Toms River Police Staffing Hits A 21-Year Low As Mayor Touts Flat Taxes

TOMS RIVER, NJ — In 2004, the state Division of Criminal Justice undertook an in-depth analysis of the Toms River Police Department, looking at its staffing, its structure and its future needs.

Back then the town — still operating as Dover Township — had about 90,000 residents, and the population of the 44-square-mile township was growing steadily. The police department had 153 sworn full-time police officers at that time.

As of June 1, 2025, the Toms River Police Department has 151 full-time sworn officers to serve a population of more than 100,000.

That reduction in the force, which has included retirements of several officers in leadership positions, combined with changes in the demands on police officers, are straining the department, according to sources with knowledge of police operations.

A change in the department’s scheduling practices, forced on the department by the township administration, combined with the decreased police force, is creating a situation that threatens to undermine public safety, several people familiar with the department’s operations have told Patch.

Toms River Mayor Daniel Rodrick touted an $11 million cut in the township's planned expenditures and no tax rate increase in 2025 when the budget was introduced May 28. But in that budget presentation, little was said about plans for the police department, including both staffing and equipment concerns.

In response to a question asking about plans to hire police officers in 2025, Rodrick insisted there are more police officers on the road now than at any time in the department’s history.

“Our new schedule increased the number of officers on the road by nearly 20 percent,” Rodrick said by text message Wednesday. “There are 49 officers scheduled every day.”

Rodrick said response times are decreasing, a statement he has made repeatedly in connection with the hiring of additional emergency medical technicians, referred to as community service officers.

In a follow-up phone call, Rodrick attacked the hiring process, which he said does not allow him to hire an officer until the spot is freed up by the person who is retiring or otherwise leaving, and said he is looking for a way to start the hiring process sooner.

Since January 2024, when Rodrick took office, 12 officers have retired, six of them in 2024, with no sworn police officers hired. Other retirements are anticipated, sources told Patch.

There have been five officers hired since January 2024: three in November, one in January and one in February, according the official Toms River Township employee roster obtained via an Open Public Records Act request.

“Our budget accounts for replacing anyone who’s retiring,” Rodrick said. He did not give a timeline on when or how many officers might be hired.

Kenneth Thomas, president of the Toms River PBA Local 137, which represents the sworn officers, corporals, detectives, and safety officers, said in a statement posted by the PBA on Saturday that Rodrick’s claims of a 20 percent increase in officers on the road are “completely false.”

The patrol division, as of June 6, has 88 officers to respond to citizens’ calls, Thomas said.

The department was scheduled to hire four officers in February, and they had been booked for the March training at the Ocean County Police Academy, Thomas said in the statement. Two of them had employment offers pending the completion of background checks and the academy.

The employment offers were rescinded and the academy bookings were canceled by Rodrick days before the training was to begin, Thomas said.

Police academy training, a 22-week course, is the first stop for new police officers for any department, not just Toms River. In addition to the academy training, new officers are assigned to a field training officer, riding with that officer for the first three months on the job to learn the department’s specific policies and protocols as well as integrating them into the town’s force. For a new officer, the entire process can take nearly nine months to complete before they are patrolling on their own. Officers who have completed the academy before joining a force are typically on the road in a little over three months.

The Waterfall effect

Rodrick said the new police department patrol schedule, which was put in place following a hearing before the Public Employment Relations Commission, has officers set to work four days a week on 10-hour shifts, which he said puts more officers on the roads, up to 49 officers a day.

The format of the new schedule is called a waterfall schedule, and it is one used by health care companies, retail organizations like Home Depot, and others. Under the format, two to four employees at a time are scheduled to start — and end — shifts at intervals throughout the 24-hour, 7-days-a-week schedule. The format does not appear to be used by any other law enforcement agencies in the country.

Mitch Little, who retired as police chief in August 2024 after months of conflict with Rodrick, said the waterfall schedule creates significant issues for law enforcement, starting with a lack of clear supervision.

The department’s previous schedule, instituted in 2023, had officers working three, 11-hour shifts per week assigned to days, afternoons and nights, with the officers with the most seniority getting first choice of days off and hours to work.

Each shift was assigned sergeants, and a lieutenant oversaw each shift. At the start of each shift, there was a roll call, where officers were briefed on any issues or situations that were happening, such as the fire at the condominium complex on Indian Hill Road in the summer of 2023, or the standoff at the home on Ravenwood Drive in July 2024 that started with officers serving an arrest warrant.

