Elizabeth Borough Police Department will shut down in coming days

ELIZABETH BOROUGH, Pa. — Police officer shortages are being felt every day.

“It is challenging times, recruitment, and retention is probably top of mind nationwide for a lot of governmental agencies,” said Elizabeth Township Police Chief Ken Honick.

Western Pennsylvania is no different. As Channel 11 has previously reported, more departments are shutting their doors and contracting with other departments for police services.

“Our municipality was approached by the municipality of West Elizabeth and Elizabeth Borough and asked if we would consider expanding our police services to their communities,” Honick said.

Add in the current contract with Forward Township and that’s four communities under one department. Elizabeth Township plans to bring on two more full-time officers and assign officers to those specific municipalities, so the contracts bring more money but also more resources.

“It opens the door for us to evolve with technology, as far as a drone program, multiple K9 teams, we are heavily invested in the license plate reader program, we do our own investigations narcotics and other types of crimes,” Honick said.

As we see more police changes in Allegheny County, Channel 11 asked the District Attorney if he believes consolidating is the answer to policing shortages.

“I think it’s a conversation to have with each municipality because not everyone wants to see a lot of police so there are different ways to go about it,” Allegheny County DA Stephen Zappala said.

Zappala said there is no one size fits all model, but his office is actively working with departments to find the perfect plan.

“From Rankin, Braddock and that area probably involving several municipalities, we’ve been actively putting a plan together but it’s a little more difficult because of the nature of the crimes as you get closer to the city borders, the policing is different,” Zappala said.

As for this contract, Elizabeth Township is already policing for Forward and will take over West Elizabeth on Jan. 1 with Elizabeth Borough to follow after that.

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