Supervisors in Cass Township made a first hire in their newly-resurrected police department.
On Thursday, they voted 2-0 to hire Scott Brennan to complete administrative duties to help get the police department officially restarted.
Brennan is a retired State Police Trooper, according to Solicitor Mark Semanchik, who made the recommendation to hire him. After the Supervisors regular meeting on Thursday, Semanchik told The Canary that he believes Brennan will work for nothing.
Supervisors did not vote on any payment for Brennan.
Semanchik said that Brennan will not don a uniform or go out on calls while he’s working for Cass Township. Instead, he’ll be completing paperwork that stymied Semanchik in the last month as he worked to get the Cass Township Police Dept. up and running again.
“There was a hurdle or two,” Semanchik said in describing the process he encountered in reversing last year’s actions.
Essentially, he’ll have to reverse what was done in 2024 when supervisors acted to suspend and then disband its police department.
He said Brennan would essentially be signing documents to get Cass Township an Originating Agency Identifier (ORI) number so the department can be officially reinstated. These are documents that Semanchik said he nor supervisors could sign.
Once that’s done, supervisors can begin hiring officers to add to an active roster in a reinstated police department.
In March, Cass supervisors voted to reinstate its police department after it was disbanded in 2024.
Early last year, the entire police department operations were suspended when Semanchik informed residents that a form had been submitted to a state agency by a Cass police officer he and the township believed wasn’t on the job there anymore.
That was followed by allegations of $575 in cash missing from the Cass Township evidence room. That money was found inside the evidence room by a detective from the Schuylkill County District Attorney’s Office the day after the police department was officially disbanded.
After the department was disbanded, supervisors then blamed mismanagement as the reason for ditching its own police department.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
- Cass Supervisors Bad-mouth Police Dept. They Disbanded in May
- DA: $575 from Cass Township Police Evidence Room Found on Tuesday
- Cass Township Police Disbandment Leads to Evidence Room Dispute
- Cass Township Has Twice Ignored Free Help in Providing Better Police Coverage
- Cass Township Solicitor Refuses to Answer Questions on Where Missing Money in Evidence Room was Found
- Cass Township Disbands Its Police Force
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