This was one of the more dangerous calls to which a police officer responded. A domestic violence call.
It happened this past weekend in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Now it was bad enough that the incident at a home on Jefferson Avenue involved a suspect who became combative.
Officers made the arrest but only after a physical fight that left one officer with unspecified injuries and the other with a broken ankle.
The worst part? The part that can leave you feeling angry and degraded?
Authorities say the suspect at some point flung bodily fluids at the cops. It’s not known what bodily fluids were involved.
Does it even matter? It would leave you worried for months. Possibly force you to take multiple blood tests to be sure you contracted no disease. Worry about passing something on to your family.
Just another reason we don’t pay law enforcement enough in New Jersey.
Did you know the average salary for a police officer in the Garden State as of September 2024 is only $61,751 annually? That works out to $29.69 per hour.
It’s disgraceful considering this thin blue line allows society to function. Men and women who risk their very lives for the public deserve more.
Not to mention the intense scrutiny cops are now under. One mistake and they could end up imprisoned themselves.
Factor in the mental pressure of people lying to you all day, every day. Now finally think about the bodily fluids.
$29.69 an hour? Are you kidding me?
I understand police officers are paid through taxes and so they’ll never make what they truly deserve. Honestly though, it should be double.
NJ schools that made the most calls to police
These are the 30 schools in New Jersey that made the most notifications to police during the 2022-23 school year for reasons including violence, weapons, vandalism, substances and harassment or bullying. The number of arrests made by police at the schools is also provided when applicable. The schools are listed by number of police calls from least to greatest. The data comes from the state Department of Education’s annual School Performance Report.
Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.
Read More: Yet another reason NJ police officers don’t get paid enough | https://nj1015.com/yet-another-reason-nj-police-officers-dont-get-paid-enough/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
What Happens When Suburban Police Departments Don’t Have Enough Money?
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart in Robbins, Ill., on Nov. 19, 2013. Dart says many suburban departments have a hard time just getting officers to patrol the town.
M. Spencer Green/AP
In suburbs just outside the city of Chicago, some police officers are paid fast-food wages; they work part-time patrolling high crime areas, just so they can use their badge to get better paying security jobs.
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Many police chiefs say the low-wages and part-time positions are consequences of inadequate funding. That means departments can’t pay for ongoing training, can’t afford to fire problem officers and don’t have the capacity to investigate police shootings.
Experts say it’s created a system where there’s often no accountability for bad actions, and no real effort to learn from policing mistakes.
Lack of resources leads to lack of accountability
Two years ago, Robert Collins took over as police chief in the Chicago suburb of Dolton — population 22,000.
“When I first came aboard, one of my first things to do was to look at the history of the department,” he says. “And I did notice that there were quite a few officer-involved shootings.”
Dolton has had nine police shootings since 2005 — tied for the most in suburban Cook County.
“To be honest with you, I don’t know how we would explain it to people,” Collins says.
One explanation could be who Dolton hires for its police force, and how they’re trained and monitored once they join the force. Experts say in many budget-strapped towns such as Dolton, a lack of resources leads to a lack of accountability for bad actions.
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There’s one officer on the Dolton police force who has killed one man and wounded three others in separate shootings. Before he was hired by Dolton, that officer had already been suspended by one department for a shooting, and fired by another for misconduct.
For most police forces, that background would raise a red flag. But for cash-strapped suburbs like Dolton, it made him affordable.
The Chicago Police Department estimates it costs $140,000 for the first year of hiring a new recruit — that’s money many suburbs just don’t have — so they’d rather take a fully-trained up officer with some baggage, than pay to put someone through the academy.
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Chief Collins says since he’s taken over in Dolton, he’s raised the department’s standards, but he’s quick to acknowledge the struggle between budgeting and policing.
“Unfortunately, sometimes there’s not a lot of money to hire what you need, you just have to make do with what you have,” Collins says.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart spends a lot of his time working with distressed suburban police departments and says, departments having to make do means “you get officers bouncing around the departments, and it’s not good, it’s not good. I just don’t know what the mechanism is to stop that.”
Fewer opportunities to learn from mistakes
One town just outside Chicago — the village of Robbins — has almost all part-time police officers. The pay there is $10.50 an hour. That’s less than the starting rate at Walmart.
The pay for a Robbins cop was $10 an hour in 2008 when a part-time officer accidentally shot an innocent 13-year-old in the back.
Nothing happened to the officer involved, or to the officer in Dolton who’s been involved in five shootings since 2005.
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In fact, according to an investigation by WBEZ and the Better Government Association, there are rarely consequences for suburban officers after questionable shootings.
Out of more than a hundred shootings since 2005, no officer has been charged with a crime for any of them. No officers have been disciplined in any way or even ordered for re-training.
Our investigation found only a handful of instances in which a department even did a review.
“The reality is that in a lot of these different towns that you named, they have a hard enough time getting officers to patrol the town, let alone to have a separate part of their office set aside that just analyzes police-involved shootings,” Sheriff Dart says.
Peter Moskos spent a couple years as a cop in Baltimore, and now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He says in suburbs and small departments throughout the country, these issues often get overlooked.
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“And so we just don’t know because there’s no account,” he says. “And yeah, if there is shady stuff going on I think it’s much more likely to happen in small towns where there’s no oversight.”
In the Chicago suburbs, that means the departments struggling with high-crime and low-budgets can miss out on opportunities to learn from mistakes and improve training or policies.
It means residents who most need help from police often have to deal with poorly trained officers — some who can stay on patrol despite numerous shootings.
