Sculptor: Archimedes A. Giacomantonio
Current location: Montgomery Street near Marin Boulevard
Photo: W. Gobetz, 2008
Law enforcement for early Jersey City developed gradually in its formative years. During Dutch colonial rule (1630-1664), the “schouts” or sheriffs protected the new settlement of Pavonia. Under English control (after 1664), the colony relied on constables and "self-protection" for public safety. Jersey City’s first charter in 1820 included an ordinance for "Public Peace and Tranquility," but the provision lacked enforcement (Van Winkle 164).
In succeeding decades, public safety considerations came out of necessity with population growth, increased crime events, and local government changes.
On May 4, 1829, the city's Board of Selectmen (second charter) addressed law enforcement for the beginning of the city's police department. The selectmen approved a watch house, the appointment of a city marshal, and seven individuals called "watchmen." The appointed watchmen donned hats bearing "Jersey City Watch" and could carry weapons. According to local historian Owen Grundy, the night watchmen could be heard "crying out the hour and insuring [sic] the inhabitants that all was well" (34). Their reappointment, however, was not consistent for several years.
In 1837/38, Jersey City became an independent municipality with a mayor and Common Council (third charter); four watchmen were appointed in 1841. The city's first mayor Dudley Gregory, an astute businessman, served three terms 1838-1840, 1841-1842, and 1858-1860. He took notice of the public safety practices in New York City and modeled Jersey City's early policing from New York's. The watchmen's responsibilities included street night patrol and surveillance for disorderly conduct and criminal acts.
According to police historian Arthur W. Pease, Mayor Gregory favored permanent police appointments based on "individual performance and dependability" and, in addition to making arrests, "he wanted them to perform prevention and investigation and assist other agencies in the city"(12). Pease records that despite Gregory's good intentions, among those of others, "there was no other interest in establishing a professional, well-trained and disciplined police department . . . ." (13). The department was plagued by "politics, patronage, spending appropriations and temporarily plugging a hole in city government where law enforcement belonged" (13).
In 1851, the watch house, at the corner of Henderson and Wayne streets, was rented for $100 a year as "police headquarters." The term "watchmen" was replaced with "policemen" who now numbered 24, and their captain was called the chief of police. After the city installed street lamps in 1852, lamp lighting became part of their duties.
Thomas B. Kissam, the former Captain of the Watch, was appointed Jersey City's first Chief of Police in 1856. In 1858, the first newly constructed police headquarters was at Gregory Street and Cooper's Alley (directly behind the first City Hall on Newark Avenue). The brick building, razed in 1890, featured a tower for fire observation. The surrounding blocks were later reorganized for the construction of the Gregory Apartments in the 1960s.
By 1859, there were over 32 uniformed patrolmen, and a detective force was added in 1857. After the Civil War, a political dispute resulted in the forerunner of the present police department. Historian Daniel Van Winkle explains that in 1866 Mayor Orestes Cleveland and his police force refused "to relinquish control of the Police Department to the new [police] commission" created by the New Jersey legislature. While the state commissioners prevailed, they appointed members of the city police. The state legislature later reversed itself in favor of "home rule," thereby creating the Jersey City Police Department by 1868 with a department of 44 patrolmen and two detectives (196).
In the 1870s and 1880s, the city's government reorganization again revamped the police department and reflected the city's population growth from 7,000 in the 1850s to 163,000 in 1890. The growth spurt came from the consolidation of Jersey City, Bergen, and Hudson City in 1871 and post-war industrialization, immigration, and urbanization. The police force expanded to 130 under the Board of Police Commissioners. It was divided into four precincts headed by a chief of police. A fifth precinct was added in 1873, along with the first mounted police.
The professionalization of policing in New Jersey seemed to progress with the Police Mutual Aid Society (1884), the Tenure of Office Act (1885), and the Police Pension Fund (1887). In 1889, yet another city charter placed the mayor in charge of policing. By the 1890s, precincts had police wagons, the Gamewell Electric Company installed signal boxes with telephones for police contact with the station houses (Police Signal System), and the police department came under Civil Service System for hiring and promotions. A new police headquarters was built at 769 Montgomery Street, the former Seventh Precinct House. It has been renovated and readapted as a condominium residence.
In 1913, Jersey City adopted a commission form of government under New Jersey's Walsh-Leavitt Act. The Chief of Police, who served under the Commissioner of Public Safety, oversaw the city’s fire and weights and measures departments. The first commissioner was Frank Hague (1913-1917). The public safety post launched Hague as the city's crime fighter and reformer. It also proved a training ground for his future mayoralty (1917-1947) and laid the foundation of a patronage system that sustained him in office.
