Penndel Borough Police Chief Joseph Sciscio sat down to talk about the department’s limited resources and the difficulty of playing secretary, supervisor and detective all in one.
Sciscio is the only full-time employee on the police force in Penndel Borough. He is assisted by 10 part-time officers and together they operate as a full-time police department without any support staff.
“I heard a statistic that the council was talking about that it was over 60 percent of Penndel were renters,” said Sciscio. He believes this number is high, but it is probably close to accurate. “I haven’t verified that yet,” he said. Sciscio estimates the total population at 2,300 residents.
“Resource allocation can be tricky,” he admits.
On Sunday, Oct. 23, seven residents of a youth independent living facility on Bellevue Ave. had to be detained after allegedly assaulting a male and female on East Woodland Ave.
The residents of the Youth Service Agency had crashed a Halloween party in the early hours of the night. After refusing to leave, the police were called. When police arrived, the young men and teens were already gone, but they returned later that morning to beat up a man and his girlfriend at the residence.
According to Levittown Now, the accused were Daniel McCleary, 19, Da’vohn Chapman, 18, Cameir Renwick, 18, Nathan Shaw, 18, Jesus Joa, 18, and two juveniles. They were arrested and charged with burglary, stalking, terroristic threats and aggravated assault.
The male and female victims sustained injuries including a possible concussion from the women being kicked in the ordeal.
Only one of the detained was from Bucks County. Four out of the seven arrested in this incident were from Dauphin County near Harrisburg, PA.
All five adults were taken to Bucks County Correctional Facility and the youths were handed off to the appropriate agencies.
Sometimes, in situations with out-of-towner arrests, the suspects are handcuffed to a bench inside of the tiny police station until transport from another county can come pick them up. “It’s not uncommon for an officer to have to watch someone on the bench while they do their paperwork,” said Sciscio.
Some officers have even spent their whole shifts watching prisoners on their bench. “If we don’t have serious enough charges to arraign them, then we have to babysit,” he explained.
“It’s not necessarily a safe situation either,” said Sciscio. Recently they had a prisoner who kept trying to spit on a female officer while in custody.
Other than the youth center, Penndel has several apartment complexes, Cairn University dormitories, a recovery house, and short-term living spaces at a place simply labeled “Get Rooms Here!”
An application to open a halfway house at 113 W Lincoln Hwy was recently withdrawn from the borough’s agenda. “That’s why I really started coming [to council meetings.] I wasn’t going to let that happen,” said Kirsten Houser, resident of Penndel for the past four years.
Earlier this month, Houser and her husband looked outside of their home on Bellevue Ave. and saw kids brawling on the sidewalk. “Small town,” she said, “lots of crime here.”
Amber Gushue, 26, life-long resident of Penndel, recalls that the SWAT team was called out to Oxford Grant Apartments to remove gang members from the complex in 2006. “They’re called Millcreek Apartments now, but they’ll always be Oxford Grant to me,” she said.
Five members of the Bloods gang in Trenton had apparently moved into the complex and were selling drugs in the area. Sciscio was involved with this incident, working on the Narcotics Unit for the Bensalem Police Department at the time. “It was interesting,” he said.
Sciscio reassured that the apartments have changed ownership, not just names. “The management is very proactive,” said Sciscio, adding that they are “fantastic.”
Although Sciscio says that all, or even a majority, of the crime cannot be attributed to the transient population, he admits there’s “a substantial amount of crime from people who don’t have roots here.”
“That’s probably one of their biggest struggles,” said Council President Kali Sodano. “Obviously, long-term residents all know each other.”
Sodano was the council member to propose a motion to disband the Penndel Police Department several months ago. “It was just a proposal that I had to look into,” Sodano continued on to say, “to increase the safety long-term because we don’t have all of the resources that Middletown has.”
Council voted not to outsource the police services to Middletown Township in early September, and have recently voted on an architect’s plans for a new police station to be built. They are currently awaiting bids on the project.
The Penndel police station is currently located within the Penndel Borough Hall. The new station will provide the department with more space, and secure areas, to book and hold prisoners.
Penndel Police responded to 189 calls, resulting in 17 criminal arrests, over the month of October, and swore in Dallas Krum as their newest addition to the force on Nov. 7.
Even with additions to the force, officers are usually alone in the station on overnight shifts. “That concerns me,” said Houser.
“Can they really handle it?” she asked.