{"id":8173,"date":"2015-09-01T19:16:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T23:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=8173"},"modified":"2015-09-01T19:17:26","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T23:17:26","slug":"httpwww-thevalleyledger-comp1904-39","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=8173","title":{"rendered":"CEREMONY HELD FOR NEW POLICE OFFICERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Six new Allentown police officers were sworn-in this afternoon and received their department badges during a ceremony in City Council chambers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Mayor Ed Pawlowski presided as officers Harold D. Bonser II, Jason Kesack, Alexander Komatick, Joseph Krebs, Ryan Lischke and Adam Sinton took the oath of office and received their department badges.\u00a0 The department now consists of 208 sworn officers.<\/p>\n

Pawlowski said, \u201cIn my nearly 10 full years as mayor, I have always been impressed by the dedication the men and women of the Allentown police department bring to the job every single day.\u00a0 They perform their jobs under difficult and stressful circumstances under wide scrutiny.\u00a0 It is important to me and I believe to the members of the department that we acknowledge their performance during opportunities like these.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an exciting time for the new officers to join our ranks,\u201d said Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald. \u201cWe (APD) have worked very hard over the last 20 months to increase our ranks. We have used an “all hands on deck” approach to conduct extensive background investigations, because we understand the importance of getting it right. The hiring pace has been appropriate, and is too important to our success as a department to allow any aspects of hiring to surpass our ability to shape good public servants for the city.\u201d<\/p>\n