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Health & Fitness

APCs, Real Job Security, & the Camden County Metro Division Scam.

[Disclosure: This blog is written from my perspective as both a candidate for a seat on Gloucester Township Council and as a concerned citizen of Gloucester Township with questions and concerns about reckless spending and business as usual in Gloucester Township.]


“Concord (NH) is poised to accept $258,000 in federal funding to buy an armored vehicle that police say would provide protection for officers and civilians alike during a terrorist attack, riot or shooting incident.” The vehicle in question is to be “paid for entirely by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security” (UnionLeader.com)

Does that sound eerily familiar to anyone reading this blog?

Allow me please, as a candidate for township council in the Nov. 5th general election, to state my position on the Gloucester Township Police and their safety. I fully support the brave men and women of the Gloucester Township Police and state my support for supplying the police force with everything needed to guarantee the safety of each and every officer in the exercise of his or her appointed duties. I am highly appreciative of the work our local law enforcement officers do in their daily routine and believe that the residents of Gloucester Township have a police force of which they can be proud.

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Gloucester Township, like the town of Concord, NH, purchased an armored BearCat to the tune of some $275,000. Like the town of Concord that held a public hearing on Aug. 12 “about the proposed purchase of a BearCat G3 rescue vehicle,” Gloucester Township Council considered the purchase of our BearCat in council and was addressed by the public. For the most part, the citizens who addressed the council were opposed to the purchase or, at least, desired to know more about the reasoning for such a purchase. My recollection of the meeting informs me that there was one regular citizen that spoke in support of the purchase and one or two law enforcement officials.

My personal suggestion at that time was a desire for local law enforcement and township council to empanel a citizen’s task force to discuss with our leaders the whole idea of beefed up security in town in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. When I aired my concern that it appeared that our police were becoming militarized, township council president, Glen Bianchini, replied that he did not understand what that meant.

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To complicate matters was the fact that Camden County already possesses an APC that sits in Lakeland and is available for all to use and this fact was stated by county officials. The rationale offered for the purchase of another BearCat by GT was that in the case of an emergency in GT, if the CC BearCat was already out, GT would not be able to respond as the situation required. The faulty logic used to offer that excuse neglects to consider that any number of simultaneous emergencies could arise and thus might require multiple BearCats to respond. In addition, whenever an emergency does arise in one town, other nearby towns are more than willing to offer help and such situations have occurred recently and were reported as having multiple town participation.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, the subject of school security was on everyone’s mind. It was reported that when the BearCat idea was submitted to our mayor, the mayor asked the police chief if the presence of the BearCat would save one life; the police chief answered yes and the mayor told him to buy it. It was purchased “with unused capital improvement funds from prior years,” as stated by Business Administrator Tom Cardis. I, for one, would like to know how and why these funds are left over. Are we overfunding projects and then claiming the excess are “unused funds?”

In stating my support for the officers of Gloucester Township, while not necessarily agreeing with every capital purchase project coming down the pike, allow me to refresh the minds of my readers about what is going on in Camden County and, by extension, Gloucester Township. Camden County politicians are trying to force a shared services agreement on the many local police forces of Camden County attempting to bring them to the rescue of the Camden City Police Force. The Camden City police serve in one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. and have already been downgraded to accommodate freeholder director "Cappelli’s Caper": the Camden County Police – Metro Division.

Somehow we are being asked to believe that the current officers of the Camden Police Department can be fired and then half of them rehired at a lower rate of pay along with new officers recruited at this lower pay and that this will bolster the police presence in Camden thus thwarting future crime. What is not clear is why the other towns in Camden County need to become part and parcel of this scheme. As of May 4th, 2013, no other police force in Camden County had stepped forward to join in on this plan. It has been reported, “The Metro Division is not being funded by County property taxpayers, but through Camden City’s property tax revenue and state funds for municipal aid. If other towns wish to join the regional police department, which is voluntary, they will pay for police protection as a shared service” (GloucesterCityNews.net). It is certainly unclear to me how other municipalities can share police services with the city of Camden.

“Voluntary” shared services or not, however, it has been reported that NJ State Senate President Sweeney is pushing a controversial shared services bill that would empower New Jersey’s “Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization and Consolidation Commission” (LUARCC) to determine "objectively" where municipalities could save money by sharing services…and where voters refuse…those towns would lose state aid equivalent to what the property tax cost savings would have been (NJSpotLight.com). The "objectivity" of this determination is questionable to me. The story that reported this had to do with a retiring police chief and sergeant from a small South Jersey town’s seventeen-member police department and the suggestion that it would be wise to merge with the 29-member force in the neighboring next town. I can see how that might be a workable plan but when we talk about one police division for all of Camden County – fully 228 square miles – the picture is not coming together for me.

As a candidate for Gloucester Township Council, I personally support a referendum, or whatever we can put together, that will guarantee that the Gloucester Township Law Enforcement Officers will have job security and will not be swallowed up by the Camden County Metro Division. Does support for the purchase of an APC guarantee that? Well…not so much. My support is for personnel not capital purchases. BTW, this is Gloucester Township not Beirut.

To my point, the Gloucester Township FIRST mayoral/council ticket is committed to support the current police force of Gloucester Township. We are opposed to any merger into a County Metro Division. We do not, in fact, take kindly to threats from Mr. Sweeney to cut services to our township and do so by making comparisons that are apples to oranges to explain why we should submit to something as ludicrous as a county-wide police department. I understand shared services…we have many shared services agreements that are workable, but we are a large township and part of a county with an even larger township, Cherry Hill, and a very troubled city, Camden, and our policing needs are different. It is beyond the scope of shared services to suggest a county-wide police department. One might as well call for a state-wide police department and that might work just as well; my meaning being it won’t work at all.

A final point; all the talk of grant money, what some people seem to think is free money, is more smoke and mirrors from the money-grabbers in Trenton and Washington. You might remember a scam referred to as the Homestead Rebate.  The state took your money, overpaid some people to shuffle it around, and then gave a little of it back to you in a scam that attempted to build good will for the money-grabbers as if they were doing you a favor. Why did it not make sense to these people just to take only what was needed or required? What happened to that rebate scam? Eventually it went away and now the state money-grabbers are looking for more ways to take your money, like an exit tax.

So where exactly does all this grant money that is being used for this or that "project" come from? Yes, right out of the taxpayer’s pocket. "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (TANSTAFL) and “there ain’t no such thing as free money.”

I hope to see you on November 5th at the voting booth.

Visit Gloucester Township FIRST at: http://www.gloucestertownshipfirst.com

P.S. - Plug this phrase (LETTER FROM FORMER CAMDEN DETECTIVE MARK SAUNDERS) into a Google Search and see what some of Camden’s Finest are saying about the Metro Division.


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