HOBOKEN — Yesterday, the NAACP-Hoboken Branch called for Mayor Dawn Zimmer to reconsider Hoboken’s controversial layoff plan, which will cut 18 city employees, 18 police officers, and demote 19 senior police officers to save $2.5 million from city spending.
Zimmer responded on NJ.com by saying her administration is working on a redeployment plan to ensure that the number of officers on the street will not be cut.
Thursday morning, P.B.A. President Vince Lombardi released a statement criticizing the mayor’s credibility on public safety cuts.
Lombardi’s statement below:
“Yesterday Mayor Zimmer issued another statement claiming that she is ‘working to finalize a redeployment plan to ensure that there is no reduction in the number of officers patrolling our streets’ regarding her plan to slash 37 jobs from the Hoboken Police Department. I was appalled and disgusted to read this.
The Mayor’s plan will have a devastating impact on the City of Hoboken. For her to claim that she can cut 37 police jobs and have no impact on manpower and presence is an outrageous statement and an outright lie. You cannot fire 18 police officers and demote 19 others without jeopardizing the safety of the people of Hoboken and dramatically decreasing the department’s capabilities.
The Mayor’s plan is ridiculous in light of the city’s recently discovered $20 million budget surplus. She has less credibility talking about the public’s safety in Hoboken than George W. Bush had in talking about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Mayor Zimmer is now ‘inviting the police unions to join and have a voice in these discussions’ in a meeting at her office on Monday. We have no intention of cooperating with this obvious media publicity stunt. We will not allow our membership to be abused in this egregious manner. Any further discussion of the city’s layoff plan is absurd and we will not be a part of this nonsense.
We again call upon Mayor Zimmer and the city council to rescind their layoff plan and stop playing politics with the safety of the City of Hoboken.”