Middletown Police Chief Announces Retirement, Search for Replacement Begins

The Middletown Board of Supervisors announced the retirement of the Police Chief James Kane last night at the board meeting and commenced the search to find his replacement.

Kane, who has been chief of the department for the past four years, will be leaving the position on June 1. The board hopes to find a new chief by the time Kane retires. With such little time, one of the board members called this search an “ambitious” one.

Kane has been in law enforcement for the past 35 years. According to an article from the Bucks County Courier Times, Kane was Lieutenant of the force before his promotion to chief and led the department to state accreditation in 2008. Kane also initiated and ran the township’s D.A.R.E program for several years.  He became police chief in 2010.

With the announcement of Kane’s retirement, the search has commenced for a new police chief. Because the position is what the Board of Supervisors called “a highly specialized position”, the board voted 4-1 to hire a police executive search firm known as Safe City Solutions to find a new chief for the Twp. The company gave Middletown township a figure of $11,000 to conduct this search.

The township said one of the reasons they chose this company was for the experience they had.  Safe City Solutions Inc. is led by two Pennsylvania chiefs, officials said.  A second reason is  the  company and the township have  an established business relationship,  employing Safe City Solutions during their arbitration process with the police department.

According to Safe City Solution’s proposal, they will narrow down the applicants to several finalists. From there, the finalists will be tested in a three-step assessment conducted by the company.

The first part of the assessment would be an oral board where applicants would answer questions in front of a panel. The second part would be a problem-resolution assessment where the finalist’s will answer how they would deal with potential problems as a Chief of Police. The final part of the exam would be an “in-basket” process, where the applicant would be sat down with a hypothetical “in-basket”.  The applicant would then sort through several different cases that were put into this basket.

Board member Tom Gallagher was the only one to vote against the hiring of the company saying that the township should be more frugal with their funds. He said that the township should consider creating a community panel to judge the top ten applicants, such as they did four years ago.

Also conducted at the meeting was the swearing in of two new police officers, Kevin Platenecky and Christopher Viscardi.

The next Board of Supervisors Meeting will be on March 3 at 7:30 pm.