#NJ cops use federal funds to set up makeshift barbershop amid lockdown

A New Jersey police department used federal funds to pay a barber to temporarily set up shop in its station house to give haircuts to officers amid the state’s shutdown of personal-care businesses, a report said Tuesday.

Paying customers also were allowed to use the Woodbridge Township cops’ makeshift set-up in a section of its station house where suspects usually enter and exit the building, NJ Advance Media said.

Township police Director Robert Hubner told the outlet that an outside barber — whom he only identified as “Jose from a local shop” — was brought in to give haircuts so the officers could keep up with the department’s grooming guidelines.

“The Health Department was consulted early on about the propriety of it,” township spokesman John Hagarty said. “And it was determined that it would be fine to do so by the Health Department by following the regulations that we put in place for social-distancing and face masks.”

Asked how proper social-distancing could be followed when cutting someone’s hair, Hagarty responded, “It is what it is.

“It was a haircut. And obviously you have to be close, wearing a face mask, for a haircut,” he said.

The barber visited the station house a total of six times over two days and was paid $1,605 in money from the federal CARES Act, which was designed to provide emergency financial relief amid the coronavirus, for the first round of haircuts for cops, Hubner said. Further haircuts to officers were personally paid for by the cops themselves, he said.

Other people who don’t work in the department also personally paid for and received haircuts, the police director said.

The outlet said it saw a photo of the temporary pop-up police barbershop.

Salons and barbershops were shut down throughout the state in mid-March and aren’t allowed to reopen again till June 22.