When the Mayor Can't Hear His Own Police: Toms River's Radio Accountability Crisis
Toms River Township Police have been fully encrypted for years — all 12 dispatch channels, sealed from the public. That encryption was supposed to protect operational security. What nobody planned for was the day the mayor's own administration would be locked out too. In May 2024, the Toms River Business Administrator formally requested a police dispatch radio. The police refused. A lawsuit followed. The case exposes what happens when encryption culture reaches its logical conclusion: not even elected officials have oversight of what's happening on their own police radio.
Key facts at a glance
The encrypted black box
Long before Mayor Daniel Rodrick took office on January 1, 2024, Toms River Township Police had fully encrypted their radio communications. All 12 police channels are locked — digital, trunked, and inaccessible without a properly programmed and authorized radio. Ocean County Scanner News documented this years earlier, noting that Toms River police implemented "total encryption on all 12 police channels," including dispatch.
For years, that encryption was largely a press and public access issue: journalists couldn't monitor breaking incidents, residents couldn't follow emergencies in their neighborhoods, and scanner hobbyists who provided informal first-alert functions to communities were cut off. These were real harms, but diffuse ones — they fell on citizens and reporters, not on the officials running the township.
Then the same opacity turned inward.
The Structural Reality
When radio communications are encrypted, access becomes a controlled privilege rather than a public resource. Whoever holds the encryption keys decides who can listen. In Toms River, that decision was made by the police department — and the answer, for the mayor's own administration, was no.
Timeline: dysfunction in layers
Rodrick Takes Office
Mayor Daniel Rodrick begins his term. The township police department is already fully encrypted on all 12 channels — a system he inherited.
Restructuring Plan Announced
Mayor Rodrick announces plans to eliminate two captain positions, a patrol officer slot, and the public information officer position. Police Chief Mitchell Little — 38 years of service, 10 as chief — immediately objects.
Fire Chiefs Formally Oppose Encryption
Ocean County Fire Chiefs Association sends a letter to Township Administrator formally opposing plans to encrypt Fire District 1 — a separate but parallel communications secrecy decision proceeding simultaneously.
Chief Little Suspended — Defectively
Mayor Rodrick suspends Chief Little for two days. The suspension notice omits the hearing date required by state law, rendering the process procedurally defective. Little files a civil lawsuit against the township alleging retaliation. He later retires after 38 years.
Radio Access Denied
Business Administrator Jonathan Salonis formally requests a police dispatch radio for administrative oversight purposes. Acting Chief Peter Sundack — newly promoted from lieutenant — denies the request "on advice of the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office."
Community Leader Gets the Radio the Mayor Was Denied
Toms River Police provide a dispatch radio to Baruch "Booky" Kaluszyner, head of the Toms River Jewish Community Council — a non-sworn civilian — without notifying or requesting permission from the mayor or business administrator.
Fire District NDAs
Toms River Fire District 1 sends non-disclosure agreements to mutual aid fire departments as it prepares to go encrypted — a decision opposed by the Ocean County Fire Chiefs Association's own leadership.
Fire Department Goes Dark
Toms River Fire District 1 becomes the only fully encrypted fire department in New Jersey. NJ's only encrypted fire department is now in the same township as its fully encrypted police department.
Police & EMS Encryption Activated
Township-wide communications lockdown complete: police, fire, and EMS all encrypted. Toms River is now among the most communication-opaque municipalities in New Jersey.
Lawsuit Filed; Recall Underway
The Township files suit in Mercer County Superior Court seeking radio access, Facebook admin access, and relief from prosecutor interference. Simultaneously, a recall petition against Mayor Rodrick is certified and moves forward.
The radio they won't give the mayor
In May 2024, Business Administrator Jonathan Salonis submitted a formal request for a police dispatch radio. The request was reasonable: the business administrator is the township's chief administrative officer, responsible for managing and overseeing municipal operations — which include the police department.
Acting Chief Peter Sundack denied the request. His stated reason: the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office had advised him that only sworn law enforcement personnel should have dispatch radios.
From the Lawsuit
"The contention that police dispatch radios should only be given to sworn officers is, at best, nonsensical, and at worst, disingenuous."— Township of Toms River lawsuit, Mercer County Superior Court
The lawsuit points out why the "sworn officers only" reasoning collapses under scrutiny: EMTs have police dispatch radios. Fire personnel have them. And then there is the case of Baruch "Booky" Kaluszyner.
The Kaluszyner Irony
While the police department was refusing to give the mayor's business administrator a dispatch radio, it had already provided one to Baruch "Booky" Kaluszyner, head of the Toms River Jewish Community Council — a private citizen, not a sworn officer, not a municipal official. This was done without notifying or seeking permission from the mayor or business administrator. The elected civilian leadership of Toms River Township was denied the radio that had already been given, without any oversight, to a community organization leader.