Under the new schedule that started in April, there are no roll calls because officers are coming on at eight different start times, and who is in charge of a specific officer is often unclear, sources said.

Under the previous schedule, the shifts overlapped, Little said, increasing patrol coverage during the busiest part of the day. Little said there was an additional overlay shift in the summer to account for the increase of tourists and part-time residents on the barrier island.

Because the shifts totaled 33 hours per week, the officers “owed” the township hours each week, Little said. They amount to 8 days a year that the officers owed to the township. Those owed hours were parlayed into working special events, such as the Toms River Halloween Parade, doing community outreach with the Neighborhood Watch, staffing special enforcement details or spending part of a day at the Toms River Police Youth Camp.

Little said those services were provided without the need to pay officers overtime because of the time they "owed" the township.

Some of the “owed” hours also were allotted for the officers to complete mandatory training, including twice-a-year qualifying with their firearms, Little said. Other training that is mandated by the state under the new police officer licensing instituted in 2023 involves courses taken on the computer, some of which are four hours long or longer.

Little said that when he told Rodrick about the training needs, Rodrick said officers should take the training on the computers in their patrol cars. That statement was confirmed to Patch by others who were present during the discussion.

Those courses can’t be done piecemeal — once started, they have to be finished in one sitting. They include tests to certify the material has been understood, sources familiar with the training told Patch, and suggesting an officer focus on the computer training module when they are supposed to be watching for suspicious activity creates risks to the officers.

According to a 2021 report by the FBI on ambushes and unprovoked attacks on police officers, 57.1 percent of fatal attacks on officers from 2007-2016 happened to those who were in their patrol vehicles by themselves.

Officers who have mandatory training to complete to maintain their state license now must be pulled off patrol to complete the training, sources told Patch, meaning there are fewer officers on the road as a result.

The need for officers to take sick time or vacation time is not accounted for in the new schedule patrol schedule either, sources familiar with the set-up told Patch.

The new schedule also does not adequately account for the practicalities of shift changes. At the end of a shift, an officer spends the last half-hour off the road. They return their vehicle to headquarters so the next officer can use it, and must file their reports on each interaction that prompted a report, from traffic stops to responses to 911 calls — including time information from their bodycam footage — and other procedures.

Responding to calls

Emergency response time has been a heated topic for several years, and precipitated the conflict between Rodrick and Little in early 2024 when Rodrick refused to fill the positions of two captains who were retiring.

Rodrick said the money saved from those positions would be used to hire more community service officers, which he has repeatedly touted as “putting more boots on the ground.” He has repeatedly said response times have decreased for EMS calls, but sources with knowledge of the operations say that statement is misleading.

In reality, a resident’s call for assistance may not be answered quickly if officers are tied up with more emergent calls, and having more EMTs does not eliminate the need for sworn officers to respond as well.

If a 911 call comes in requesting assistance with an injury or an overdose or to a home where there is a history of issues such as domestic violence, a police officer will respond before EMTs are sent, to ensure the safety of all involved, sources said and Little confirmed. If a resident calls to report they discovered their vehicle was broken into in their driveway overnight, that call may have a longer delay for a response if officers are responding to an emergency call, they said.

Calls also may require other officers to be pulled in to join the officer who first responded, from a K-9 officer to one trained in drug impairment recognition. That can mean officers being pulled from their patrols, delaying responses.

Less emergent calls also may see delays if an officer is responding to a serious situation, from a crash with serious injuries to a domestic violence situation or someone suffering from a mental health crisis.

With the elimination of the township’s animal control personnel, police officers also are handling animal control calls before A-Academy, the contracted company, is able to arrive.

Little said the new reporting requirements handed down by the state Attorney General’s Office a few years ago mean a call that might have taken 15 to 20 minutes in the past now may take 45 minutes to an hour, once the paperwork is completed, even with the technology officers have at their fingertips.

The delays can leave residents who need police assistance frustrated and angry.

“The technology is a double-edged sword,” Little said.

Wear and tear

The other effect of the waterfall schedule is increased wear and tear on the police department’s vehicles.

Under the previous schedule, vehicles were shared by two officers. That meant if there was a problem with a vehicle, it was easier to pinpoint who was driving at the time, and, if applicable, who was at fault.

