Packing up at Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital

In this 2012 file photo, Sen. Garrett W. Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital staff member Cinda Smith-Patton, a human service technician with the hospital for 29 year helps to pack up the site. A building on the site has been chosen as a quarantine site in the event a traveler from West Africa needs to be monitored for Ebola.

(Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger)

TRENTON — The state paid more than 500 hours of overtime during a three-week period to Human Services police officers who were stationed around the clock at a former psychiatric hospital in Hunterdon County after it was identified as a location to quarantine West African travelers who had contact with Ebola patients, NJ Advance Media has learned.

So far, Gov. Chris Christie's administration has not needed to use the former Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Lebanon Township as a quarantine area. Only Doctors Without Borders Nurse Kaci Hickox has been quarantined in New Jersey after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, and she was held at an isolated tent at University Hospital in Newark from Oct. 24-27.

But once the state Department of Human Services decided to use Hagedorn to temporarily house "asymptomatic" travelers, department officials decided to deploy police to the location, Human Services spokeswoman Nicole Brossoie said.

“As we were surveying the building for appropriateness, there was media and community interest/trespassing so we did have two officers on rotating shifts to provide perimeter and building security,” Brossoie said in a email.

The number of officers who were assigned — and how many were paid at the overtime rate — is in dispute.

Brossoie said the payroll office logged 1,080 hours at Hagedorn, with 557 of them paid at the time-and-a-half overtime rate. The 23-day assignment ended Wednesday. She said she did not have an accounting of the labor costs.

PBA Local 113 Attorney Stuart Alterman said two officers and a supervisor were assigned to Hagedorn, and they were all paid at the overtime rate.

Human Services police officers on average earn in the high-$70,000 range and sergeants in the $80,000 range, according to state payroll records.

Alterman called the Hagedorn assignment “an impulsive way to deal with an acute situation that was neither planned very well or executed very well.” He said officers in the 94-member police force were concerned and frustrated they were provided no training to respond in the event a quarantined person become ill.

“I’m not going to say it wasn’t needed,” Alterman said. “They are not doctors and nurses and not trained to deal with containing a potential pandemic.”

No sick people would be held at Hagedorn, Brossoie said. In the event a person in quarantine developed Ebola symptoms, they would be transferred to one of three hospitals: Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, Hackensack University Medical Center and University Hospital in Newark.

The department still plans to use a building at Hagedorn if quarantine space is needed. State health officials said if those who came in contact with Ebola patients are New Jersey residents, they would be quarantined at home.

Brossoie said the police officers were pulled from Hagedorn on Wednesday because “the Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital police assignment was temporary and specific.” She said the assignment’s end was not prompted by questions from NJ Advance Media.

The security detail at Hagedorn coincided with the Nov. 15 disbanding of a 23-member unit within the 92-member Human Services police department whose officers accompanied child welfare workers to dangerous neighborhoods and to search for missing children. The unit was disbanded to cut down on runaway overtime expenses.

On Nov. 17, a child welfare caseworker in Camden was confronted in her office and stabbed more than 20 times by a client she had been supervising. The caseworker was in stable condition Friday at Cooper University Hospital, Camden. Her assailant, Taisha Edwards, is held on $500,000 bail.

Some Human Services police officers had worked from the Division of Child Protection and Permanency offices, including some who shared building space. Now officers work from one of three state psychiatric hospitals and are dispatched to a child protection office as needed.

The decision to abolish the police unit assigned to the child welfare agency has drawn sharp criticism from union leaders representing the child welfare employees. A grievance has been filed seeking security guards, metal detectors and the restoration of the police unit.

Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.