Budget ax forces Trenton to cut police by 100
TRENTON, N.J. - About 60 police officers in New Jersey's capital took their boots off in front of police headquarters to protest their layoffs Friday.
Officials say 105 officers, or nearly one-third of Trenton's 350-member police force, received pink slips. The layoffs included every officer with less than seven years on the force.
Mayor Tony Mack says the layoffs will save the financially strapped city about $4 million this year.
Police officials say 18 of them are expected to be brought back next month with the help of a federal grant.
Newark, Camden and Atlantic City have slashed their police forces over the past year because of budget cuts. The cuts have not all proven to be permanent. Many officers have returned to duty.
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In Trenton, the last officers to be laid off are scheduled to complete their shifts at 5 p.m. Friday, The Times of Trenton newspaper reported. That's also the time when laid-off night-shift officers are expected to turn in their equipment.
The Times reported that those officers will get four hours' of pay for the trip under union rules.
To make up for the reduced patrol force, lieutenants and sergeants will return to the street, shifting the effected part of the police department to its detective bureau, the newspaper reported.
One woman who spoke to the newspaper was grateful that the layoffs are coming when the weather is getting colder.
"Let's just thank God it's fall," the woman, who declined to provide her name, told the Times. "They'll be in the house because it's too cold."
In Camden, crime rates worsened in the two months after nearly half the police force was laid off Jan. 18.
A Camden County Prosecutor's Office report obtained by The Courier News of Cherry Hill and the Philadelphia Inquirer in March shows there were 79 aggravated assaults with a firearm during that period of time in Camden, up from 22 during the same period in 2010. Shootings nearly doubled, increasing from 16 to 30. However, homicides were down to 4 from 7 a year ago.