Local historians concur that the police force, and the fire department, needed reform from previous lax administrations and the frequent government changes. Author James Vernon claims that, at the turn of the twentieth century, corruption among the police and their ineffectiveness in curbing crime and violence was a national and a local problem (57). And author Steven Hart portrays Jersey City as "the East Coast equivalent of a Wild West city" (73).
As Commissioner, Hague set out to reorganize the police department and reduce the crime rate. A 1921 City Commission report credits Hague with having "greatly increased the efficiency of these forces. For years these departments had been regarded as political auxiliaries to whichever administration happened to be in control. . ..[having] a demoralizing effect. . .." The report continues that Hague restored both discipline and confidence in the departments by challenging the Policemen's Benevolent Association and removing its influence. The PBA, essentially a labor union, was said to be ". . . in absolute control of police affairs and practically ran the Police Department. Patrolmen shirked their duty, knowing they would be protected by the Police Benevolent Association."
According to Vernon, Commissioner Hague acted as "judge and jury in the disciplining of the city's police force" (57). Hague, it is said, cleared out the department by reassigning desk officers to beat patrol, dismissing officers without trials, and bringing many officers to trial. In the evenings, he was known to walk the city to measure the response time by the police and fire departments that he called in.
Among Hague's reforms was his Merit System Plan approved by the state's Civil Service Commission ". . . for recognition of police officer's meritorious service by rewarding points on the Civil Service promotion examinations" (Pease 32). In 1914, the Jersey City Police Academy opened at 282 Central Avenue, and in 1957 moved to the Jersey City Armory. Here officers received training about criminal, motor vehicles, city ordinances, and the department rules and regulations. Firearms training took place at the Jersey City Armory and later at a firing range at Ogden Avenue in 1930.
Before the infamous 1916 Black Tom Explosion in New York Harbor, Commissioner Hague and Hudson County prosecutor Robert S. Hudspeth identified violations by the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company and the Central Railroad of New Jersey in storing dynamite and railway cars with explosives at the terminal beyond the 24-hour time limit. They expressed fears that the munitions depot jeopardized the city's population.
Those concerns came to pass on the early Sunday morning of July 30th. An explosion of several hours impacting residents and property 90 miles away reigned on the area as an act of domestic terrorism. One of the known casualties was a guard, Jersey City Patrolman James F. Doherty.
During Hague's tenure as mayor (1917-1947), the city was reported to be "crime-free" with stepped-up security of one (1) law enforcement officer for every 3000 residents. A cadre of plainclothes officers recruited from Hague's "horseshoe section" of the city, known as "Zeppelins," was invaluable to Hague's hard-fisted brand of law and order.
Local historian Daniel Van Winkle describes Hague's police force as 700 officers well trained to deter "vice or morality of any kind." He adds that amidst a post-World War I crime wave, "few outrages have occurred within the borders of Jersey City" (196-197).
On July 2nd, 1921, the "crime-free" city hosted an overflow crowd in a hastily built arena at Boyle's Thirty Acres for the "Battle of Century" or the Jack Dempsey-Georges Carpentier fight. To his credit, Hague and the police department he revamped managed the event to almost everyone's satisfaction. According to Arthur W. Pease's study of the police department, the fight's promoter George "Tex" Rickard "stated he was astonished the way the Jersey City Police Department handled 100,000 excited people that historic afternoon without one incident or arrest" (34). Such accolades may have pleased Hague and his supporters, but the tax burden per capita to Jersey City residents and the cost relative to comparable municipalities became a moot point.
In the 1930s, the Motor Pool Division, at Franklin Street and Webster Avenue, helped modernize police work. The initial five patrol cars for eight precincts were employed in regular police work rather than their original usage as "touring cars" for special occasions. Two-way radios became standard equipment in police cars in 1933. An outdoor range at Laurel Hill became a training ground for police use of submachines, tear gas, shotguns, and grenades, among other weapons. And an Emergency Service Unit was installed at No. 9 Engine Firehouse at Bergen and Duncan avenues.
Jersey City's Emergency Squad for additional support to the police in rescue situations began on February 10, 1931. According to Sgt. Teddy Goral, the unit was modeled after a similar service squad in New York City "to answer major emergencies and civil disturbances" (1). The Emergency Squad employed their special training at events like protecting President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the cornerstone ceremony at the Medical Center Complex on October 3, 1936, and again when he visited Jersey City in 1940.
