Summit Hill police chief: Panther Valley wants an officer in its schools

Summit Hill Borough Council received an informal request to provide a school resource officer to the Panther Valley School District.

Joseph Fittos Jr., chief of police in Summit Hill, encouraged council to look into the matter because police have responded to more than 300 incidents in the school district in the past three years.

“We make many, many arrests,” Fittos said. “Things are getting more serious and more dangerous. We already intercepted things and stopped things from happening in the past couple of years.”

Fittos said the school board wants to meet with council to discuss the matter, which would involve the borough hiring a full-time police officer, have the district exclusively utilize that officer during the school year, and then have the officer work for the borough during the summer months.

Council agreed unanimously to meet with the school district on the matter, and said it would like police department representation to be at the meeting.

Fittos said he advised the district that the bulk of the cost for the officer would be on them due to the school resource officer being in the schools 80 percent of the time.

The officer would share responsibilities at all three buildings in the district.

The high school and intermediate school are in Summit Hill while the Panther Valley Elementary School is in Nesquehoning.

The officer couldn’t make arrests at the Nesquehoning school because it is out of his jurisdiction since he would be a Summit Hill officer, so in such a case he would obtain mutual aid from the Nesquehoning Police Department.

The police chief told council that the school district is hoping to obtain a grant to pay for the officer.

Council member David Wargo said, “I think we’d be foolish not to at least sit down with the board and discuss this.”

“I think we should talk to (the district) about this,” added Councilman William O’Gurek, “to make things down there more safe.”

Fittos said, “It’s not like we’re expecting terrorists to come in,” adding, “We have a lot of homegrown things.”

He told council that the request by the school district came from a meeting the board had on April 12 with him and officers Jeffrey Ohl and Brian Horos.