Freeholders 'Abused Power' in Jail Takeover Vote, Morris Sheriff Says

Just one day after a monumental vote was approved by the Morris County Freeholders to take control of the Morris County Correctional Facility, Sheriff Edward Rochford has fired back.

In a letter to the media, Rochford’s office explained that this is the first time in 275 years the jail won’t be controlled by the Sheriff’s office, and claimed the Freeholders 6-0 vote was an abuse of power.

The letter reads, in part:

“This is an abuse of power by the Freeholders. They are playing with the taxpayers’ safety for their own political purposes. They are legally allowed to take over the jail but it makes no fiscal sense to do so and the taxpayers should look to Warren and Ocean Counties where the jail was taken over by their respective Freeholder Boards and then returned to the Sheriff because it was an expense and a liability they did not actually want to bear.” Rochford said. The Freeholders spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with study after study trying to justify dismantling the Bureau of Law Enforcement and creating a county police but despite their best attempts, the public outcry shut that down. Now they are after the jail without any due diligence but rather, just because they can.”

A statement released by the county after the vote said Rochford and his office had nearly doubled overtime costs at the jail while the inmate count had declined over the past half decade, while keeping the same number of employees on staff.

Rochford, however, said the turnover rate in his office has been astronomical, losing 39% of new officers in the first two years due to uncompetitive salaries.

The letter continued:

“The Bureau of Corrections has seen a spike in overtime due to the continued mass departures resulting from the egregiously uncompetitive salaries. Since 2012, we have lost 39% of our new officers within their first two years. This equates to close to $800,000 in training costs of replacement officers and close to the same amount for overtime to fill the void of the departing officers during the lapse of time required to get a new officer approved, through the academy and up and running. The Sheriff has addressed this with the Board of Chosen Freeholders and County officials but they have disrespectfully ignored him and his 50 years of law enforcement experience.”

The governing body cited Rochford’s mismanagement of finances as the impetus behind the vote, but the claims were countered by the Sheriff, who touted a streak of fiscal conservatism, stating:

“In short, the Sheriff has never gone over budget in his 23 years as sheriff and he has even given back to the county roughly $1million a year through his fiscal management. He has negotiated in good faith with his unions for the best interest of the agency and the county at large. He has always remained fiscally responsible and conscientious. He has acted within his legal rights and dutiful responsibilities. The contracts are within the salary ranges set forth by the governing body themselves for county law enforcement. The salaries three years from now will still be lower than those the Prosecutor’s Office enjoy today so there should not be any issue. The Freeholder Board is interfering with the Sheriff’s ability to run the agency in his fiscally conservative ways and as a result have created this overtime issue that they are now touting as mismanagement.”