Jenkintown’s Police Situation: A Different Perspective — the One from Home

Jenkintown Matters,

To the members of the Jenkintown community:

We share this from our hearts, as family members of Jenkintown police officers. We are their mothers, wives, sisters, and friends. We choose to keep our individual identities private, for a very real fear that our loved ones might face retaliation from those in charge, should they become associated with what we’ve written. We thank you for understanding.

The profession of being a police officer is often looked at as a “calling.” It takes a special type of person to sign up for a job like this one. As everyone knows, a person must be willing to literally lay down his life to protect the community he serves. It means car stops and writing tickets and getting the “bad guys.” But being a cop is so much more. 

Being a police officer means making relationships with members of the community you serve. It means holding someone’s hand as you deliver news with empathy of the loss of a loved one. It means seeing a child in an abusive situation and being a safe haven for that little person. It means performing CPR on someone in the middle of a medical emergency until an ambulance arrives. It means standing in the rain and helping kids cross the street as they go to school and then making rounds in that school to ensure their safety throughout the day. 

Being a police officer entails deescalating a volatile domestic situation. It means you become the calming presence for someone after they were in a car accident or checking on someone shaken up after being followed home by a stranger. It means checking in on businesses during the day and responding to building alarms to make sure everything and everyone is safe. It’s getting out of your car to join a pick-up game of basketball because you want to represent something more to kids than just a threatening presence. 

In today’s world, being a police officer means you must keep your head “on a swivel” because of ambush-style attacks on officers around the country. It means seeing statistics of fellow officers being shot every single day. It literally means working with someone you trust with your life because of what you may encounter during a shift. 

Being a police officer is often a thankless job, where officers carry around much more than the weight of their bulletproof vest and duty belt. It too often means being hated simply because of the uniform they wear.

Many of these guys have known from a very early age that being a police officer is all they’ve ever wanted to do. This wasn’t a last minute, “I don’t know what else to do with my life” decision. For the mothers of JPD officers, conversations surrounding future of the department have been heartbreaking, as the dream our sons finally accomplished could be taken away from them. 

As girlfriends who became wives of these officers, we’ve seen the men we love wake up before the sun to prepare for rigorous training at the police academy, to then seeing our guys proudly stand on stage graduating. 

We supported and encouraged our partners as they applied to job after job, took test after test, to finally achieve their dream of becoming sworn officers. We watched our guys make $15/hour, strapping on a bullet proof vest to go to work as part-time officers, knowing they were working for experience instead of a paycheck. But they didn’t care. They did it because they loved it, because it was a lifelong ambition. 

And finally, we watched them stand proudly at Borough Council meetings, each being sworn in and taking an oath to uphold the Constitution and to protect each one of you.  They swore to lay down their lives to protect this community and its residents, including the members of Borough Council, who now treat them like dispensable badge numbers instead of men with families who take great pride in their work and in the community they serve. Your community. Your families. 

When news broke earlier this year of the Borough’s plans to dissolve the police department, it only confirmed what our officers had been hearing through the grapevine. Shortly after their new chief’s hiring, our guys would come home and talk about these unthinkable rumors of their department being taken over, never sure if they could believe them. It was a period of great stress for all of us. 

Most of these officers are the breadwinners or the only source of income for their families. Some work two jobs. In addressing the possible dissolution of the JPD, the chief said in multiple interviews the he recognized the “human element” to all of this and that should the JPD dissolve, he’d help them find other employment. He later said at the Beaver Hill meeting, that officers would just be welcome to apply for other jobs with whatever department took Jenkintown over. That doesn’t help much. 

He did not mention that many of these guys are too young to retire but too old to move to another department, meaning they would take a substantial pay cut (tens of thousands of dollars) to work anywhere else. Some of these guys won’t have their pensions vested for another few years, meaning they lose most of what they worked for over the last 10 or so years. It means they will have nothing to show from their commitment they made to your community.

Perhaps the scariest of all the news is the fact that one-man patrols are now in effect for certain shifts.

Perhaps the scariest of all the news is the fact that one-man patrols are now in effect for certain shifts. The fear this brings to us as wives, mothers, and family members of these guys is unspeakable. 

It’s easy for Jenkintown residents to walk around town believing that it’s a little bubble of a community where nothing ever happens. As family members of your police officers, we see things differently. We make sure to hug and kiss and pray for our men as they walk out the door, not knowing what they may encounter when they leave home. We watch them with their kids and in some moments, we think of the widows and fatherless children this job has created. Each morning or night we hear the door open and the sound of Velcro as the bulletproof vest comes off, we breathe a little easier knowing they made it through another shift. 

And all of that came while knowing we weren’t sending them off to work alone. Imagine the fear and anxiety our days and nights will hold knowing they’re out there on a solo patrol. Respectfully, please refrain from sharing with us the “Abington is right next door” speech. It takes a split second for a situation to turn for the worst. We don’t need our guys waiting five or more minutes for backup from a neighboring department to arrive, if they’re even able to. 

Policing anywhere alone is completely unsafe. We all have seen how quickly things can take a turn for the worst — how one wrong step can lead to actions with irreversible consequences. Just this past June, Philadelphia police officer Jamie Roman was murdered simply because he pulled over the wrong car. 

Single-officer patrols not only increase the risk to our officers, the lives and property of all those who live here, but they also increase the likelihood our officers might need to use lethal force to diffuse a situation. An officer’s life is going to be much more vulnerable now that patrols are alone. Situations that would be considered “non-lethal” with two cops could have just turned lethal with one. Everyone’s safety is decreased with one-man patrols- officers, offenders, and innocent community members. 

We urge you to please communicate with your elected officials. They have the power to make positive changes for your community and the police department. We know from seeing all of you show up at the community meetings that you value your Jenkintown police officers, the guys who leave us to protect you. Communicate with them how unsafe one-man patrols are and how you desire for the JPD to remain intact and fully staffed. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please keep our guys in your thoughts and prayers as they’re out there on the street. They need that now more than ever.

Please see this article for more information regarding one-man patrols in Jenkintown along with FBI statistics.

With appreciation,

Family members of the Jenkintown Police Department

Jenkintown Police News