Cass Township disbands police force, solicitor says money went missing from evidence room
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - The Cass Township Police patch, seen at the municipal building in Duncott on June 28, 2024.
DUNCOTT – Another Schuylkill County police force is no more.
Cass Township Supervisors voted last month to disband their police force and took further steps Friday to rely on State Police for coverage.
Solicitor Mark Semanchik said during Friday’s supervisors meeting that $575 went missing from the police department’s evidence room and had to be paid by the township to the Schuylkill County District Attorney’s Office. He said the township was served with a court order to return the cash.
Semanchik said the evidence room has been “under seal” since the department was temporarily suspended.
Those statements came in response to a former police officer, Joe Kavanaugh, demanding his personal belongings be returned. He said he has a gun belt and other items in his locker. Officers’ lockers were also in the evidence room, both Semanchik and Kavanaugh said.
Supervisors Chairwoman Brenda Helt asked Kavanaugh why he didn’t ask for his items back when the department was suspended, before the evidence room was sealed, noting he was present at that meeting.
“[The State Police] called me at 8 o’clock in the morning accusing me of withholding your personal property,” Helt said. “I’m not holding your personal property. It’s in an evidence room.”
“But that’s not evidence. You hold evidence in an evidence room. You don’t put a locker room and evidence in the same room,” the officer said.
He asked for the supervisors to accompany him to retrieve his belongings. Helt deferred to State Police.
Later in the meeting, Semanchik explained that the Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission (MPOETC) system still showed Cass Township as having nine active officers. State Police requested that paperwork be filed with MPOETC to “separate” those officers.
“That fully allows the Pennsylvania State Police to step in and oversee all of the outstanding issues that remain from the police department and what we’ve gone through over the last six months, if not longer,” Semanchik said.
Supervisors approved a motion to file that paperwork.
According to the minutes of the prior meeting on May 30, the department was disbanded after supervisors “were not provided with the assistance that we requested back in February when the department was suspended.”
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The officer should sue Cass Township for not returning his personal property, the gun belt and whatever.