Thursday, January 31, 2013
Camden County Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr. called the move a failure of leadership that 'defies logic,' and promised new officer trainees will hit the streets in March.
Rank-and-file members of the Camden City Fraternal Order of Police voted down a proposal from the Camden County Freeholders to join the Camden County Metro Police Division or forfeit their years of service on the job. The offer failed to pass by a measure of 142-62 on Thursday, with 204 of 234 members voting. That final tally means that the police union in the most dangerous city in America will try its luck challenging the labor reorganization in the court system, as an April 30 deadline to dissolve the city force in favor of a countywide Metro Division looms. The deal on the table Thursday would have created a special exception allowing for as much as 100 percent of the current department to be hired by the Metro Division while …
Will the deal have a big impact on crime for Camden County residents? According to two veteran officers, the outcome is uncertain.
After 27 years with the Camden City Police Department, Richard Desmond has been through layoffs, labor negotiations, and general unpleasantness on the job. As a retired sergeant, he heads up the Emerald Society drum and bagpipe band, a ceremonial outfit he says has played at funeral services for more than 400 police officers and firefighters up and down the east coast. But burying the Camden City P.D. to make way for the countywide Metro Division is a deal he thinks will ultimately create a force that, even if larger, is no cheaper and far less experienced than the current corps of men and women policing the city. Far from the fight-'em-there mentality of the Camden County Freeholders—which has promised that a larger force will contain the…
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Mayors from several Camden County towns endured jeers and taunts from the crowd of 75-plus while denying entry to a delegation of police chiefs.
Waving signs that read “WE DEMAND RESPECT FOR CAMDEN” and “PUBLIC SERVANTS NOT PUBLIC SLAVES,” some 75 picketers gathered outside the Camden County Boathouse Tuesday evening to protest a closed-door meeting of several local mayors on the subject of replacing the Camden police department with a county-based metro division. Chanting “Sell-out” as each successive attendee arrived, the crowd cheered when a passing car or truck honked in support, and heckled the building through bullhorns for nearly two solid hours. Among those coordinating the opposition were Camden City residents, police and firefighters from throughout the county, and their families. To a person, they expressed nearly the same concerns—that details of the reorganization …
NJSgt
12:31 am on Tuesday, April 23, 2013
So how do you think contract negotiations will go for every department in Camden County now that this county force is up and running? more ›