State police further stretched by North Franklin takeover
When North Franklin Township decided in December to disband its police department rather than carry a sizable deficit into the new year, it became the latest in a mass of municipalities to fully rely on the state police to keep its residents safe.
And while Trooper Melinda Bondarenka said Washington state police have the resources to take over for the township’s department, she acknowledged that it will feel the strain of the further expansion of its coverage area.
“It’s just going to thin us out a little, so to speak,” she said.
In April 2018, Troop B – the state police force responsible for Allegheny, Greene, Fayette and Washington counties – provided full coverage to more than 60 municipalities that don’t have police departments of their own, according to an Observer-Reporter analysis of state police coverage data.
This number has only grown. Before North Franklin dissolved its police force, East Pittsburgh decided to do so in November.
State police are required by law to cover any municipality that takes this step at no extra cost to the municipality. In 2017, more than half of Pennsylvania’s 2,561 municipalities fully depended on state police to respond to incidents in their jurisdictions, said spokesman Ryan Tarkowski.
Still, Tarkowski said there are things a municipality should consider before disbanding its police department.
For one, state police don’t enforce local ordinances. And since state troopers patrol a much larger zone than officers from a local force, Tarkowski said they may take longer to respond to calls.
“It’s just the nature of the job,” he said.
In Canton Township, a municipality that currently doesn’t have its own police department, residents complain that state police are unable to respond to emergency calls in a timely manner. For this reason, supervisors are looking into starting a force for the township.
Before East Pittsburgh’s police force disbanded, Bondarenka said its residents also expressed concerns that response times would increase, though she added that she has heard no complaints since state police took over.
Bondarenka said she can’t say one way or the other whether North Franklin will experience extended response times. It all comes down to an officer’s activity at the time of the call and the incident’s severity, she said.
She gave the example of an emergency room:
“If you come in and you’re throwing up, and someone else comes in and they have their arm broken off, you’re not going to be seen first,” she said.
Just so, if a trooper gets a call for an armed robbery and another for a vandalized mailbox, Bondarenka said they will first respond to the armed robbery.
“Maybe it took us an hour to get to that broken mailbox because it wasn’t the priority at the time,” she said.