N.J. Borough Disbands Police Department over Staffing Shortages

The tiny Camden County borough of Woodlynne will disband its local police department after county officials said the department suffered from insurmountable staffing shortages.

Woodlynne — located between Camden to the west and Route 130 and Collingswood to the east — is less than a quarter mile in size. County officials said the small borough will now be policed by the Camden County Police Department, which replaced the Camden City Police Department in 2013.

“After years of oversight by the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, the borough agency will disband, and the governing body will work with the Commissioners to create a smooth transition for patrols to start in the coming weeks,” county officials said in a statement.

Officials with the Woodlynne police department and the borough’s mayor did not immediately respond to a request to comment Thursday.

According to county officials, Woodlynne would not have the infrastructure or personnel to continue operations as an accredited department after Sept. 1.

A letter from Woodlynne’s director of public safety Edwin Ramos to the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said the department would only have had four officers to patrol, supervise and maintain training, working 12-hour shifts seven days a week by October.

Camden County commissioners said they would work with the borough to patrol the town of 2,900.

The department will absorb the borough’s existing patrol officers as well as three cadets currently in training at the Monmouth County Police Academy, said Camden County Police Chief Gabriel Rodriguez.

“At this current juncture we are working with the existing officers, borough officials and council to determine what the needs of the community are, and we are preparing to be ready to start assisting with supplemental patrols on Sept. 1,” Rodriguez said.

The Woodlynne Police Department drew criticism in recent years after a police officer was caught pepper spraying a group of teenagers in June 2020, and a former councilman and police officer exchanged assault accusations after an incident in the councilman’s home.

The police officer accused of pepper spraying the teens pleaded guilty to simple assault charges and agreed to resign from the department. A grand jury declined to charge the same officer in a separate incident after shooting a man in the buttocks while he was fleeing the scene of a robbery.

Thursday’s announcement isn’t the first time Woodlynne has lost local control of its police department. In 2006, the department disbanded and entered into a shared service agreement with Collingswood to patrol the small community. Woodlynne wrestled back local control in 2010 after the shared service agreement failed to work out for both towns.

“Ironically, this is why we originally formed the Camden County Police Department in 2013,” because of the failed Collingswood and Woodlynne shared service agreement in 2009, said Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli Jr., liaison to the Camden County Police Department.

“Today we have agreed to assist Woodlynne and support them in providing sustainable policing services that the taxpayers in the town deserve and ensure that we are providing a well-trained agency that is committed to building community and focused on engagement with residents,” he added.

The New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police completed its own assessment of the department and found it in need of reform, officials said.

Some of the key findings included: “no inventory controls, no indication of any proactive crime data analysis, no officer evaluations, 2021 was the last year of record for training for any Woodlynne officer, the investigation function was merely ink on paper and was not being completed, no school security program exists, and evidence is not properly secured.”

The report from the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police identified several areas of concern, including the ability to provide school security, investigations, crime data and evaluations.

New Jersey’s Office of the Attorney General mandates ongoing training for police officers, and it was discovered that Woodlynne had no record of ongoing officer trainings since 2021.

The report also found the local school district, which serves students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade was unaware of a school security or safety program or who was in charge of the department.

Investigations in the department were an ”afterthought,” because the officer assigned to investigations was also responsible for patrols, according to the report.

Evidence security was “grossly ignored” at the department with documentation in disarray, the report said. An audit by the county prosecutor’s office in November 2023 also found evidence was not properly stored.

Officials with the county said Woodlynne will benefit from the Camden County Police Department’s community policing practices and use-of-force guidelines that place a high threshold on when officers can use force.

“The CCPD has drastically transformed the city of Camden and we are confident that with this consolidation, things can turn around in Woodlynne as well,” Cappelli said. “This is a large undertaking but one that we deem as necessary for the wellbeing of the Woodlynne community, and we are confident that this will be a step in a positive direction.”

________

Visit nj.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.