By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
As he steadily climbed through the ranks of the Ocean City Police Department during his 29-year career, it appeared that Bill Campbell was heading straight to the top – to chief.
He went from being a summer police officer to a full-time patrolman, to sergeant, lieutenant, captain and then deputy chief.
Campbell, though, never really thought about becoming police chief during any point in his career, he said.
“Never, never,” he repeated. “Not really, just because, realistically, I just didn’t think the timing would ever work. Beyond that, I never really gave it a thought. I was happy every step that I took. I enjoyed it.”
“When I got promoted to sergeant and right up the ranks, I enjoyed it. I was never really looking for that next rung I needed to grasp. I was very comfortable in each position that I had achieved. That was never really an aspiration of mine to become chief. I never thought I was going to be the chief,” he added.
However, Campbell has taken charge as Ocean City’s new police chief following the retirement of his predecessor, Jay Prettyman. Campbell won Prettyman’s backing to become the next chief.
“I was certainly surprised, kind of shocked, really, by the fact that he had made his decision. He hadn’t given me any firm indication that he was looking to retire. It just kind of came about relatively quickly for him,” Campbell said of Prettyman. “Obviously, I was very surprised and humbled by his endorsement of me succeeding him, and very proud, certainly. I’m very proud to be in this seat and to do the very best I can do for the agency and the employees who work here and the city as a whole.”
The 55-year-old Campbell has spent his entire law enforcement career in Ocean City. He started as a seasonal officer from 1989 to 1992 before joining the department as a full-time patrolman in 1994. Then followed a series of promotions through the ranks, culminating with him becoming chief of the 68-member department in October.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Campbell began vacationing in Ocean City with his family in the 1970s. His parents moved to Ocean City full-time in 1994.
He became interested in a police career while majoring in criminal justice at Delaware County Community College. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree in criminal justice at Shippensburg University and a master’s degree in administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Campbell will lead a police department that includes 68 full-time officers.
As a young man, Campbell was shaped by his experience at the police academy and by the highly disciplined, paramilitary environment of police work, he said.
“At the beginning of my career, that certainly formed the foundation for the respect you have for yourself, the respect you have for other people,” he said of his time at the police academy. “There’s a purpose to it. There’s a lot of lessons learned, and you learn a lot about yourself – how you manage your time, how you work under stress, how you’re part of a team, how you get along with your fellow recruits.”
“Because you have to succeed as a whole, you can’t succeed individually and alienate the team concept, because you won’t succeed. That’s part of what’s instilled in you, that you’re part of a team. It’s something greater than just you individually,” he continued.
Campbell takes over a police department that, in 2022, became the first law enforcement agency in New Jersey to win accreditation for a sixth time. Accreditation is a highly coveted recognition of professional excellence and serves as a model for other law enforcement agencies throughout the state.
In an interview, Campbell credited Prettyman and other former Ocean City police chiefs for a long line of stable, professional leadership that was key in the department’s accreditation and operation.
As a result, Campbell said there is no need for him to make any major changes as the new chief – or, as he put it, he doesn’t have to “blow it all up and start from scratch and come up with a better plan of doing things.”
“This is a well-oiled machine and has been so for a long time. I’m not walking into a dumpster fire, where I have to look at every aspect of the police department and start layer by layer trying to implement change for the better. Policy-wise, we’re really solid,” he said.
One thing he definitely does not plan to change is Ocean City’s strategy for preventing rowdy teenagers from causing trouble during the summer tourism season. For three summers in a row, Ocean City and other shore towns have had to deal with an outburst of underage drinking, foul language, fighting and assaults involving groups of unruly teens.
However, Ocean City turned the tables on the teens this past summer by closing the beaches at 8 p.m., imposing an 11 p.m. curfew on minors and shutting down the Boardwalk restrooms at 10 p.m. The city also approved a backpack ban for juveniles and adults from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. to prevent teens from concealing alcohol, weapons and other contraband.
“I think it worked remarkably well,” Campbell said, while promising to bring back the same strategy for the summer of 2024.
“We saw success,” he continued. “It decreased the amount of teenagers that descended on Ocean City and other shore communities just for the purpose of a beach party, hanging out and whatnot. So, it had a measurable impact, and it brought the families back on the Boardwalk. It gave them more confidence that they could bring their children or grandchildren up there without having to navigate large groups of teenagers standing in the middle of the Boardwalk.”
Campbell does not plan on making any major changes in the police department's operations or management.
Another main focus by the police department under Campbell will be preventing auto theft in the resort. A professional auto theft ring coming down to Ocean City and other shore towns from North Jersey, as well as teenagers stealing cars simply to take joy rides, have been targeting luxury vehicles.
Campbell said about 15 cars have been stolen in Ocean City this year, a record number. He said all but one of the thefts involved unlocked vehicles with the key fobs left inside. He urged car owners to lock their vehicles and take the keys inside the house.
Although Campbell doesn’t plan on overhauling the department’s operations or personnel, there are major construction projects ahead that he will help to direct.
Next year, Ocean City will start construction on a new $6.5 million police substation at Eighth Street and the Boardwalk. When completed in 2025, the substation will function as its own “self-serving” police department on the Boardwalk, Campbell explained.
The substation will include offices, conference rooms, locker rooms and a booking area for arrests. It will also serve as the headquarters for the department’s community policing unit and the summer officers. Normally, Ocean City hires 60 to 65 seasonal officers to help protect the resort during the busy summer tourism season.
Campbell said the substation will give the department a bigger and better presence on the famous Boardwalk, one of the centerpieces of Ocean City’s tourism industry.
Over the longer term, the city is planning to modernize the police department’s main headquarters at Eighth Street and Central Avenue in the heart of downtown. The timetable and cost have not yet been determined for the project.
Campbell stressed that, as the new police chief, he fully supports the idea of renovating the building. The city had once considered building an all-new headquarters that would have combined the police and fire departments, but the project was deemed too expensive.
The existing red-brick building dates to the late 1800s and once served as a school before it became Ocean City’s public safety building for the police department and municipal court.
Plans are in the making to renovate and modernize the antiquated public safety building that serves as the police department's headquarters.
Campbell said the building’s renovation and modernization will require the department to move into temporary facilities, probably trailers, on city property at 16th Street and Simpson Avenue.
“It’s going to be a big undertaking, there’s no doubt about it,” he noted of the challenge of moving all of the records, furniture and equipment from the police headquarters to the trailers.
With the round-the-clock responsibility of protecting public safety, the department will not have the luxury of taking a “timeout” while the police headquarters is under renovation, Campbell stressed.
“It’s not like we can hit the pause button and say, ‘Well, we’re going to come back in a year,’” he said.
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