A small South Jersey police department is disbanding because of staff shortages
Camden County Police will take over for Woodlynne's police department once it disbands in September, officials said.
The town of Woodlynne, Camden County, is disbanding its police department for the second time in 20 years due to a severe staffing shortage, officials said. Camden County Police will take over the department’s duties.
Woodlynne Police Department, which has a staff of four officers covering the town of 2,900 residents, will disband Sept. 1, said Dan Keashen, spokesperson for Camden County. The Camden County Police Department, which already covers neighboring Camden, will take on patrol and other duties in Woodlynne.
Woodlynne’s police department was last disbanded in 2006, and nearby Collingswood’s police department took over. Woodlynne officials decided to restart a police department in 2010 after Collingswood sought to terminate patrols a year ahead of the contract’s end.
In recent years, the Woodlynne Police Department had been under the oversight of the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, said Keashen.
The Woodlynne Police Department was stretched too thin, operating with “only a total of four officers to patrol, supervise and maintain training working 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” Edwin Ramos, director of public safety for Woodlynne, said in a letter. That made providing basic services to residents “unsustainable,” Ramos wrote.
An independent evaluation by the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police cited in the announcement also determined that the police department had “no inventory controls, no indication of any proactive crime data analysis, no officer evaluations” and that 2021 was the last year on record for training of any Woodlynne police officer.
“Today we have agreed to assist Woodlynne and support them in providing sustainable policing services that the taxpayers in the town deserve and ensure that we are providing a well-trained agency that is committed to building community and focused on engagement with residents,” County Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli Jr., liaison to the Camden County Police Department, said in a statement.