Some confusion was put to bed during the Conneaut Lake Regional Police Commission meeting on August 18, about a conversation that took place with representatives from Linesville Borough Council and some members of the Police Commission.

The reason for the small gathering was to discuss possible police coverage in Linesville.

There was indeed some banter between two Linesville Borough Council members, Pete Fizer and Sharon Kobel, and four people representing the Regional Police Commission including Secretary Rose Mumau, Supervisor Roy Whaley, Mayor Tim Kaider and Police Chief Todd Pfeifer.

This took place on the Friday before the last Linesville Borough Council meeting.

During the August 18, meeting of the Commission, Chief Pfeifer said that he had received a call the morning before from a member of Linesville Council. She wanted to know if they had any dates available for a meeting.

“I was under the assumption that we were awaiting dates from them and that's what I explained to her. So, basically, she asked if we could provide available dates to her and she would then approach the rest of council to see what would be suitable for the request that the Commission appear for this public hearing,” he imparted.

(The chief said the word hearing, but it was used interchangeably with the word meeting later on.)

Whaley said he wanted to clarify the situation and began by stating that Linesville Council had instructed President Pete Fizer to contact Conneaut Lake's department to request information.

After ascertaining a general idea of what said information might be, “Mr. Fizer and Sharon Kobel showed up and we had a little discussion as to what their expectations were. They gave us a list of things and we asked them for more information, which they had to go back and find...”

He went on by saying that they asked that Linesville Borough Council agree on the list for the the Commission's consideration.

According to Whaley, they had been waiting for a Linesville representative to contact them. He then asked the chief if, according to the call the day before, they wanted the whole board to attend a meeting, or just a few for a work session.

The chief answered that he was just asked about a date or dates for a meeting, as he had said earlier.

Whaley then listed the procedure for any municipality that might request police coverage.

1. Find out expectations.
2. The board would designate a working team to go over scenarios with the chief.
3. The team would then go back to the Police Commission Board and review said scenarios.
4. Have a discussion with the party who is requesting contracted services.

He said that until they have a list of expectations, they cannot move forward with any of the above.

“If in fact they want us to attend a meeting in their municipality, it would be impossible for us to, 1, make any decisions, unless we have a full advertised board at that meeting and 2, we wouldn't be able to really answer any questions until we had a list of what they wanted, as far as expectations...,” Whaley stated.

He ended that by adding that the chief and work team would have to come back to the board as well, and they would need time to figure out what they could handle in terms of options.

Pfeifer said that this had been the first time he had heard from anyone since that initial meeting. He said that the call had been from Mrs. Lewandowski and he assumed they were looking for a gathering at which questions from the public could be addressed.

There was some banter about whether or not attending a public meeting for a fact finding scenario would be the best route. A work session was more agreeable because they would be able to figure out what kinds of answers to give at a public meeting, once they found out exactly what Linesville wanted.

The bottom line, after much discussion, was this. Whaley is going to contact Lewandowski to ascertain exactly what Linesville Borough Council wants, etc. Mayor Kaider and Whaley will represent the Police Commission as a work team.

Currently, the board is not certain exactly what Linesville might want and the plan is to find out and go from there.

Moving on to a more mundane issue, a brief discussion took place about going back to gray uniform pants, rather than the current black.

Pfeifer pointed out that due to the dark color, the clothing picks up everything and looks dirty more quickly than gray pants would.

Because all officers have enough money in the uniform allowances, a motion was made, seconded and carried to allow the change to go forward.

Also, the infamous police dog might soon be cross trained so that he will become a drug sniffing hound.

He is an explosive detecting animal but, according to Pfeifer, has pretty much been on vacation since March of ‘09. Pfeifer said that there had been no need for his skills because they hadn't had any explosive sensing missions as of late. He described his current job as, “sleeping in the office and eating my lunch.”

There were some questions from Whaley, Mayor Kaider and Supervisor VanHonk about cost, etc., and, according to Pfeifer, there would not be any additional cost for the training at all. He also said that there would not be a need for Sgt. Nichols to travel out of state either and that he didn't foresee any extra costs in the future.

When the mayor asked exactly what the dog would be doing if he received the training, Pfeifer gave a few examples including drug raids, traffic stops with probable cause and other scenarios.

There was no action taken at the meeting concerning the cross training.

The chief presented the activity report for July and it was as follows: There were 6 traffic citations issued in the township and 4 in the borough; 6 non-traffic citations in the township and 1 in the borough; 2 felony arrests in the township; 5 misdemeanor arrests in the township and 2 in the borough;

27 incident reports in the township and 5 in the borough; 13 incidents cleared in the township and 4 in the borough; 11 accident reports in the township with 3 injuries and 2 accident reports in the borough with no injuries;

6 follow up reports in the township and 1 in the borough; 106 calls in the township and 29 in the borough and 2 outside the area; 38 verbal/written warnings in the township and 35 in the borough; 43 traffic stops in the township and 39 in the borough and 4 motorist assists in the township and 1 in the borough.

K9 activities were: 9.5 hours of training.

Property value lost/stolen was $250,139 in the township and $554 in the borough with $6,863 property value recovered in the township.

Total calls were 275 in July.

The next meeting of the Conneaut Lake Regional Police Commission will take place on September 15 at 6:30. The meetings are held at the Sadsbury Township building and begin at 6:30.