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Lowellville police chief emphasizes continued training for officers
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From the time he assumed the top post at the Lowellville Police Department, Chief Ryan Bonacci has emphasized the importance of officer training. Since he took over in September his officers have attended 26 training sessions on topics such as reporting missing children and taking down an active shooter.
By EMMALEE C. TORISK
LOWELLVILLE
Chief Ryan Bonacci likes to think of himself as an optimist, but only outside of the Lowellville Police Department.
When he’s there, pessimism rules.
“We have very few problems in Lowellville,” Bonacci said. “But when it comes to police work, you have to be ready.”
And with an additional $6,000 allocated this year solely for officer training, Bonacci is working to ensure that his department of 21 — it was just 10 when he assumed the post in September — can take on anything and everything.
In the past seven months, members of the police department have attended 26 training sessions on topics ranging from reporting missing children to identifying and finding street drugs to taking down an active shooter. Another dozen sessions, such as those on scrap-metal thefts and the statewide heroin epidemic, are scheduled for the rest of the year with more likely to come.
Sgt. Don Coppola, the department’s field-training officer, said attending training sessions helps officers learn to more effectively serve the community. He acknowledged, too, that the odds of their having to address some of those issues in Lowellville might be unlikely — but that it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“We’re prepared to deal with just about anything,” Coppola said.
Updating the department’s training program has long been high on Bonacci’s list of priorities.
In past years, an officer’s attending a training session was typically something he did on his own time and at his own expense. Now, though, the majority of the department’s officers have attended at least one session, many of them free, and those who haven’t — the new hires — will do so very soon.
There’s no such thing as too much training, especially in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world of police work, said Capt. Stacy Karis, who also is the district’s school-resource officer. Plus, even in a small village such as Lowellville, anything can happen. Becoming complacent in this line of work isn’t an option.
“We go on a barking-dog call sometimes, but it can be as sad as an overdose or a possible suicide,” Karis said. “We have to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.”
This renewed emphasis on training also has attracted recent police academy graduates, Bonacci said, as they see a department that’s trying to change and keep up with what’s going on in the field — and want to be part of that.
The department itself also is quite young, Bonacci added, with 13 out of its 21 members younger than 35. Among its four full-time officers, including the 33-year-old Bonacci and the 34-year-old Coppola, no one is older than 35.
For this reason, and because the village is so small, Bonacci knows his police department of today likely won’t be the same at this time next year.
Even so, he’s hopeful that if and when his officers leave for other opportunities, they’ll be ready to tackle whatever comes their way, thanks to training they received while at the Lowellville Police Department.
“It makes you better,” he said. “And when you’re better at your job, the community’s a little bit safer.”