To Our Residents,
As we enter a New Year, I would like to take an opportunity to thank all residents for their continued support of the men and women of the Franklin Township Police Department.
Our department has never been more committed to serving the residents of Franklin Township, Buena Borough, and Newfield Borough. We demonstrated success in 2024 as we moved towards increasing visibility in many forms within our community. One of our goals for 2024 was to enhance visibility on our roads to ensure the safe travels of all residents and visitors to our community. An increased patrol division has enabled us to be more proactive in our enforcement efforts. As traffic fatalities have climbed all over the State of New Jersey, our trend has gone in the opposite direction. Our enforcement efforts have correlated to a 40% decrease in traffic fatalities within our community from the previous year. Any life that we can save by ensuring safety of our residents is worth its weight in gold and we will continue to lead the way in our state when it comes to traffic safety and enforcement. As I have stressed in my tenure, another driving factor in achieving our department’s mission includes enhancing our school security measures. In 2024 we worked tirelessly with our schools to increase security and communication to ensure the safest schools for our students and staff in the area. The relationship that we have formed with our school systems is second to none. This relationship has led us to increased visibility and presence in and around our schools as well. In 2024, we were able to add two additional school resource officers to our department. We currently are responsible for the safety and security of eight schools and we are proud to be able to provide school resource officers to six of those schools. The Township of Franklin Board of Education now has an SRO in all three of their schools and Edgarton Christian Academy in Newfield also has a full-time SRO stationed there every day. We also worked alongside the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office to provide a safety assessment for Delsea High School and Delsea Middle School which led to grant funding to be able to provide safety bollards in front of both schools. A safety assessment at Edgarton Christian Academy was recently completed and they are waiting for approval on an almost $250,000 grant for safety features to their school. Our department also purchased essential equipment needed to respond to an active shooter event, which was used during a full-scale active shooter drill at Delsea High School in November. Residents should feel assured that our preparation for these types of events is a main priority and we are already working on plans to increase training and drills in 2025. The department’s visibility has also increased through concerted efforts in the area of community policing. Our biggest effort towards enhancing our relationship with our community is our Holiday with a Hero event which is held every December. We are very grateful to partner with the Newfield
Franklin Township Police Department |Pg 3
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online