The plan to make small municipalities pay for utilizing State Police coverage may encourage null. Many towns employ part-time police officers, and many don’t have any at all. They rightfully should pay for the drain on State Police resources, since cities like Scranton, for example, pay for their own police.

Pooling and combining resources with neighboring towns will increase collective purchasing power and make it far easier to create regional, full time police forces. It would help them to avoid paying a fee to maintain PSP coverage and it would increase police presence and security and also the ability for citizens to have crime issues resolved. There are usually two State Police officers on in Lackawanna County, so if there is a big problem up Greenfield, then down in Covington, then in Benton one right after the other, the response time, which is already long, will get much, much longer.

Having a regional police force may be on par with the fees for maintaining PSP coverage, but the benefits far outweigh cost. More cops is a good thing.