By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton Borough and Township police departments will begin joint operations starting Wednesday morning with combined patrol units as the latest phase of consolidation takes effect.
Officers will continue wearing their respective department’s uniforms, and squad cars have not been repainted to have common markings. Police, however, are using the same .9 mm service revolvers.
Officers from the two departments will at some point be paired in the same cars, if not immediately.
Officials said Friday that there are no jurisdictional boundary issues with borough police officers making arrests in the township and vice versa. They noted the two departments already have had mutual aid agreements in place to assist each other, and state law enables officers to make an arrest outside of their towns.
Until the end of the year, the departments will continue to be led separately: borough Chief David J. Dudeck will run the borough police while acting chief Lt. Christopher J. Morgan will run the township police.
”Dave is there, beginning to have all of the department run as one,” Borough Administrator Robert W. Bruschi said in an email Monday. “Technically, Chris is the chief of the township PD until the end of the year, but they work side by side with decisions that impact the individual departments.”
Borough police Capt. Nicholas K. Sutter said Friday that until the merger of the Princetons is official Jan.1, offenses would be logged separately. That means for a little while longer, traffic and other violations still would be handled by the respective municipal court in the town in which they had occurred, either the borough or the township.
Aside from the patrol units, borough police have begun making the phased-in migration to the township police headquarters. Administration is under one roof as is the borough detective bureau. And as of Friday morning, the borough police communications moved to the township.
Borough residents still can call the same police nonemergency number, 924-4141, and 911 without any problems. But no longer can citizens report an incident in person to police at Borough Hall.
To do that, they need to come to the township police headquarters, located at 1 Valley Road. It’s expected that by next week, the Police Department will be completely moved out of Borough Hall.
The two towns are getting closer to a historic merger. Chief Dudeck, who did not return a phone call seeking comment, will lead the combined department of 54 sworn officers.
While the majority of police are familiar with the two towns’ geography, there were training sessions through the year in which borough police would go on ride-alongs with their colleagues from the township police in the borough and vice versa, Capt. Sutter said. Another help is the computer-aided dispatch system that has mapping software police will be able to access from their cars.
As for those vehicles, residents will not notice any difference because officials decided not to repaint them to have a common marking.
”As we acquire new police vehicles, they will be painted with the new police logo. However, we did not feel it necessary to repaint the current fleet of township and borough police cars,” said Mayor-elect Liz Lempert in an email Sunday. “It’s a visible sign that we are only spending money on essential items. We are reusing and repurposing to the greatest extent possible.”
Police, however, will have a common uniform come Jan.1.

