Orange re-hires five laid off police officers.
 News Conference and Swearing In Ceremony Monday, May 23rd at 10:00 am., City Hall, Orange New Jersey, 29 North Day Street, City Council Chamber

Mayor Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. and Police Director John Rappaport swore in five of the Orange police officers who lost their jobs as a result of New Jersey’s fiscal crisis. The rehiring was made possible by federal permission to redirect an existing law enforcement grant. The police officers re-hired are: Jashan Carter, David Fanfan, Rocco DeSantis, Rennie Wilson and Pablo Cajiga. They are the most senior of the officers laid off.

The funds to rehire the officers became available when the Department of Justice granted Orange permission to use federal COPS funds previously intended for hiring new officers for the purpose of rehiring the laid off officers instead.
In 2009, Orange had received $964,000 from the federal COPS program to hire five police officers for the following three years. COPS is the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The funding came from the federal recovery program, and competition for the grants was intense.
Most New Jersey police departments that had applied for the COPS money -- including the State Police -- were turned down. Eighteen New Jersey police departments received funding, a small fraction of the 305 New Jersey police departments that applied under the COPS Hiring Recovery Program.

Statement by Mayor Eldridge Hawkins, Jr.
I want to thank the Department of Justice for approving our application to rehire our police officers using COPS grant funds, and I want to thank Congressman Donald Payne for helping us secure that permission. It hurt when state aid cuts forced us to layoff police officers and firefighters, and it feels good to have welcomed back our firefighters in March and now the five laid off police officers.
During the time these officers were laid off, the remaining officers of the Orange Police Department rose to the occasion by implementing a successful crackdown on gang violence and increased surveillance of crime hot spots. The return of the five will enable us to strengthen those two initiatives. We are still negotiating with the police union hoping to achieve the kind of givebacks that enabled us to bring back more firefighters. If the current negotiations are fruitful, we hope to bring back more of the laid off police.

Statement by Police Director John Rappaport
“When these officers were laid off, we reorganized our staff so that there would be no reduction of officers actually out on the streets on patrol. So, the return of these officers actually enables an increase of the police presence on our streets above the level that existed prior to the layoffs.”