New Upper Gwynedd police officers Chase Koffel, James Coughlin and Raymond DelGiudice received their badges from family members after being sworn in on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (Credit: Upper Gwynedd Police Department)
Four new officers have been hired in the past year
Just months after Upper Gwynedd added three new officers to their ranks, two more could be on the way.
Township officials voted unanimously on Monday night to make offers of employment to two candidates, the latest round in what’s become a near-constant discussion.
“We interviewed 23 applicants, then of those 23 applicants we passed four, and then two of those withdrew within less than a week. Hiring officers has become very competitive,” said commissioner Denise Hull.
In late 2022 Upper Gwynedd heard the results of an outside study examining the department’s staffing levels, and recommending new hires begin as soon as 2024 to replace officers slated to retire in the near future and meet staffing levels based on the township’s population.
One new hire joined the department in July 2024, followed by three more in January 2025, which police said brought the force up to 23 total officers, two below their authorized strength of 25. Since then, Hull told her fellow commissioners on Monday night, a new round of candidates has been vetted via written and physical testing by a regional consortium, with the township identifying a pair at the top of their list.
“To ensure that we would not lose the remaining two candidates to other police departments — they were high on other lists — conditional offers were made to one candidate on March 20th and the other candidate on March 25th,” she said, before adding that specifics on the two candidates would remain confidential for now.
Resident Linda Smith asked for the reason for the hires, whether they were due to an increase in crime or retirements of older officers, and commissioners president Katherine Carter answered that the reason was “a little bit of both.”
In addition to the offers of employment, the commissioners also unanimously approved two other police-related items, one “memorandum of understanding” with an employee identified only as “Officer 25,” and a request for proposals seeking a new firm to oversee the township’s police pension plan, which Hull said is meant “to ensure that the township receives a competitive rate, and the best possible services for these plans.”
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