6 cops protect 12 residents at South Jersey golf course

PINE VALLEY The police department of Pine Valley operates from a small white house with lime-green office walls, where Richard Rauer, the 5-foot-11 police captain with a handlebar mustache, answers the phone.

He and his five officers share one squad car. Each wears a light-blue uniform and pants with a gold stripe, and carries a radio and a 9mm Glock pistol.

But Rauer’s department is unlike any other in the state. Even some law enforcement officials outside New Jersey say they’ve never heard of one like it:

Its job is to protect a golf course — albeit the world’s best, according to Golf Magazine — which occupies most of Pine Valley’s one square mile and is the reason for the Camden County borough’s existence.

The 12 residents barely outnumber the six officers. That makes Pine Valley the second-smallest municipality in New Jersey, and the smallest to have a police force.

Rauer acknowledges he and his officers encounter little crime. He told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the department averages one or two arrests a year, “maybe less.” That’s if trespassers or thieves get past the guarded entrance and the 8-foot-high chain-link fences that epitomize the deep desire for privacy everyone here appears to share.

Last year, the borough reported zero major crimes, and in 2013, three larceny-thefts - which Rauer said may have been people stealing flags from the greens.

“If anything,” said Bob Mather, 87, the friendly borough clerk who has worked there since 1969, “the police department acts as a deterrent to outsiders - outsiders that would like to come in here to do harm.”

Naturally, there’s plenty of downtime, which officers try to fill by driving around on patrol, looking to be of help in a power outage or a medical emergency.

Rauer insists his department’s mission is the same as that of any other. His officers undergo firearms and pursuit training each year with two bordering police departments, Pine Hill and Clementon. And Pine Valley’s residents — who must be members of the famous invitation-only golf club — need protection, too, he said.

“It’s no different than any other town,” he said.

Rauer scoffs at the department’s critics, who include Camden County Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr., who said in 2007 that the Pine Valley police force “makes no sense.” A spokesman said Cappelli still holds that view.

“That’s like saying they don’t need one in their town,” Rauer said, sitting recently in a leather chair in the borough hall. The building is on an unmarked road just past two “Dead End” signs.

Rauer’s department is Pine Valley’s biggest expense: $225,000, or nearly half the $474,000 budget, a sliver of which, less than 1 percent, comes from state aid. The Pine Valley Golf Club pays the borough $101,000 for the police services, according to borough officials.

The police force formed in 1983, or 54 years after Pine Valley was incorporated as a municipality. The prior protection had come from “watchmen” who carried firearms and patrolled the course at night. When borough officials felt that posed too much liability, they created the police force.

“We felt we had to be stronger as far as that was concerned,” Mather said.

Some officers use Pine Valley to learn the basics and move on, while others are retired from other departments. Borough officials declined to make the officers available.

The pay is low.

The one full-time and four part-time officers, not including Rauer, make between $7,000 and $27,000. Rauer, who is full-time, makes nearly $42,000.

Inside his office, which Rauer had painted lime green to “brighten up the place,” there are a basic desk, a computer, and a flatscreen TV. On the wall, there are tacked memos about preventing heat-related illnesses and what to do if the power goes out.

The officers work eight-hour shifts. Occasionally they respond to calls in neighboring towns.

Mayor Michael B. Kennedy, who has lived in one of the borough’s 23 homes with his wife for about six years, said officers once came to his home when the lights went out. He has never had to call for an emergency.

“We’re back in the woods here,” he said. “So anything can happen.”

For a secretive place - the membership list at the golf club is private, and visitors can enter the borough only once a year during an amateur golf tournament in September — Rauer embodies that trait.

He doesn’t want people to know his age — “that’s not necessary” — or the town outside Pine Valley where he lives, for concern criminals will find him. “I certainly have locked up a few,” he said.

That is, during his 22 years on the force. Mostly for trespassing and theft.

Rauer was previously a police officer in Berlin Township, where he started in 1984 and, according to township records, resigned in 1988.

Why did he leave?

The records don’t say. “Just time to move on,” Rauer said.

Pine Valley uses the jail cells in Clementon and Pine Hill, because it lacks its own.

Clementon Police Chief Randall Freiling said Pine Valley last needed a cell more than a year ago.

Freiling is one of the lucky few to go past the borough entrance and onto the course, which is heralded for its challenging design of deep bunkers, hilly terrain, and pine trees. (Membership is rumored to include ex-presidents and famous actors.)

“I have seen the grounds of Pine Valley,” he declared in an interview, recalling he had responded to a fire alarm there this year. “Yes, I have.”

He called Rauer and other employees there “phenomenal people.”

“You just have to basically have a legitimate purpose to go back there,” he said.

Finding one isn’t easy. Guests must be invited by members to play. And women can play only on Sunday afternoons.

“That’s just the way it is,” said Charley Raudenbush, club manager. Asked why, he said: “I don’t know, and probably wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

The private nature of Pine Valley runs so deep that even the police department and the clubhouse, which sit 50 yards apart, seem to acknowledge each other only when necessary.

“I’m not involved with them at all,” said Raudenbush, who is also a Pine Valley resident.

“We stay away from what’s going on over there,” said Mather, the borough clerk.

The quirks add up to make Pine Valley one of the most unusual police jobs.

The Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia has a security force, but not with arrest powers like Pine Valley. The Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J., which hosted the Barclays tournament in August, does not have a police force. Nor does Tavistock, a Camden County borough that, like Pine Valley, is a golf course.

Jack Rinchich, a former police officer and president of the Florida-based National Association of Chiefs of Police, said he had never heard of a department like Pine Valley.

But if anyone can afford a police force, he said, it’s a golf club with wealthy members.

“Now whether you can justify it or not,” he said, laughing, “if you’ve got the bucks, and you have the resources, and they’re legitimate, what can you say?”

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Information from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.inquirer.com