Frackville PD loses last full-time patrol officer; community holds town hall

FRACKVILLE – About 20 people attended a town hall meeting Tuesday at the Frackville American Legion to discuss concerns regarding the mountain city’s police coverage.

As of the last Frackville Borough Council meeting, the Frackville Police Department had only two full-time employees, Chief Paul Olson, and Patrolman Devin Dellock. Longtime Patrolman Anthony Kankowski resigned in February, and full-time Patrolmen Phil Petrus and Chris Hand resigned in the past year as well.

Dellock was hired last week as a full-time patrol officer for Tamaqua Borough and subsequently handed in her resignation at Frackville.

According to the Pennsylvania State Police Community Access to Information Dashboard, which maintains a map of municipalities covered full or part-time by State Police, Frackville has not had full-time, 24/7 local police coverage since 2021.

Frackville is also contracted by Gilberton borough, who has paid $100 a day since 2017, or $36,500 a year, for 24/7 coverage in their borough, which disbanded its part-time department after ex-Chief Mark Kessler’s suspension in 2013.

Tuesday’s meeting at the American Legion was organized by a group of concerned residents and attended by about 20 people, not counting local press. No borough officials attended the meeting.

Heather Kankowski, ex-patrolman Anthony Kankowski’s wife, described the police force as “shattered” at Tuesday’s meeting.

“[The mayor] did tell everyone, ‘I need somebody here that’s going to put the hammer down,'” Heather Kankowski said. “Well, she did, and, congratulations to the mayor, because, unfortunately, you don’t put a hammer down on a glass sidewalk. It shattered.”

Heather Kankowski said, along with full-timers, the department officially lost a part-timer and has multiple part-timers who will not work in the department.

She spoke of safety concerns in the borough.

“You have women and men that have PFAs or domestic issues, you have an elderly neighbor, you have children that, now that the weather is getting nice, are playing in the streets or at the parks,” Heather Kankowski said. “You have a mother, a father, a child, a sister or a brother, or just a friend. These are the people that Frackville is supposed to protect and serve.”

“In an emergency, you’re going to have State Police,” she added. “State Police is now covering almost half of Schuylkill County.”

According to the State Police Community Access to Information Dashboard, only Mahanoy City maintains full-time local police coverage in northern Schuylkill County, while every municipality in the Sentinel‘s coverage area has a part-time force or a contract with a neighboring department.

The Frackville State Police barracks covers a cross-section of Schuylkill County, split from the northwest to the southeast, from Butler Township to New Castle Township, to Blythe Township, to the Lehigh County line at the Blue Mountain in West Penn, and all points northeast.

Heather Kankowski said, in the event of a medical emergency, a local police officer will likely be the first to arrive and can begin life-saving measures while an ambulance responds, potentially from Shenandoah or Pottsville or points farther.

“They can be here quicker than State Police, that might be on another call 20, 30 miles away,” she said. “The response time is everything in a life-and-death situation.”

New Ringgold, for example, is in the Frackville barracks primary coverage area is about a 40 minute drive from Frackville.

“When you’re down-and-out or you’re having a heart attack and you think your police are coming, they’re not, because you have none,” Heather Kankowski added.

She said the borough needs “drastic change.”

Heather Kankowski read a letter from her husband, who said he wanted to retire from Frackville, but issues in the department “fell on deaf ears.”

“The decision [to leave] came easier to me due to the poor and horrible management from within,” Heather Kankowski said, reading Tony’s letter.

Some attendees spoke about their own experiences, either with State Police or with the department.

One attendee said his door was kicked in and he was held at gunpoint. State Police took 27 minutes to respond, he said, but Tony Kankowski followed up with him, to make sure all was well.

Others questioned why ads have not been placed in local publications seeking police officers.

Heather Kankowski also questioned Olson’s qualifications. Olson was a senior patrolman with the Pottsville City Bureau of Police when he was hired at Frackville. He makes $78,000 a year, Heather said.

Citing another officer’s resignation letter, Heather Kankowski said Olson verbally abused officers and complaints were brought to council and ignored.

“We’ve lost a lot of good cops, and it’s because of one problem,” Brian Russell said at the meeting.

Dellock spoke at the meeting as well about her experience, and said her shift Tuesday would be her last at Frackville after she’d received a memo directing her to run traffic enforcement in Gilberton during the exact timeframe of Tuesday’s town hall, and an abrupt scheduling change for her final two weeks.

“He doesn’t care,” Dellock said, noting he’d made sexist remarks when she was on desk duty. “He has no care in the world.”

She said the toll of his leadership and an apparent barrage of memos to patrol officers had created a hazard for officers in the field.

“Our minds were no longer with the job,” Dellock said. “I’ve had to have other officers speak up for me at a call because I wasn’t there. Mentally, I was not there, at all, which could’ve gotten me seriously hurt or killed.”

Dellock said she feared for the borough’s safety as a resident.

“I’ve got to worry about my own kids in a town that I work in,” Dellock said. “What does that tell you when I’m a cop and I’m scared?”

State Police, she said, has one car on the night shift covering from West Penn to North Union.

Heather Kankowski asked Dellock if Olson had a directive that Frackville officers could not back up a neighboring department unless they were specifically requested, to which she said yes.

Frackville has frequently assisted Shenandoah Borough Police and West Mahanoy Township Police on calls over the years.

“They have to specifically request us,” Dellock said. “If County goes over the radio and says ‘Unit 71, respond,’ that’s the only time we can [respond.]”

“His policies are not only affecting the residents of this borough, it’s all of our surrounding communities,” Brian Russell said.

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