There was time built into the schedule for necessary maintenance like oil changes and tire rotations and transmission service, Little said.

Now the vehicles are in use more than 20 hours a day, with multiple officers driving them, sources told Patch. Scheduling maintenance requires pulling a car off the road, and there are not enough spare patrol vehicles in the fleet to accommodate that, sources said.

Little said the department had been replacing about 10 vehicles a year for several years, with patrol cars being shifted to other uses when they reached 150,000 miles. Cars removed from patrol are used by Class 1 officers who patrol the township’s parks and the Class 3 officers at the schools. After a few years those vehicles then shift to “special duty,” Little said, where they are placed at road construction details, to remind residents to slow down and beware.

“Those (special duty) cars are not on patrol,” he said. After being used for special duty for a time, the cars finally are sold at auction for parts, Little said.

One reason the cars had been ordered yearly is because there is a year of lead time to get orders filled. Patrol cars are specially designed and equipped for patrol duties, Little said, to be able to support the equipment they need including computer terminals, emergency light bars on the top of the car and more. They can’t be ordered off the lot at the local car dealership, and the speed of changing technology means replacing the entire car, not just transferring pieces to other vehicles, he said.

Little said the 2024 car order was canceled by Rodrick, meaning it would be at least 2026 before the police department receives new patrol vehicles.

That is dependent on the township ordering police cars in 2025, however. Under the 2025 budget introduced at the May 28 Township Council meeting, the line item for police cars was blank.

Rodrick, in response to a question asking whether the town plans to buy police cars in 2025, said the cars are a capital expense, not a line-item expense. He did not say whether cars would be ordered in 2025, or how many might be budgeted as a capital expense.

A human toll

Because the waterfall schedule has eliminated the specific day, evening and night shifts, it has disrupted the camaraderie of the shifts. Little said that under the former schedule, the officers assigned to a shift became close-knit units.

That translates into better coordination in the field, with officers knowing what to expect from each other, particularly when they respond to an incident, he confirmed.

It also translates into officers understanding the subtle changes that can go along with an officer struggling mentally for whatever reason. Officers who are in touch with their subordinates on a regular basis can pick up on cues and reach out to offer assistance, whether it’s just a listening ear or something more. The new schedule has disrupted those relationships, sources told Patch.

The mental health concerns for police officers are not insignificant. There has been increasing attention paid in recent years to officers in crisis because of increasing suicide rates among police.

Among the biggest factors are the traumatic events police officers encounter. Police frequently see people under the worst of circumstances. Whether they have to respond to the scene of a child who has drowned in a swimming pool or the aftermath of a horrific crash, the trauma leaves an impact.

With Toms River officers answering thousands of calls every month — Little said the department received more than 65,000 911 calls in 2023 — the impact is significant. Time away from the job to decompress is critical, and officers typically take a full week off — like many professions — to get that reset. Sources told Patch taking a full week off was being discouraged under the new schedule.

The combination of all the stress is damaging morale, Little said. Officers have been seeking jobs elsewhere, and he said the number of applicants for Toms River police positions had dropped significantly in 2024. Others have retired as soon as they became eligible, Little said, when they might have stayed longer.

Among those anticipated to retire in the coming weeks is acting Police Chief Peter Sundack. Sundack was a lieutenant when he was appointed police chief when Little retired in August. Sundack, who is listed as a captain in the official Toms River Township employee roster obtained via an Open Public Records Act request, will reach 25 years of service on Aug. 23. Sources have said he is out on medical leave and is set to retire afterward.

Guy Maire, who was promoted from lieutenant to captain last year when Sundack was appointed police chief, has been named deputy chief. He was hired in 1998. The rest of the command staff includes seven lieutenants and 20 sergeants with varying hire dates, including three in 2001.

The command staff is a critical part of supporting the officers on patrol, the 2004 report by the state Division of Criminal Justice said. In addition to recommending two sergeants for each patrol shift and a lieutenant supervising those sergeants, the report recommended "that the department be organized into three divisions: Operations, Investigation and Administration. We recommend that each division be under the command of a captain or a deputy chief, who will report directly to the chief of police. At the current time, Dover has only one deputy chief. If it chooses to keep that rank at that level, then the deputy chief should be in command of the largest division, which is Operations."