Christie Confounded as Shore Cops Stay When Tourists Go

At the height of tourist season, 150,000 people vacation on Long Beach Island, an 18-mile stretch of New Jersey shore. The crowds are gone by October, when the traffic signals blink amber along the main boulevard.

Just 7,500 residents remain year round, and with them the police forces for six towns. For the next eight months, about 75 full-time officers, earning $7.1 million annually, are responsible for repeated checks of 18,000 empty vacation properties on a barrier island where the median home value is $782,900, double New Jersey’s average.