ELIZABETH, Pa. — For the last four years, Chief William Sombo has provided police coverage to Elizabeth Borough with the help of part time officers, but this summer he saw a need for some help.
“With the scheduling issues I’ve been having over the course of a couple years now it was time they needed to make a move meaning looking into filling a position that’s been vacant since 2019,” said Chief William Sombo with Elizabeth Borough Police.
According to Sombo, the borough didn’t just look into expanding the department, but disbanding it altogether.
“It’s not fair to the people. Your own police department, your own personal officers who know every nook and cranny of this borough, we know the good element we know the bad element,” Sombo told Channel 11.
It’s a heated discussion across the community as the borough has a number of options on the table from raising taxes to grow the force or subcontracting out.
“At the end of the day do I believe Elizabeth Borough Police Department should be disbanded, and another police department take it over, uh no I do not,” Sombo said.
According to the budget figures, Elizabeth Borough would have to double its public safety budget in the next two years to supplement two full-time officers. Meanwhile Elizabeth Township has offered to pick up the coverage for about $100,000 less.
Sombo said the neighboring department doesn’t have the staffing to fill the hole if they were to get the contract, but Elizabeth Township Chief Ken Honick said that’s not the case.
“Elizabeth Township does have an active civil service list with a candidate and how many we would hire to cover the three tenths of a mile for 24-hour coverage is to be determined,” Honick said.
The proposal right now is to have Elizabeth Township have two dedicated officers in the borough from 8am to midnight and have another zone share an officer during the overnight hours.
As the conversation continues, there is no clear decision on what the Elizabeth Borough will vote to do.
“I am in favor of police services and why because the Elizabeth borough community is the last community in our school district area where we currently don’t provide police services so it would be nice to have that patrol footprint and it would be nice for us to have positive residential community impact on Elizabeth Borough,” Honick said.
It’s not clear when the Borough Council will make a decision, but if it does vote to disband, then the chief and 10 part time officers will be out of a job.
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