Warning!
Well, the handwriting is on the hall, and the message is pretty grim.
There are serious staffing problems facing the Pennsylvania State Police, which could result in a variety of problems down the road.
Basically, there are two problems. First, the training for state police is extensive and expensive. Joe Kovel, president of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association, puts the price tag at $10 million to train every class of 100 cadets.
Second, there are about 2,000 troopers who will become eligible for retirement in the next three years, according to Kovel. That’s nearly half the current complement of 4,302 troopers statewide.
While all those troopers won’t retire at the same time, they will turn in their badges at some point. and the total cost to replace them will be somewhere around $250 million, an astronomical amount, especially for a state hurting financially like Pennsylvania.
Right now there’s a shortage of officers as there are 417 vacancies in state police stations across the state. There are currently two cadet classes in training with 168 members. However, 216 troopers have retired already this year so that will be another 44 posts which won’t be filled, raising the number of vacancies to 461. The number of vacancies will only continue to rise as more and more troopers retire in the coming years.
So, what’s the solution? Well, it’s extremely unlikely that Pennsylvania taxpayers will be able to foot the bill to replace all the retiring troopers. That means state police won’t be able to provide the protection they currently provide.
In the future, municipal and regional police forces will probably have to handle minor incidents, such as vandalism and petty thefts, leaving the state police to investigate more serious crimes such as sexual assaults, drugs and homicides. After all, Pennsylvania taxpayers are paying a lot of money to train our state troopers. And that’s why they’re universally regarded as among the best law enforcement officers in the country.
There are several options out there for municipalities, who currently rely exclusively on state police and can’t afford to start their own police departments. There are regional police departments like the Southwest Regional Police Department, which covers a number of local municipalities in Fayette, Greene and Washington counties, and the Charleroi Regional Police Department, which covers a number of municipalities in the Mon Valley. They contract out services to municipalities, who pay the department by the hour for their services. It’s an arrangement that seems to be working out fine for many municipalities.
In Washington County, Monongahela has contracted out police services for Finleyville, New Eagle and Union Township. That arrangement also seems to be working nicely.
There’s one other possible option out there. State Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-South Union Township, and other lawmakers are sponsoring House Bill 733, which permits county sheriffs and their deputies to make arrests in criminal cases. They currently handle only civil cases.
That could mean countywide police departments. It would certainly result in a rise in county taxes, but it would also spread out the increase among county residents. Theoretically, that could be cheaper than individual municipalities trying to start their own police departments.
Whatever the solution, local residents and municipal officials better begin taking a look at this problem now to try and determine which is the best option available.
There are a lot of unknowns out there, but the only guarantee is that the status quo will no longer be in a couple of years. Change is coming, and we all better be ready for it.