LOWER MERION—For the past several years, police departments across the country have had trouble finding new officers. Now, officials from Lower Merion say they could soon be back to their full authorized strength of 136 officers for the first time since 2020.
“We’re requesting six additional conditional offers of employment be issued to six of our candidates that are on the current police list that have successfully completed the rigorous background investigation,” Andy Block, superintendent of the Lower Merion Police Department, told the board of commissioners. “Of those six, five of those are male and one is female, and with this approval, if this is approved, it will take the police department back up to its authorized strength of 136 police officers.”
Four years ago, Lower Merion officials reported they were short 16 police officers or about 10 percent of the total force.
John Iushewitz, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 28, thanked the commissioners and others for getting the department’s strength back up to its full level.
“We just want to comment tonight on what a momentous occasion this is,” Iushewitz said. “Not since 2020 have we been at 136 officers. It goes to show you what happens when a union, police management, township management, and our elected officials work together in order to solve a problem. The problem of getting enough police officers we needed. So the FOP would like to thank everybody here tonight that actually made it happen.”
Commissioner Daniel Bernheim expressed his support for the offer of employment to six new officers.
“Indeed, this is a collective effort,” Bernheim said. “When we heard about this, I did ask the question, “When was the last time we were at 136 so it is nice to see that we are at that complement and everybody is literally on the same page, and I’ll do a ditto and thank you to all involved.”
Commissioner Jeremiah Woodring, vice president of the board of commissioners, talked about the importance of the department to the community.
“I just want to take a moment to stress how important the Lower Merion Police Department is to this township, echoing the same support for the work that you do. I think we see as commissioners that our biggest concerns are around policing, and those are always the concerns of our constituents as well. So I think, therefore, we need to staff the police officers and give them the resources they need for the things we receive concerns about – around burglary prevention, traffic safety, as well as community policing. So I don’t think we can be any more proud that we could be this aggressive with recruiting over the past year and a half, and we want to acknowledge the teamwork that it took to reach that goal.”
Commissioner Scott Zelov said between integrating the recent new hires and concerns over the effects on the township budget, he thinks the township shouldn’t rush to bring the department’s strength back up to the full 136 officers.
“I support the recent ramp back up to 130, which is where we are now,” Zelov said. “I’m somewhat skeptical of the need to go much beyond that level right now. Training and integrating new officers is costly; it’s a long process. It’s already underway for several recent new hires “