Chief Ryan Maher (right) is sworn in. (Diocese of Greensburg)
A Pennsylvania diocese has created its own private police department to assist in schools.
Lt. Ryan Maher, who served the Pennsylvania State Police for 25 years, now is the director of security for the Diocese of Greensburg, according to an article that the diocese published in January and that the diocese’s executive editor, Cliff Gorski, emailed to Catholic Vote on March 18. Superintendent of Catholic Schools Nancy Rottler and Bishop Larry Kulick wanted each of the diocese’s 12 schools to have a trained police officer.
The diocese force’s members make rounds every day at each school while building relationships with students and families, Maher said, according to a March 17 TribLive article.
“We’re very careful on who we put in these positions,” Maher said, the article reported. “Once they’re assigned to a building, they’re part of the community. You have the deterrent and the crime prevention, but the mentoring is just as big a part as anything.”
Parishes have successfully asked for the department to also provide security at Mass or events, too, TribLive reported. Officers assigned to specific schools help monitor students’ arrivals, departures and lunch periods, or work extra duty assignments. Each of the department’s 16 officers can make arrests. They must have retired from a state or municipal police force, after at least 20 years of service.
Rottler said nobody has complained to the diocese about the force’s presence, TribLive reported.
According to the diocese’s article, which Gorski wrote, Maher is examining best practices that police forces that other school districts across the country have formed.
“It’s sad that we live in the times that we do; however, we can’t put our heads in the sand and pretend that it’s not going on,” Mayer said, according to Gorski’s article. “Unfortunately, school shootings and school violence are going on everywhere, and the Catholic schools are not immune to that,” Maher said.
Gorski said in the email that officers do not need to be Catholic.