{"id":255129,"date":"2026-07-30T01:49:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T01:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/255129\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T01:49:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T01:49:24","slug":"bethlehem-town-police-chief-to-run-for-albany-county-sheriff-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/255129\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethlehem Town police chief to run for Albany County sheriff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bethlehem Town Police Chief Gina Cocchiara is running for Albany County sheriff, saying Tuesday that she has filed with the Board of Elections.<\/p>\n

It comes less than a week after Sheriff Craig Apple said he would not be seeking reelection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like Apple, Cocchiara is a Democrat, and is one of the first candidates to announce a bid for the seat.<\/p>\n

The election itself isn\u2019t until next year, though Cocchiara says she is planning events as soon as this fall.<\/p>\n

Cocchiara became a Bethlehem Police Department police officer in 1998 from the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office.<\/p>\n

“This has been a calling since I was a little girl. This is the only job I ever wanted to do since I was probably 8, 9 years old, and just stuck with it,” she said Wednesday in an interview with Spectrum News 1. Cocchiara was appointed chief<\/a> in 2020 after Chief Louis Corsi retired.<\/p>\n

She said she has deep respect for Apple, who started in the sheriff\u2019s office in 1987 and has served as county’s top cop since 2011. Cocchiara said he encouraged her to run for sheriff.<\/p>\n

“He does support me, again, just from the years of working side by side in law enforcement. And we have a lot of similarities just in how we treat our people, how we are accessible to our community and how much we love the job,” Cocchiara said.<\/p>\n

She said it’s still early in the campaign and right now, she is focusing on introducing herself to Albany County residents outside of Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

Cocchiara grew up in Suffern, Rockland County.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bethlehem Town Police Chief Gina Cocchiara is running for Albany County sheriff, saying Tuesday that she has filed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1593,153,155,154,139,294,1592],"class_list":["post-255129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-spectrum-news-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}