Emails Confirm Abington Will Not Police Jenkintown

At last Wednesday’s Council Workshop meeting, Council Vice President Christian Soltyziak and Police Chief Thomas Scott asserted that the borough is still considering “all options” in their efforts to bring the police budget under control.

While the Council has never officially mentioned the prospect of contracting with Abington, Council President Jay Conners was quoted in a WHYY article saying, “We honestly believe that we would be getting more services and better services because neighboring police departments have a lot more to offer than what we currently have.”

However, emails we have received from Abington Commissioner and President Tom Hecker might make Mr. Conners rethink that idea.

Mr. Hecker not only denied having any substantive discussions on the matter, he emphasized that it would be illegal for Abington or any other municipality in Pennsylvania to do so.

In two separate emails, Mr. Hecker told Jenkintown Matters:

The Abington Township Board of Commissioners has no intention of contracting with Jenkintown Borough to provide police services. I communicated this directly to your Borough Council President. Even if we were interested, the law does not allow for it. If Jenkintown votes to disband the police department, the law requires the Borough to engage with the state police to provide services.

And in the follow up, Mr. Hecker elaborated:

While Borough Council has said nothing on the record about any negotiations with Abington, the proposal from Bellevue Communications twice cites this as an option.

In item number 4, it states,

“…because of the sensitive nature of the issue as well as the fact that it will be necessary to inform members of the Jenkintown PD about the Borough’s plans, Bellevue strongly recommends that the Borough announce its intention to contract with Abington Township PD ahead of a vote on the issue by either municipality.

In recommendation item number 7, it states:

Either at or after the press conference, Borough leaders should expect to field requests from [the media] for one-on-one interviews about the plan to contract with Abington Township.

(Bold emphasis ours).

Jenkintown Matters believes the citizens of this borough deserve a definitive explanation of the government’s intentions, beyond its plans to have the Governor’s Center for Local Government Services (GCLGS) perform a cost-benefit analysis. Of what it will analyze exactly, it is not certain. At the Wednesday workshop, Council indicated that this analysis might also include the fire department and the Second Alarmers.

What, exactly, is the plan here? What is Council’s end game, and more importantly, why are they again working so hard to stonewall the residents that they represent? And finally, when will Council publicly denounce their plan to outsource policing in Jenkintown?