The salaries of the two new full-time and two new part-time policemen will be paid, in part, by a federal COPS grant.
By: Linda Seida
SOLEBURY The township Board of Supervisors passed a resolution April 1 approving the hiring of four new police officers, two of whom will be employed full time.
A portion of the officers’ salaries for the first three years of their employment will be paid for with a federal COPS grant in the amount of about $75,000 per year, according to Supervisor Thomas Caracio. COPS stands for Community Oriented Policing Services.
The full-time officers are Gary Wayne Forrester Jr. and Daniel Peter Marascio. Working part-time for the township will be Keith Patrick Fennell and Paul Kevin Callan Jr.
A part-time officer will earn $13.25 per hour, and his duties will call for 20 hours per week and may range to 32 hours per week, according to Mr. Caracio. The starting salary for a full-time officer is $37,777, according to Gretchen Rice, township clerk.
This will bring the force to 12 full-time and two part-time officers.
The COPS grant will allow the township to keep up with the increased demand for services in Solebury and to help prevent an increase in crime, according to Police Chief Richard Mangan.
The DARE program in schools has called for increased involvement by police on a yearly basis, Chief Mangan said. There is also an increased need for traffic enforcement as well as the safety inspection of vehicles, he added.
"We aggressively enforce the speed limit on a weekly basis," Chief Mangan said. "It has put more demand on our time, and we want to step up enforcement to try and cut down on the accident rate."
Police efforts to enforce the speed limits in the township have been focused on all township roads, he added, not just on Windy Bush Road, which has been the focus of a recent PennDOT study.
Windy Bush Road, also known as Route 232, was the site of two fatal accidents last fall as well as numerous other crashes and near-accidents, resulting in residents requesting a lower speed limit and increased safety measures.
PennDOT studied conditions on the road and last month announced a lower speed limit of 40 mph would be implemented sometime this spring along the road’s more than five-mile length, which spans several municipalities. In addition, the intersection at Aquetong Road will be converted from a two-way stop to a four-way stop. Also, several passing lanes will be modified or eliminated.
The cooperation and willingness of Solebury to enforce a lower speed limit was a plus as PennDOT weighed whether to decrease the speed limit, according to Dutch Eichorn, a traffic control specialist manager with the agency.
The increase in the number of police officers does not mean there has been a drastic increase in the crime rate in the township, Chief Mangan said.
Solebury police prefer to be "proactive, preventing crime, rather than just react to crimes after they occur," he said.
"We’re always concerned about drugs," the chief said, adding his department would continue to be actively involved in the DARE program. Gangs, however, have not been an issue in Solebury.
"There is no gang problem in the township," he said although the department did send a policeman last year to a seminar about gangs.
In addition, the increase in manpower in the department "will allow the prerogative of the adoption of a detective’s position," Mr. Caracio said.

