Toms River Council Would Extend Police Promotions List, But Mayor Objects

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Toms River Township Council is scheduled to vote on an ordinance Wednesday that would extend the expiration of a promotions list for the police department's command staff.

It's a move opposed by Mayor Daniel Rodrick, who has said he will veto it, calling it "fundamentally unfair to all of the officers who are now eligible to take upcoming promotion tests."

The fight over the promotion lists comes as the number of sworn officers in the department continues to dwindle. A roster that was at 151 in June 2025 has lost more officers to retirements and resignations since then, putting the department at 141 sworn officers as of early December.

Rodrick said via text message in December that he plans to hire 10 officers. He did not say how soon those hires would take place and when pressed for a timeline, insisted as he has since June that the police department has more officers on the road now than it has ever had.

The police department's roster of 141 as of Dec. 4 was just four officers more than the department had at the start of 1991, according to an Asbury Park Press article in the Newspapers.com archive. The department started that year with 137 officers, serving a population of about 76,500 residents. Toms River has more than 100,000 residents currently.

Neighboring Brick Township, which has a population of about 77,000 residents, has 146 sworn officers.

At his final council meeting in December, outgoing Council President Justin Lamb urged the town to hire more officers.

"Purely from the taxpayer's perspective come next month, I really look forward to hopefully seeing more new hires at the next meetings, more promotions as those members leave," Lamb said. "The police department, we need to bring them back up."

The lack of new hires has come in spite of changes to the police hiring process approved under an ordinance adopted in late July that Rodrick said would make it easier to fill openings. Those changes eliminated a requirement for a four-year college degree in favor of an associate's degree or having 60 college credits, or two years of experience in any branch of the U.S. military.

They also require candidates to pass of a written exam approved by the police chief and the business administrator, and put the interview process in the hands of the administration, with limited input from senior leadership in the police department.

Rodrick has said the police department's previous hiring rules supported nepotism, and that they made it more difficult to replace retiring officers, saying candidates could not be interviewed before an officer had officially retired. Rodrick said that meant the department was stuck without an active officer when a retiree used sick time before retiring.

New officers who are hired right out of college usually must go through the police academy — a 22-week training program — and field training. For a new officer, the entire process can take nearly nine months to complete before they are patrolling on their own.

Officers who do not need to go through the police academy still must undergo field training to learn the police department's policies, a program that last three months before they are patrolling by themselves.

The police department, which has been advertising for applicants since August, has not been accepting applications from people who have not been through the academy, according to the recruitment FAQs on the police department's website.

It is not known how many applicants Toms River has had for the police department since August, when the hiring rules change went into effect. Open Public Records Act requests for the number of applications they received and for how many applicants had been interviewed were rejected by Toms River.

While Rodrick said he plans to hire 10 officers, that would still leave the department well below the 163 outlined in the township's ordinance for the police department — a number that an analysis by the state Department of Criminal Justice said was not sufficient in 2004.

That analysis said Toms River (then still Dover Township) needed to increase its staffing levels to 173 officers to accommodate anticipated population growth in the 44-square-mile township.