3 Beaver County boroughs merge police forces to form regional department

BEAVER COUNTY, Pa. — Freedom, Conway and Baden boroughs all just approved to merge police forces, forming the first regional police department in the area.

Baden Borough councilmember Michael Stuban said the new department could take effect as early as April, and by June at the latest.

He said families in the three towns won’t see much of a difference.

“The main station will be in Conway. The substation will be in Baden. Baden will see the patrols, so will Freedom and Conway. None of that will change,” said Stuban.

Stuban said people may see a new officer around with a different patch and car design with the new name: Beaver Valley Regional police department.

There will be 11 full-time officers, which includes current officers. The bigger department will give officers more training time.

“You will have the time to send the officer to go to training. They could specialize on becoming a community relation officer or K9 trainer, maybe a detective so they can be trained better,” said Stuban.

On Wednesday night, all three towns are voting to create police committee with members from each borough.

Then, that committee will eventually appoint a new police chief.

Leaders said the consolidation will save them money in the long run and it won’t impact police response time since the towns are minutes apart.

“Then I think we need to look at fire departments consolidations. It doesn’t make sense for fire departments that are one a mile away here and a mile away there and they all have the same type of equipment,” said Stuban.

Once they get the police department up and running, they are going to check with other communities to see if they are also interested in joining.

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