That Dolton officer involved in all those shootings was recently promoted to detective.
‘A lot of my officers could walk away and get a better paid job – there’s a very good reason they stay’
Chief Constable Stephen Watson said his officers aren’t overworked, but deserve better pay. The ‘public service ethos’ among cops keeps them in the job, he added.
Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Stephen Watson(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
Police officers in Greater Manchester are not overworked, but they should be paid more, the force’s Chief Constable has said. Stephen Watson said the wide-range of skills of our cops mean they would likely earn much more in the private sector.
But their commitment and ‘strong public service ethos’ keeps them in policing, he added. Chf Con Watson said that while he would always welcome more officers, Greater Manchester Police has the means to do ‘a first class job’.
It comes as it was announced GMP will get an extra 176 neighbourhood officers, with the first batch on the streets within six months. Some 120 will be new recruits, while 56 will be redeployed from elsewhere across the force.
Today (April 10), Prime Minister Keir Starmer outlined a plan to put ‘thousands of bobbies back on the beat’. Funding for 13,000 new officers across the country by 2029 has been confirmed.
The Home Office says its ‘neighbourhood policing guarantee’ will ensure there are named officers in every district. A guarantee of patrols during the busiest periods in town centres and ‘hotspot’ areas – such as on Friday and Saturday nights – has also been made.
Speaking exclusively to the Manchester Evening News, Chf Con Watson said the government plan was ‘very good news’ and would ‘enable [the force] to do more of the things that are starting to make a difference’.
Chief Constable Stephen Watson speaks to the Manchester Evening News(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
The force currently has around 8,200 officers. That is above the level the force had in 2010 before cuts were implemented by the then coalition government – around 8,000.
One of Chf Con Watson’s predecessors, Michael Todd, said he wanted 10,000 to properly police the region. Asked if that was a realistic and achievable number, Mr Watson said: “That would be wonderful.
“It is all tied up in money and resource and the rest of it. I’m very clear – the more cops I’ve got, the more than we can do. I’m not, however, saying we can’t do anything with what we’ve got.
“What I’m saying is, I think we’ve got enough to do a first class job. And we certainly had enough to do a better job than we were doing four years ago. So yes, we could do more with more, but we’ve got enough to do a first class job.
“I would like more, and the way to attract more is to make our candidacy for additional monies irresistible because of what we are doing for the public. It’s not just about numbers, it’s what you do with the numbers.”
Chf Con Watson, installed in 2021 to turn around what was a failing force, added: “If you look at the levels of proactivity within GMP, a very simple metric, in 2021 we were arresting just shy of 30,000 people. Last year we arrested 67,000 people. That is a marker of intent.”
The chair of the Greater Manchester Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, last week said the force was struggling due to a shortage of officers, with a retention crisis impacting frontline policing.
Chronic underfunding and excessive workloads are putting public safety at risk, Mike Peake added. A report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said officer workloads nationally have increased by more than 32pc per constable since 2015, with some carrying unmanageable caseloads.
Asked if he believed GMP officers were overworked, Chf Con Watson said: “The short answer is no. Let’s be very clear about this. Our officers work really hard in a very difficult, dangerous environment – and they work 24/7.
“Our people are really impressive and, candidly, the public should know that and respect the fact they really do put it out there. And very often it comes as the expense of family life and all the rest of it.
GMP Chief Constable Stephen Watson(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
“So our people work very hard. However, in a sense, ironically, our people are less burdened with the sort of unproductive workloads that they used to have at a point where GMP was performing very poorly, because we’ve orientated the workload and the model around how we deploy our officers better to reflect that which is truly productive.”
Chf Con Watson agreed officers deserved more money.
In England and Wales, the government ultimately sets police pay, but the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) provides independent advice on pay and conditions for police officers up to and including the rank of chief superintendent
According to GMP’s website, the starting salary for a new officer is £28,551, with annual increments rising to £46,044 per annum after seven years’ service.
“I don’t think our officers are paid enough for what they do,” Chf Con Watson said. “If you think about what is asked of the average police officer. They are expected to go from diplomat, to social worker, to financial advisor to gladiator, to bringer of peace and calm.
“They’ve got to have all those diplomatic skills, they’ve got to have courage, they’ve got to have integrity, they’ve got to be able to diffuse very difficult situations – and sometimes they have got to put their bodies on the line to protect the public.
“All of that taken together in one human being is asking a lot, so ours are very special people. And candidly, they’re not paid enough.
“However, what I would say, is that our people do this not just because of the money. They also do it because they have purpose and a set of values that underpins their public service motivation. So I think they should be better paid and more fairly paid.”
Asked how much, he said: “It’s not my bag is it? I could snatch a figure out of the air, but that wouldn’t be unhelpful. The fact of the matter is, if you look at the skills I’ve just described, in the average police officer, and you translate that into the commercial sector, a lot of our officers could simply walk off the job and go and get better paid jobs elsewhere.
“The reason they don’t do that, is because they have a very core public service orientation. Frankly, whilst of course we want to have people who are better paid, I have no lack of morale and motivation from my staff because that public service ethos is very strong.”
Federation chief Mr Peake said around a third of student officers are leaving GMP to find alternative careers. “Retention is an issue,” Chf Con Watson said. “But I don’t think it’s all bleak, incidentally. We are retaining a very high number of the officers we recruit.
“The reason why there’s a probationary period is because before we say to an officer, you’re a fully-fledged officer with a 30-year career in front of you, we need to test them in the extraordinary environment in which they are going to work.
