Lansdale police Chief Mike Trail speaks to borough council during his public safety committee report in the July 16, 2025 meeting. (Screenshot of meeting video)
Mike Trail, Lansdale's chief since 2017, addresses time in town
Lansdale’s police chief has a message for council and the public, as his name has appeared in a high-profile job hunt in Montgomery County.
Chief Mike Trail addressed that search during his public safety committee report to council on July 16.
“On a personal note, some of you may or may not know that I was one of the individuals that participated in the (search) for the chief of police for Norristown,” Trail said.
“I just encourage anybody, in your professional endeavors, always to keep looking for new opportunities to better yourself, and that’s why I participated in that process, and we’ll see what happens with that,” he said.
On July 10 Trail was one of three candidates who answered questions from Norristown’s residents as that borough seeks to fill their chief position, which has been vacant since December 2024.
In April 2018 Trail was named permanent chief of the department after the retirement of predecessor Robert McDyre, and had worked for roughly ten years as an officer elsewhere before arriving in Lansdale in 2002 and working his way up through the ranks, from patrolman, to detective, patrol supervisor, sergeant, then acting chief starting in 2017. On being named fulltime chief, Trail recalled growing up in Bucks County and how friendly talks with a Newtown Township officer led him to consider law enforcement as a career, working as a patrol officer in Baltimore before a brief stint working as a stockbroker in the private sector, then arriving in the borough.
During his update to council earlier this month, Trail gave brief updates on several ongoing topics, including police vehicle purchases, pending retirements and requested new hires of police, and ongoing talks about how to help those living in borough parks — before talking about his own future. The chief told the public that he did alert Lansdale’s mayor, manager, and council president ahead of that announcement in Norristown, before addressing other chatter.
“I do want to put the rumor that I am unhappy, perhaps, here to rest: I’m not. The community has been great to me. i’ve been here for almost 25 years, raised my family here,” he said.
“I was here at this podium almost eight years ago, and talked about developing a plan for community service, we talked about managing the chaos — I did not realize that would include a pandemic — and then we talked about working hard to serve the community. And I think the organization has done that,” Trail said.
Three candidates vying for the Norristown police chief position gather for a photo at a community meeting on July 10, 2025 at Municipal Hall in Norristown. Pictured, from left, is Lansdale Police Chief Mike Trail, Mark Benjamin, a retired captain with the Atlantic City Police Department and New Britain Township Police Chief Richard Clowser.Since his promotion to chief, Trail has led a revival of the town’s parking permit system in 2019, headed up the department’s response to the pandemic in 2020, then led interactions with protestors and advocacy groups that summer, asking council to approve changes to the town’s police hiring practices and the adoption of body-worn cameras by officers.
That pandemic response grew into the “North Penn HUB,” a regular meeting of regional police, nonprofits, and agencies working together to address issues caused or exacerbated by the emergency and its response, and in 2023 the department began a grant-funded program to hire a mental health coresponder who aids police on emergency calls. That coresponder has since given several reports on those interactions and their successes, while Trail led the department to secure state accreditation status in 2022, and he council have continued to discuss other longstanding issues like traffic, road and pedestrian safety, parking, and homelessness around the town.
“I’m looking for different opportunities in my future, perhaps. Not necessarily right now, but somewhere down the road,” he said.
After that report, council held a lengthy discussion about a request from the chief to activate the town’s civil service commission and generate a fresh list of candidates for new police hires, with at least one retirement expected in 2026 and two other officers able to retire with little notice, according to Trail. Councilwoman Carrie Oglesby asked that decision be tabled until later this year pending clarity on the future leadership of the department and the borough’s budget. Her motion to table that request failed, and council ultimately voted to approve the request to start the process of developing an updated candidate list.
Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 6 and the public safety committee meets at 6:30 p.m. that night, both at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.
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