The Squad has responded to the area's most horrific tragedies. It was among the first responders in 1951 (February 10) when a Pennsylvania commuter train from Exchange Place headed to Bayhead and derailed over a temporary span near the Woodbridge, NJ, station. Eighty-five people were killed and 500 were injured. In 1958 (September 15), the Squad responded when two Central Railroad of New Jersey locomotives, traveling eastward from Bayhead to the Jersey City Terminal, plunged 40 feet into Newark Bay from the open drawbridge killing 45 passengers and three railway workers.
Jersey City's Emergency Service Unit participated in the investigation of the Jersey City facilities implicated in the 1993 (February 26) World Trade Center bombing in the North Tower underground garage for explosives and suspects. Again, on September 11, 2001, the Jersey City police and the Emergency Squad were among the first responders after the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.
On the evening of December 25, 2005, a rescue unit arrived on the ice-slicked Lincoln Highway Bridge (Route H 1-9) Bridge to set up warning flares. Upon returning, the vehicle plunged into the Hackensack River, killing two officers. Due to poor visibility, they were not aware of the opening of the flat-deck drawbridge. In 2007, it was renamed the Shawn Carson and Robert Nguyen Memorial Bridge for the deceased officers.
On Memorial Day, May 25, 1936, Mayor Frank Hague dedicated the Jersey City Police Memorial, sculpted by local artist Archimedes A. Giacomantonio, at Bayview Cemetery. The statue and its granite base, inscribed with the names of five patrolmen buried there, were placed at the cemetery’s burial site (plots 42 and 44). The 1,500-pound, seven-foot bronze and iron statue of a patrolman in repose was modeled after Sergeant Harry Morse for his physique and Patrolman Arthur J. Morrissey for his facial features. In May 1887, the cemetery trustees donated the site for deceased patrolmen who needed a burial.
Undisturbed for 25 years, the memorial statue was vandalized and stolen sometime between May 31 and June 1, 1961, and taken in parts to locations in Bayonne, NJ, most likely intended for scrap metal. Giacomantonio responded to a call to weld the statue back together and return it to its pedestal. Two thieves repeated this unseemly deed on the night of March 10, 1975.
Detectives located parts of the statue at a Jersey City scrap yard and elsewhere. Giacomantonio again agreed to repair the damaged police statue with the assistance of welder Kelly Hoskins of Prescott Street. Hoskins donated the new bronze, and steel shafts were implanted in the statue’s legs to prevent further theft. Once restored, the police statue would not return to the cemetery but to a new stone pedestal on the grass divider at Montgomery Street and Marin Boulevard behind City Hall. Here it was rededicated on August 17, 1976, as arranged by Councilman Morris Pesin.
The Jersey City Police Department is under the Department of Public Safety with the Fire Department, Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, Parking, and Fire Prevention. Under the present mayor-council form of government adopted in 1961, the Jersey City Council in 1987 granted the mayor the authority to appoint the police chief.
The Division of Police for the state's second-largest city has four precincts or districts, North (Central Avenue and Hutton Street), West (Jackson Street near Communipaw Avenue), East (7th Street near Newport Center), and South (Bergen Avenue near Wilkinson Avenue) with approximately 975 uniformed officers, 200 crossing guards, and 200 civilians.
Alexander, Jack. "King Hanky-Panky of Jersey City." The Saturday Evening Post 26 October 1940: 9-11, 119,121-124.
"Police Department," Board of Commissioners, Jersey City. Jersey City under Commission Form of Government, 1921--A Book of Achievement, pp. 54-56.
Costello, A.E. The Police Department of Jersey City: From the Reign of the Knickerbockers to the Present Day. Jersey City: The Police Relief Association Publication Company, 1891.
Goral (SGT.) Teddy. Emergency Squad: Seventy-five Years of Jersey City Emergency Service. North America: cgi, 2007.
Grundy, J. Owen. The History of Jersey City, 1609-1976. Jersey City, NJ: Progress Printing Co., Inc. 1976.
“Hague Unveils Police Statue.” New York Times 25 May 1936.
Hart, Steven. The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Super Highway. New York: The New Press, 2007.
McLean, Alexander. The History of Jersey City, N.J. Jersey City, NJ: F.T. Smiley and Co., 1895.
Pease (Deputy Chief Ret.), Arthur W. Historical Highlights: Jersey City Police Department. Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance Publishing Co., 2019.
Van Winkle, Daniel. History of Hudson County Municipalities, 1630-1923. Vol. 1 pp. 91, 99, 124, 134, 194-197 New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1924.
Vernon, Leonard F. The Life and times of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2011.
Wagoner, Walter H. “Police Monument Rededicated.” New York Times 18 August 1976.
Winfield, Charles. History of the County of Hudson, New Jersey. New York: Kennard & Hay, 1874.
