The borough of Woodlynne is disbanding its police department and Camden County’s police force is taking over its duties in the next 60 days.
The consolidation is because of a severe staffing shortage, according to Edwin Ramos, the borough's public safety director. The three existing officers in the Woodlynne department have applied for positions with the county police force.
Ramos wrote to the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office saying that, by October, the borough “will be operating with only a total of four officers to patrol, supervise and maintain training working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, leaving the police department unsustainable to provide police services for the residents, visitors and a safety issue for the officers who remain.”
Emma Lee
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WBGO
The county prosecutor’s office has overseen the department for years, according to a news release.
“Despite the best efforts of the governing body … there simply is not enough manpower to maintain a police department in this small community,” said Camden County Commissioner Director Lou Cappelli.
Officers in the small department “were working much too hard,” according to longtime Woodlynne resident Shirley Childs.
“They make rounds at 2:30 in the morning. How can you make rounds on every street at 2:30 in the morning? They were doing that,” she said.
Ramos said the borough was left with no option when an officer requested family leave at a time when retirements, including his own, hit the department.
“I had to give my honest opinion, and we needed this to happen,” he said. “This was something that we had to do for the safety of the public, visitors and our police officers.”
Woodlynne borough, which borders the City of Camden, is less than one-quarter square mile and is home to 2,902 residents. Crime in the borough is among the lowest in the county, according to officials.
“We don’t have 50 shootings, we haven’t had a homicide in almost 20 years,” Ramos said. “We’ve had one ugly shootout, and nobody was hit this year.”
But Camden County Police Chief Gabe Rodriguez said his department is still analyzing the crime data, which he said has been “very difficult.”
“There's a lot of hard copies we have to go through. There's a lot of different agencies we've been communicating with,” Rodriguez said, warning that the crime numbers will change once everything is cataloged.
“This is no fault of the director or his staff. They just don't have the adequate training and resources to properly catalog everything for us to have accurate numbers,” he added.
The regional Camden County Police force was created in 2013, which Cappelli said “ironically” happened when Woodlynne had previous staffing problems. Woodlynne has had its own police department since the 1930s, until it disbanded the first time in 2006. It reconstituted in 2010, after it didn’t reach a shared services agreement with Collingswood.
The most recent iteration of the Woodlynne police force, under the supervision of the prosecutor’s office, has been subject to high profile incidents in recent years.
In June 2020, a Woodlynne police officer, without any provocation, pepper sprayed a small group of young men who were sitting on a front porch. That officer, Ryan Dubiel, pleaded guilty several months later.
According to the Courier Post, a former borough councilman sued the department, alleging that his family’s civil rights were violated when officers used pepper spray in his home during a February 2020 incident. An NJ Advance Media analysis shows that Woodlynne paid $30,000 to settle a lawsuit to resolve claims of misconduct against an officer in the last five years.
Emma Lee
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WBGO
Cappelli said lawsuits against police misconduct were not a “specific factor” for the consolidation.
“Certainly when you look at those lawsuits, one can ascertain that perhaps there was a lack of training and experience necessary to run the police department in Woodlynne,” he said.
Until Thursday’s announcement, the Camden County Police Department had largely confined itself to the City of Camden after police chiefs across the county wanted nothing to do with a regional force.
The county prosecutor’s office said it supports merging of the police departments.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the consolidation “will at long last afford the residents of Woodlynne comprehensive public safety and community outreach.”
“Formed on a foundation of mutual trust and respect, these new relationships will serve as an impetus for positive change in Woodlynne. This consolidation will enable Woodlynne to prosper as a community,” the office wrote.
The Woodlynne Borough Council and the Camden County Board of Commissioners are expected to formalize the agreement before the end of August. County Police Chief Gabe Rodriguez said that starting Sept. 1, the department will provide supplemental patrols in Woodlynne.
There are still details to be worked out, including how much borough residents will pay the county for police services.
County and borough officials are scheduling community meetings to get residents’ input about the merger. Some community members are anxious that they haven’t been part of the discussions already.
“It could be a good or bad thing for Woodlynne, so we're just gonna have to wait and see,” said Susan, a resident who declined to give her last name. “You have to know what somebody's presenting to you before you can have concerns…you heard them say they’re still collecting information.”
Childs, a 30-year borough resident, said it was a good move for the county to provide police services, but she wants residents to be part of the conversation.
“They should have presented it to the community first,” Childs said. “I hope my damn taxes don't go up.”
