Midsummer Issue 2023

Georgia PD Looking For a
Few Good Men and Women
Story and photo by Karen Fucito
Back in 1998, Jakai Braithwaite was newly
graduated from West Virginia University
by way of Hopatcong High School and looking
to work in law enforcement. Armed with
a Bachelor of Arts in political science and
government and after a study abroad stint in
Spain, Braithwaite was eager to get his career
started.
“I always wanted to be on the job, always
wanted to serve,” recalled the 48-year-old.
After college, his first job back in New Jersey
was working as a juvenile detention officer at
the Morris County Detention Center. Not a bad
job, he said, but he wanted more.
However, the process for applying for police
department jobs at that time, he added,
was arduous, expensive and competitive. He
remembered taking the exam for a position at
Roxbury Township, knowing he was more than
qualified but also knowing there were a couple
hundred other qualified applicants vying for
one or two positions.
After nearly a year of waiting to hear about
that job—and others—and no closer to getting
hired in his home state, Braithwaite decided a
change was needed.
“You get tired of waiting,” he said.
So, he headed to Georgia, a place that had
some meaning for him.
“I attended the ‘96 Olympics as a spectator. I
thought, wow, I fancy this area,” he said, thinking
back then that one day he would wind up in the
Atlanta area.
While New Jersey was where he wanted to
work, “I’m a Jersey boy, through and through,”
Braithwaite said, he never ruled out other
options.
His plan was to get to Atlanta, get a master’s
degree and head to the federal level of law
enforcement: “Go work for the feds.”
But that’s the thing about making plans; One
never knows when they’ll change.
Instead of working on the federal level,
Braithwaite landed a job with the Alpharetta
Department of Public Safety.
“From visiting the area and seeing the quality
of life—Alpharetta is a vibrant, developed
city—that is what I wanted to do,” he said of
the move to the Atlanta suburb in 1999.
Braithwaite is the younger of two children
born to Reginald and Roberta Braithwaite.
Giving back seems to run in the family.
His deceased grandfather, Robert Preston,
served in the Army, he said. His father is a
Vietnam veteran and a retired United States
postal inspector. His mother, also retired, was
26
LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS Midsummer 2023
the director of social services at
Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.
His older brother, Jabbar Braithwaite,
is a detective sergeant in the Criminal
Investigations Division in Alpharetta.
With both sons and their families in
Georgia, his parents made the move
from New Jersey five years ago, he
said.
“We come from a family of service.
It’s probably built in our DNA a little
bit.”
Braithwaite’s trajectory through the
Alpharetta police department has been steady.
Currently, he holds the rank of police captain
and public information officer in the 115-member
department.
In 2022, with more than a dozen police officer
positions unfilled, Braithwaite was tasked with
recruitment, something he admittedly had no
prior knowledge of or experience with.
“Completely outside of my wheelhouse,” said
the seasoned investigator.
What he did know, however, was that
recruitment for law enforcement across the
country was a problem and that to find qualified
candidates he would have to think outside the
box—and outside Alpharetta.
Which is how Braithwaite made it back to
New Jersey.
“The pool of candidates consisted of two
groups: one group that is interested in being on
the job and another group that is interested and
qualified,” he said of candidates in the Atlanta
area. The pool, he said, is so small that local
agencies offer incentives to entice the best
candidates to come to their agency, pitting
agency against agency.
“We start eating our own,” he said.
His suggestion to expand the candidate search
led to his home state. Specifically, Hasbrouck
Heights in Bergen County, where his ties from
Top to bottom: Jakai Braithwaite with fellow
officers and administrators from Alpharetta,
Georgia. Shenique Rosario runs through the
physical test at last year’s recruitment session.
(Photo courtesy of Jakai Braithwaite)
growing up in Hopatcong were still strong.
Through Heights councilman Michael Sickels,
a college roommate of one of Braithwaite’s
childhood friends, Braithwaite’s recruiting
program was given the red-carpet treatment in
the small borough, including the use of the high
school gym. Media coverage also helped get the
word out.
At last year’s event, 26 candidates applied and
tested. Eight candidates were hired, including
Shenique Rosario. At the time, Rosario was a
5-year veteran of the New York City Police
Department.
“It was a quick transition for me,” said the
Queens native, who was hired two months after
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