By Julie E. Martin
The Leader Times
FORD CITY, Pa. — Ford City’s emergency medical services director is predicting bad things if budget cuts to the police department are not restored to enable the force to return to full-time coverage of the borough.
“I feel that it is only a matter of time before the reduction in police coverage results in a critical emergency in the borough that results in a serious injury or death to one of our patients or even one of our employees,” EMS Director David Dunmire said in a letter he recently presented to Ford City Mayor Marc Mantini.
Dunmire’s problem is that it takes state police — who since January have been patroling Ford City when borough officers are not on duty — longer to respond to calls because their coverage area is so large. He cited in his letter that emergency crews waited 20 minutes for police to arrive recently when an “unruly” man was found lying in the road intoxicated. With no police to arrest him, the man staggered across two lanes of traffic to his home, Dunmire wrote.
“Our crew was powerless to stop him from doing this, which in turned caused a critical safety issue for not only the patient, but also our crew,” Dunmire, who did not return calls for comment, said in the letter. “I would hope that the borough would reconsider their decision to reduce the police coverage and reinstate full-time local officers.”
The Ford City Council in late December adopted a budget that cut police funding nearly in half - reducing the number of part-time hours to about 40 per week. Since January, the borough has relied on state police for coverage when Ford City officers are not on duty.
“It isn’t working out for us at all,” Ford City Fire Chief Ron Wojick said. “I’m not faulting the state police. They patrol a big zone and it takes them longer to get here. But 15 or 20 minutes can mean the difference between life and death.”
Commander Sgt. William Myers of the Kittanning state police said concern about response time is not unusual, especially in communities that have gone from a full-time to a part-time local force. And since his department covers much of the Route 28 corridor, from Armstrong County to as far south as Fawn in Allegheny County, he said he can understand the concerns.
“In municipalities that used to have their own full-time police, their response times were quicker than ours because they were dedicated solely to that municipality,” Myers said, adding that dispatchers are trained to prioritize calls and send officers where they are needed most. “We strive to respond to every call as quickly as we can.”
Less than a month into having state police patrols, council members have had few complaints with the change in coverage — even when Mantini read Dunmire’s letter to them during a recent meeting.
“If something happens and the state police are the responding law enforcement officers, then they are on the task,” borough Manager Eden Ratliff said.
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©2015 The Leader Times (Kittanning, Pa.)