Newark Laying Off 19 of 184 Police Recruits
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  1. #1
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    Newark Laying Off 19 of 184 Police Recruits

    Newark to lay off all but 19 of 184 police recruits
    From The Star-Ledger, October 13

    NEWARK, NJ – Three years ago, Newark began recruiting new police officers and training them to fight crime in a city steeped in violence.

    Now, facing one of the worst budget crises in its history, the city next month will layoff all but 19 of the 184 police academy recruits hired during Mayor Cory Booker’s tenure, said Derrick Hatcher, president of the Newark Fraternal Order of Police. The recruits will lose their jobs so the city can plug an $11 million hole in the 2011 police budget, part of an $83 million citywide deficit.

    Booker said he empathizes with the recruits, but said the city had hard choices to make. He blames the police unions, saying if they would have renegotiated contracts to reduce nighttime and overnight pay, accept once-a-month furloughs and eliminate uniform allowances, the cuts would not have been as deep.

    "It pains this admini stration that many of the hard-working, dedicated officers we have hired over the past four years will face layoffs if the police union does not come to the table and make reasonable concessions that will save police jobs," Booker said in a statement. "The union leadership should apologize to their members for selfishly refusing to make even the smallest concessions."

    Hatcher said the police unions will not reopen talks because they negotiated their contracts within the past year and don’t believe concessions would offset enough of the budget shortfall to save jobs.

    Several recruits said they find little solace in Booker’s statement.

    "We stood at our graduation and (Booker) told me and my family about this whole career we’re getting into, and here we are six months after the academy out of a job. We’re done. As it is now we’re not coming back," said one officer, who is in his mid-20s and works in the West Ward. He asked that his name not be used for fear of disciplinary action.

    Another officer from the West Ward said most members of the 2010 class left jobs with high-paying salaries to join the police department.

    "We’re going to lose everything, our houses and our cars. A lot of us were making more when we came here. We made sacrifices to come here," he said. "Booker’s main thing when he took office was cops and law enforcement. Now it’s turned to teachers. He turned his back on us."

    When he took office in 2006, Booker promised to reduce violence in New Jersey’s largest city. That year, the city of 281,000 had 106 homicides, one of its bloodiest years in a decade.

    Booker brought in a new police director — Garry McCarthy — new crime-fighting equipment and new recruits in three separate police academy classes. Det. Josephine Santaniello, a department spokesman, said it cost the city about $825,000 to train the 165 officers who will be pulled off the streets in November. < BR>
    At the police academy graduations in 2008 and 2009, Booker referred to the newly minted officers as "heroes" and "modern-day freedom fighters." He admitted to squeezing the budgets of other departments so he could hire and retain these new officers. Overall crime dropped by 21 percent since 2006 and the number of homicides dropped in 2008 to 67, one of the lowest levels in recent years.

    In June, Booker announced that the city had a budget gap. After other efforts to close the gap failed, the city announced the elimination of more than 800 municipal jobs, including police, firefighter, parks, sanitation and others.

    The most recent graduates, those of March 2010, will have to retake a civil service exam to take a police position elsewhere. Members of the classes of 2008 and 2009 won’t have to retake the exam, but may have trouble finding work in other departments.

    Other police chiefs may not be eager to hire Newark’s laid off officers, said R occo Miscia, director of the Essex County College Police Academy.

    "A chief is typically hedging his or her bets on the odds the officer is going to go back to the agency they came from," said Miscia, a 26-year veteran of the Montclair Police Department."

    The recruits’ predicament has garnered the attention of state Sen. Ronald Rice and Assemblyman Al Couthino (D-Essex). Last month, they drafted a bill that would give priority to officers terminated "for reasons of economy" who were unable to complete their first year of service, thus allowing them to be rehired without retaking the civil service test.

    "You have to wonder why the city would have hired a class knowing they might not have the money to actually pay for it," Couthino said. "What this legislation is trying to do is to correct state law so these people would not be punished."

    Couthino is trying to fast track the bill by combining it with other public safety legislation. He said it could be signed into law by late October. McCarthy said he supports the bill but hopes it isn’t necessary.

    Hatcher has similar sentiments, saying these officers need as much help as possible.

    "These people’s dreams are being deferred," the union chief said. "They had their families bear with them while they were in the academy and they are going to be hurting now."

  2. #2
    Guest

    Re: Newark Laying Off 19 of 184 Police Recruits

    Bend over and take it....Unless the Police Unions allow cut-backs, this is SOP all over the country.

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