Penndel Police Still Work In A One Room Office

Regular Penndel Borough work sessions tend to be pretty quiet and dimly attended by residents.

That changed when Mayor Bob Winkler began talking about purchasing a new building for the town’s police station.

The once headquarters for a small vending machine company was acquired by the borough on March 21, when it used funds secured through a Parx Casino grant from Hulmeville Borough.

Some resident’s don’t think the borough needs the building, others think repairing the building will cost more than the borough can afford. According to Winkler and Police Chief Joe Sciscio, both are wrong.

The mayor and chief don’t think many people in and outside the borough know that the police department currently operates in a single 14 by 20 foot room adjacent to a public bathroom in the borough hall. When criminals are detained, they sit handcuffed to a bench, just a foot or so away from the officer typing up their report; when victims and criminals are brought in for questioning, there is no place to separate them. And in Penndel borough, operating with a small police force like it does, most of the officers are operating in the small department completely alone.

Since Sciscio began at Penndel, he’s made it his mission to beef up the security and controls in place within the one room police department. Yet on any given day, anyone can walk into the borough hall and find Sciscio sitting at his desk, alone, with the door wide open. Why? Because he has no other choice. “Unfortunately with the layout there is no other way we can arrange it,” he said. “If we moved [to the new building], it would be a lot safer than what we have now.”

Records and evidence, employee lockers, detained prisoners and officer desks are kept within inches or feet from one another and for the chief and mayor, it’s time to change that.

“It’s just by pure dumb luck than nothing has ever happened,” Sciscio told LevittownNow.com. “It’s a very unsafe situation.”

The department, which operates with 10 part-time officers, provides 24/7 patrolling of .4 square miles, for the safety of over 2,000 residents.

The new building, which sits adjacent to the borough hall, will provide 1,500 square feet to be used for the police force.

While Chief Sciscio claims the building looks like a garage and shell from the outside, it will provide plenty of room for all the equipment and materials the department will require. The plans, which have no official start date, include a three phase project, all of which Sciscio thinks can be done for under $15,000.

The borough was allotted $200,000 for the project by the Bucks County Redevelopment Authority; $190,000 of which went to it’s purchase. The other $5,000 could be taken from funds already secured for a training exercise that Sciscio said has fallen through.

“Of course no one wants anyone to get hurt, but I don’t think money is the bottom line,” he said. “It’s a wise investment to spend money for the safety of everyone. We just hope council sees it the same way.”

Sciscio, who made the shift from the Bensalem Police Department to Penndel four years ago, said the job has forced him to be creative. According to him, largely everything inside the police department has been gifted to the borough.

“We don’t have a lot of money here,” he said. “So first you make sure everyone gets paid and then you make sure they have the equipment they need. We do more with less here and we all take pride in that.”

Regarding the new building, the mayor and chief have both spoken of offers from local contractors who are willing to donate their time or cut the costs heavily to rehab the empty soon-to-be police station.

“We will deal with whatever we are budgeted,” the chief said. “That’s the best part about living in a blue collar town, there’s lots of tradesmen.”

Since as early as 1989, Sciscio said, there has been plans to purchase an additional building for the police department.

“People act like it’s a surprise, council acts like it’s been shoved down their throats, it hasn’t,” Winkler said.

Like most things in Penndel, according to locals, politics has gotten the better part of the plan.

According to Sciscio, purchasing the building and then never renovating it would be like “rubbing salt in the wound”. When asked if he is worried that the building could sit empty, he said he is, but he is trying to stay optimistic.

“It hasn’t been a secret that we have been looking to get more safe,” said Sciscio. “We can all work together and get on the same page. Politics has no place in law enforcement.”