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While much larger Paramus is cutting 13 officers, and demoting eight others, four officers in tiny Park Ridge are on the chopping block — which may not sound like much to some until you consider that it represent one quarter of the entire department, including the brass.
“Believe it or not, we DO have a very stressful and demanding job, more than the average citizen will ever know,” an officer from Park Ridge told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.“We have given the town back money as far as paying significantly into our health care, tanking compensory time instead of overtime, but it does not seem to matter.”
Meanwhile in Paramus, officials hope to save roughly $1 million of a nearly $57 million budget by dumping 13 cops and demoting a dozen others. “The department will have 40 less officers than its authorized strength,” a ranking officer told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Paramus — the crossroads of North Jersey, with mall after mall, and highways that give criminals easy escape routes. Now it will be a town with a department stretched thin. On top of that, what will this do for morale?
Council members claimed they had no choice because the police union wouldn’t agree to a pay freeze. Union members, in turn, have said the borough hasn’t opened its books as part of the negotiation process.
Jerry DeMarco Publisher/Editor
They didn’t even mention the fact that once you begin making concessions, you can’t go back. Officers in Rochelle Park, for instance, were put in an untenable position of agreeing to a pay cut AND a cap on overtime so a group of fellow officers wouldn’t get canned.
Given their position — which I am not criticizing — where do they start come the next round of bargaining?
In such wildly different towns as Norwood, Garfield, and Hawthorne, layoffs appear inevitable. Harrington Park already is pink-slipping officers.
And that’s just in North Jersey. Throughout the state, the same scenario is being played out in town after town.
Drastic times call for drastic measures, yes. But if safety and security aren’t at the top of your list, what happens to quality of life across the board?
Obviously, some people aren’t considering that. Yet the first time a call calls out — perhaps when one of their houses is burglarized — you can be sure who’ll shout the loudest if those responsible aren’t immediately caught.
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