The mayor himself was also denied access. The administration that is legally responsible for overseeing the police department cannot hear what its police department is doing.
The Facebook parallel: opacity across every channel
The radio dispute wasn't an isolated incident — it was part of a broader pattern of communications control that played out across multiple channels simultaneously.
When Mayor Rodrick took office, he appointed Phil Stilton as the township's new Public Information Officer. Rodrick directed the police department to add Stilton as an administrator on the department's official Facebook page — a routine administrative consolidation request.
The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office intervened with warnings that granting the township access could compromise prosecutorial responsibilities. The request was denied. Business Administrator Salonis was eventually permitted moderator-only access through a negotiated agreement with prosecutors and the police chief. That access was later removed entirely.
The Pattern
Radio dispatch: controlled by the department, inaccessible to elected oversight.
Social media page: controlled by the department, inaccessible to elected oversight.
Both channels blocked through the same mechanism — a county prosecutor's office that has inserted itself between the mayor and his own police department.
Whether one agrees with Mayor Rodrick's specific management approach or not, the structural dynamic here is worth understanding: in Toms River, the elected mayor has been effectively separated from routine communications access to his own police department. The encryption that sealed those communications from the public has now sealed them from the people's elected representatives.
Police chief turnover: the cost of dysfunction
The communications disputes didn't occur in isolation — they emerged alongside sustained leadership instability in the Toms River Police Department.
Chief Mitchell Little
Police Chief (until 2024)38 years of service, 10 as chief. Opposed Rodrick's restructuring plan eliminating two captain positions. Suspended for two days in April 2024 — the suspension notice was procedurally defective under state law, omitting the required hearing date. Little filed a civil lawsuit against the township alleging the suspension was invalid and retaliatory, then retired.
Acting Chief Peter Sundack
Acting Police Chief (2024)Promoted from lieutenant to captain and named acting chief after Little's departure. Denied the business administrator's dispatch radio request "on advice of the prosecutor's office." His tenure marked the period during which the Kaluszyner radio distribution — without administration approval — occurred.
Captain Guy Maire
Promoted Alongside SundackPromoted to captain in the same reorganization that created the acting chief position. Part of the new leadership structure that emerged from Rodrick's controversial restructuring of command positions.
The rapid leadership churn — at least three transitions at the top of the department within roughly two years — is itself a form of institutional damage. Continuity of command matters in a police department; repeated turnover at the chief level creates uncertainty about policy, procedures, and priorities throughout the organization.
What encryption culture produces
The Toms River case is unusual in its specifics but illuminating in its structure. Strip away the local political texture — the mayor versus the prosecutor, the disputed captain positions, the recall effort — and what remains is a dynamic that encryption creates everywhere it is deployed without clear governance rules.
When radio communications are open, they are a public resource: anyone with a scanner can listen to dispatch, monitor a fire, follow a pursuit. Oversight is ambient — built into the communications architecture itself. Journalists listen. Residents listen. Elected officials who want to understand what their police department is doing can simply listen.
Encryption ends that. It converts a public resource into a controlled one. Someone holds the keys. Someone decides who gets a radio. Someone decides who gets removed from the Facebook page. That authority does not evaporate — it concentrates. In Toms River, it concentrated in the county prosecutor's office, which used its advisory relationship with local police leadership to effectively block the elected municipal administration from access.
The Accountability Vacuum
Police encryption is typically justified as protecting officers and operations from adversarial monitoring. What it actually does is create an information asymmetry: the police department knows everything that happens on its radio; elected officials, journalists, and the public know nothing. In a functioning system, elected oversight compensates for this asymmetry — the mayor can ask, the chief can answer. In Toms River, that compensation mechanism broke down. The chief refused. The prosecutor backed the refusal. The mayor filed a lawsuit to get a radio.
This is the accountability vacuum that encryption builds. It doesn't matter that the immediate dispute involves a politically contentious mayor — the same structural vulnerability exists in every encrypted jurisdiction. Encryption doesn't just remove public oversight; it creates a system in which oversight itself becomes a contested privilege.
The lawsuit
In late 2025 or early 2026, the Township of Toms River, Mayor Daniel Rodrick, and Business Administrator Jonathan Salonis filed a 16-page lawsuit in Mercer County Superior Court. The defendants are Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer, First Assistant Prosecutor Michael T. Nolan, and New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport.
What the lawsuit seeks
Dispatch Radio Access
A court declaration that Business Administrator Salonis is entitled to a police dispatch radio for municipal oversight purposes.
Facebook Administrator Access
Restoration of township administration as an administrator (not merely a moderator) on the police department's official Facebook page.
