{"id":4480,"date":"2015-05-02T05:29:23","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T09:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=4480"},"modified":"2015-05-01T12:27:28","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T16:27:28","slug":"o-c-sheriffs-office-weighing-impact-of-new-court-security-responsibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2015\/05\/o-c-sheriffs-office-weighing-impact-of-new-court-security-responsibilities\/","title":{"rendered":"O.C. Sheriff’s Office Weighing Impact of New Court Security Responsibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Ocean County Justice Complex, Toms River, N.J. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

County officials are mapping out the potential impact of additional courthouse security responsibilities required by the state, though they say the requirements should not cost taxpayers since the budget is already set for the year.<\/p>\n

The state Supreme Court has ordered that sheriff\u2019s officers guard all civil courtrooms at county court houses across the state, said Ocean County Freeholder Jack Kelly, who met with Ocean County Assignment Judge Vincent Grasso, Sheriff Michael Mastronardy and other officials over the past week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at what we have to do to come into full compliance\u201d with state court rules, Kelly said.<\/p>\n

In all, seven courtrooms \u2013 all civil courts \u2013 did not always have a sheriff\u2019s officer physically present at all times at the Ocean County Justice Complex. The state recently notified county court systems that it would begin enforcing rules that require sheriff\u2019s officers in all courtrooms regardless of what type of proceedings go on there.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike [Mastronardy] was looking at ways to do this with retired officers, and we just can\u2019t,\u201d said Kelly, explaining that the Supreme Court has required that regular sheriff\u2019s officers must guard the courtrooms.<\/p>\n

Freeholder Director John C. Bartlett said the county\u2019s budget has already been set for 2015 and the board does not wish to add new positions in the sheriff\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be difficult,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Kelly, the sheriff\u2019s office is investigating ways to better spread officers around the courthouse, potentially using one supervisor to oversee several entrances to the building instead of posting a separate supervisor at every entrance.<\/p>\n

There is no hard deadline on when the county must come into compliance, but Grasso has requested a formal plan be promulgated soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have anything to report on what it will cost to implement it as we\u2019re just in preliminary discussions,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

County officials are mapping out the potential impact of additional courthouse security responsibilities required by the state, though they say the requirements should not cost taxpayers since the budget is already set for the year. The state Supreme Court has ordered that sheriff\u2019s officers guard all civil courtrooms at county court houses across the state, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[24,1249,1250,204],"class_list":["post-4480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean-county","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-court-security","tag-ocean-county-justice-complex","tag-ocean-county-sheriffs-department"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/ocean_county_court.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-1ag","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}