Laid Off West Orange Officers Find Jobs With Millburn
Millburn hires laid off West Orange officers; chief calls it a win-win for all.
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The economy has taken a toll on a lot of professions, particularly law enforcement in New Jersey, which has seen layoffs of police officers around the state and in West Orange.
Millburn Township put two of those officers back to work this week.
Because of recent retirements of the chief and a captain, Millburn was able to hire the two new officers who were laid off from the West Orange Police Department last March, creating what Police Chief Gregory Weber called a “win-win” in a difficult economy.
For Millburn, it means less money spent on training and the fact that as experienced officers the two will get on the street faster. For the new officers, it means landing a job, doing what they were trained to do.
“This is less expense to the taxpayer, because we do not have to send and pay for them to go to a police academy,” Weber said this week. “Nor do these new officers have to spend as much time in a field training program as brand new, untrained officer would normally have to. The other side of this win is that good officers, who were victims of these tough economic times and laid off, now have jobs."
Chief of Police Gregory Weber introduced Travis Jiroux and Peter Smeraldo to the public and to the Township Committee on Tuesday night.
The new officers are 23-year-old Travis Jiroux and 22-year-old Peter Smeraldo.
Jiroux waswas born and raised in Lafayette, New Jersey, and currently lives in West Orange.
According to his police department bio, as a youth Jiroux played football and baseball and went through Lafayette's schools until high school when he attended to parochial school, graduating from Pope John High School in Sparta in 2007. After high school he attended and graduated the County College of Morris in 2009 with an associate degree in Criminal Justice.
Jiroux was hired by the West Orange Police Department in September of 2009 and attended and graduated the Essex County Police Academy in February of 2010.
On Tuesday evening Officer Jiroux was joined by his family: his mother, Lorraine Jiroux; father, Wilfred Jiroux II; older brother Wilfred; older sister – Becky; and his twin sister Alissa. Jiroux’s father held the Bible for him during the swearing in ceremony.
Jiroux resides in West Orange and in his downtime enjoys a variety of outdoor activities such hunting and fishing.
According to his bio, Smeraldo was born and raised in West Orange, where as a youth he played lacrosse. He was educated in the West Orange school system and graduated from West Orange High School in 2007. Currently he attends Rutgers University in Newark and is pursuing a bachelor degree in Criminal Justice.
Smeraldo was hired by the West Orange Police Department in September of 2009 and graduated from the Essex County Police Academy in February 2010.
On Tuesday evening Officer Smeraldo was joined by his family: his mother, Kimberly Smeraldo; father, West Orange Fire Chief Peter Smeraldo Jr.; and younger brother – Connor. His father, who is also the director of the Office of Emergency Management, held the Bible during the swearing in.
Smeraldo resides in West Orange and enjoys reading, working out and surfing in his spare time.
The new officers will attend two weeks of in-house training, before being assigned to the patrol division and a field-training officer. They were hired as a result of vacancies created due to retirements from the Department.
The officers were hired as a result of what is commonly known as the Rice Bill, which allows a municipality to hire laid off police officers, instead of utilizing the normal civil service system.
"I am extremely happy to have these two new additions to the force, I think they will do well in Millburn,” Weber said.
Steve DeRosa
2:55 pm on Thursday, October 27, 2011
Once again Millburns gains is West Orange loss. I had the pleasure of working alongside both of these young men before i retired and can attest to their eagerness and desire to serve and protect the Residence they were sworn to protect. Once again West Orange does nothing to hire its Officers back that have been laid off. Amazing how many other Towns around have rehired their Officers and even promoted except West Orange Did the residents ever wonder why???
TF
1:38 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
I wonder why. Out of the 8 officers laid off, 5 of them were hired by Millburn so that means the taxpayers of West Orange paid for these 5 officers to be trained so they could go on protect the residents of another town. I wonder if the administration can make sense of that because I sure can't. I say good luck to the officers and hope they are treated better in their new place of employment than they were in their previous.
Tom G.
2:29 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
These officers were hired by WO in 2009 and finished the academy in early 2010. They provided over a year of service to WO. I doubt, at the time, WO knew they would have to lay off these officers. So it's not like they paid for training knowing the officers would be gone in 2 years. It's just the way it worked out.
This kind of thing happens all the time. At my office we hired a new guy. He sat through a week of training and then quit to take a different job. We paid him a week's salary while he sat through training and provided no service to the company. That's not fair either.
Ryan
4:26 pm on Friday, October 28, 2011
Wonder why? What's to wonder? It was budgetary. The people who complain about not having enough cops on the street are, more often than not, the same people who complain their town taxes are too high. Something had to give to fill the budget hole created, largely, by tax appeals resulting from the real estate market downturn. The firefighters agreed to take it on the chin to save their jobs, the cops didn't, so cops got laid off. I don't like it either but it's not some big mystery.