JACKSON TOWNSHIP, NJ – The Jackson Township Police Department has been banned from Facebook since June. Nobody is sure why. Jackson Police Chief Matthew Kunz last Tuesday said multiple attempts to restore the page and contact Meta, the social media site’s parent company, went unanswered.
Kunz said he had given up hope as the company did not inform the department why it was banned and offered no path to reinstating.
Shortly after Shore News Network published the story last week, newly appointed Councilman Mordechai Burnstein began calling Facebook and demanding answers.
“I had dealt with Facebook in the past on other matters and reached out to my contacts there to express our disappointment as a township in the company and to see why our police department was banned,” Burnstein said. “I’m glad Facebook did the right thing today and reinstated the page, and thank them for expediting the process for our town.”
Burnstein said he learned of the outage shortly after taking office and decided it was important to ensure the township access to the platform was turned back on. Burnstein said many people in the community used the page to get emergency information from the township and police department regularly.
“I’m glad Facebook did the right thing in this situation,” Mayor Michael Reina said. “I wish they would do the right thing for so many thousands of other individuals they have censored. It would be nice to see Facebook once again allow free speech on the platform and stop censoring people who don’t agree with their political agendas.”
The Jackson Police Department’s Facebook Page has 22,000 followers in a town of 65,000 residents. It is a vital communication tool for the department and the township.
When the page was returned, there was still no indication of why it was banned. Posts included information about the Special Olympics, traffic-related alerts, public safety bulletins and police activity alerts in the community.