The police director would set department policy and formally oversee the police chief. Under Howell’s form of government all department heads, including the police chief, already report monthly to the township manager.

Howell officials have indicated that Township Manager Jacqueline Ascione would serve as police director or appoint someone else to fill the position.

A March 8 meeting showed public sentiment to be running against the idea of naming a police director. One resident referred to the proposal as "another created, political appointment job."

As the ordinance is proposed, the person appointed police director will not have to be or have been a police officer or have otherwise received any training in law enforcement.

The idea has drawn fire from those in law enforcement who support police chiefs.

Mitchell Sklar, executive director of the New Jersey State Association of Police Chiefs, told the News Transcript that "politics should be kept out of public safety."

Sklar said, "In general, it is in the best interests of the community to have a trained career officer run a police depart-ment."

He noted that meant an individual who had gone through the ranks and had proven experience. Sklar said having a career police officer head a department "insulates the position from the usual political give and take."

"Our issue is to keep politics out of police work," said Sklar. "The sudden measure in Howell to incept a police director seems out of the blue because Chief Ronald T. Carter is so well-respected in the law enforcement community."

Township Attorney Richard Schibell previously stated that the reason a police director is being considered is because Carter wanted to begin a departmental ticket quota system.

Carter has said that is untrue and explained that the management policies in use in the department have been the same for many years and have never been questioned or criticized by Township Council members or the administration.

Carter said it wasn’t until he wanted to put the accepted departmental policy of incorporating the number of tickets and arrests in each officer’s performance evaluation into written form that the policy was deemed a "troubling policy" by Mayor Timothy Konopka.

Carter claimed the mayor termed his evaluation methods a "quota system."

Sklar said the inclusion of the number of arrests made and tickets issued by an officer in an officer’s performance evaluation is an accepted method, in fact, the only way to do it.

"There has to be some measure to rank an officer’s performance of his duties. Tickets and arrests are what they do. If you don’t keep a record, how do you know how to rank them?" he said.

Sklar said any challenge to this method of record keeping has always been upheld when challenged in court.