade ago to bring the size of the police department to the 1,300 police officers employed by the city of Newark. The Newark Police Department currently has 1,058 police officers, while Jersey City currently has 887, down from the 924 it had one year ago at this time.
“We want to expand the department back above 900, definitely,” Shea said, noting the similar populations of Newark (307,000) and Jersey City (284,000). “We have more workers and visitors during the day. We have more visitors at night and yet, we are at 887, so we still need to expand our department if possible to handle our responsibilities.”
Shea said two large recruit classes that joined the force 25 years ago are reaching retirement age, so getting recruits in the academy is all the more important.
“We are not going to be able to keep up on the retirements based on the number of seats the academy can give us, even if we tried to put 100 in (the academy),” Shea said.
Jersey City police officers’ union President Joe Cossolini said the city is losing officers to higher-paying jobs in the suburbs.
“Since my team and I were elected in 2021, the city and the union have been confronted with the challenges of recruiting and retaining police officers in this city,” Cossolini said. “We have seen numerous officers leave the department for higher-paying police jobs In the suburbs, and we have seen many qualified new recruits choose to go elsewhere.”
One of the solutions presented to fill the need for more police officers is shifting officers to a four-day, 12-hour shift schedule, but that would call for a potential 13% increase in the police budget to cover the extra man hours, officials said. “It brings up a lot of other issues,” Shea said.
Currently the city spends in excess of $10 million annually in police overtime.
Cossolini said contract negotiations have not begun but “schedule changes are among many other ideas that have been explored.”
Bergen-Lafayette Councilman Frank Gilmore said he hasn’t seen any evidence that more police means less crime. He pointed out that the 2024 budget proposal calls for $121 million in police salaries, $15 million more than budgeted in 2023.
“We have been increasing our police force year after year and the crime has been what it has been, at the bare minimum you can say it was relatively stable,” Gilmore said Friday. “We need to look at some more alternative solutions … The approach to a safer community can’t always be police, police, police … Point to an instance where if there were more police officers this outcome would have been different.”
City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione did not respond to requests for a copy of the budget presentation given to the city council.
Fewer cops and the use of officers as crossing guards and at the public safety communications center to fill vacant positions are another factor in the millions spent on overtime. Moody also said officers need to qualify twice a year for shooting, which adds to the overtime total.
Shea and Moody are proposing $14 million be budgeted for overtime in 2024, some $6 million more than the amounf budgeted this year. The final overtime figure for 2023 is expected to be approximately $13 million.
Shea also defended the request to transfer $2.5 million from other divisions in public safety to cover overtime costs for the police department, a request thar was rejected Wednesday night by the city council.
“Take a look where that money is coming from, it is all coming from my department,” Shea said. “I am not asking for any additional money. I am just moving money I didn’t use in one area … into another area where we used more than we expected and that happens at the end of every year. I am not sure how this became such a big issue this year.”