Cease-and-Desist on Interference
An order requiring the prosecutor's office to stop interfering in township personnel investigations and decisions reserved to local elected officials under New Jersey law.
"Billhimer, a far-left Murphy appointee, is not only interfering with our ability to manage the township but appears to be using his office to further a political agenda."
— Mayor Daniel Rodrick, on the lawsuitThe township's lawsuit frames the conflict as a separation of powers issue under New Jersey law: county prosecutors have statutory authority over law enforcement operations, but that authority does not extend to blocking elected municipal officials from the basic administrative access to their own departments that management requires.
The case will turn on how courts interpret the boundary between prosecutorial oversight of law enforcement and the management authority of elected municipal officials. Whatever the outcome, the litigation itself — the fact that a mayor must sue to obtain a radio — reflects a governance breakdown that encryption helped create.
The broader context: a fully encrypted township
Toms River's radio access fight doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in the context of a township that has, over the past two years, closed off virtually every public communications channel.
Police Encryption
All 12 dispatch and operational channels fully encrypted. Predates the Rodrick administration but persists through it. The system that locked out the mayor locked out the public first.
Fire District 1 Encryption
Became New Jersey's only fully encrypted fire department on January 6, 2025 — over the formal written objection of the Ocean County Fire Chiefs Association. Read the full story.
EMS Encryption
EMS communications joined police and fire in the encrypted tier on January 13, 2025. Township-wide communications lockdown now complete.
No other municipality in New Jersey has encrypted its fire department. Toms River is an outlier nationally as well as in its own state. Adding the police access dispute to that picture produces something remarkable: the township that has done more than any other in New Jersey to seal its public safety communications from public view now finds itself in court arguing that sealing those communications from elected officials goes too far.
The Recursive Irony
The Rodrick administration did not create Toms River's police encryption — it inherited a fully encrypted system. But it also did not reverse it, even as Fire District 1 went encrypted over fire service objections during its watch. The same opacity that blocked public oversight has now extended upward, blocking the elected officials who might have challenged it. A government that chose secrecy has discovered that secrecy doesn't respect political rank.
What this means for other encrypted jurisdictions
Toms River is an extreme case. The combination of a politically contentious mayor, an assertive county prosecutor's office, and fully encrypted communications across all services created the conditions for this particular collision. But the underlying vulnerability is not unique to Toms River.
Across New Jersey and the country, police departments have encrypted their communications without establishing clear governance frameworks for who holds access authority, under what conditions it can be denied, and what oversight mechanisms exist for elected officials. The default assumption has been that department leadership manages access — and in normal times, that's fine. But "department leadership" means different people in different political circumstances. It means the chief who agrees with the mayor, and the chief who doesn't.
The Access Question Nobody Asked
When jurisdictions encrypt, they answer the question "who can't listen?" (the public, the press). They rarely answer "who can?" in writing. Toms River is what happens when that unwritten assumption is challenged.
Governance by Lawsuit
If the only way for an elected mayor to access his own police department's radio is through litigation, the governance framework around encryption has failed — regardless of who is right in the underlying political dispute.
A Warning Sign
Encryption advocates argue that modern police operations require communications security. They rarely address what happens when that security architecture is used to resist oversight. Toms River provides the answer.
What New Jersey residents can do
Follow the Lawsuit
The Toms River case in Mercer County Superior Court will set precedent on whether encrypted police departments can deny radio access to elected municipal officials. Watch its outcome.
Ask Your Municipality's Policy
Does your mayor or council have access to police dispatch radio? Does your township have a written policy on who can be granted access to encrypted communications? Ask — in writing.
File OPRA Requests
New Jersey's Open Public Records Act (OPRA) can be used to request policy documents about encryption access, radio distribution records, and communications with county prosecutors about municipal radio systems.
Support Transparency Legislation
New Jersey lacks a state law requiring open police radio or setting clear governance rules for encrypted systems. Legislative action could prevent the next Toms River situation before it reaches the courthouse.
The question Toms River answers
Police encryption debates usually center on two competing values: operational security versus public transparency. Toms River adds a third dimension: what happens to democratic accountability when the communications infrastructure of a public safety agency is fully sealed?
The answer, in Toms River, is a lawsuit. An elected mayor, unable to obtain a radio through normal administrative channels, compelled to go to court to access the encrypted communications of a department he is constitutionally responsible for overseeing. A community organization leader with a dispatch radio that the mayor doesn't have. A police Facebook page that the mayor's PIO can't administer.
None of this could have happened with open radio. When dispatch is public, oversight is ambient. Encryption didn't just close the door on the press and the public — it handed the key to whoever controls the police department, and in Toms River, that turned out not to be the mayor.
That's not a Toms River problem. That's an encryption problem.
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