43
Lowellville Police Department carries on in the wake of staff shake-up
By SARAH LEHR
LOWELLVILLE
These days Lowellville’s men and women in blue are fewer in number.
The Lowellville police department currently employs 10 part-time and two full-time officers, Capt. Donald Coppola said. In the past, the department has employed 15 to 20 officers, according to Coppola. The department also lacks a police chief in the wake of former Chief Ryan Bonacci’s resignation, which he announced in June. Bonacci cited the outcome of an internal investigation into the conduct of Police Capt.Stacy Karis, who is in a relationship with Mayor James Iudiciani, as the reason for his resignation. After the investigation, which Coppola conducted in May, Bonacci recommended firing Karis. She remains employed.
Karis had served as the school resource officer for Lowellville Local Schools until the school board asked for a replacement. In March 2015, Karis sent a school safety plan to Village Council members, which made the plan public information although state law stipulates that such a plan must be confidential for safety reasons, according to documents obtained by The Vindicator.
Bonacci also alleged, in documents obtained by The Vindicator, that Iudiciani intimidated him, threatened to fire him for insubordination and interfered with Bonacci’s management of the department.
Iudiciani did not grant requests to speak in-person with The Vindicator, but denied intimidating Bonacci in a written statement. “His allegations are the farthest thing from the truth,” Iudiciani wrote.
Iudiciani said the village is interviewing candidates for an interim police chief and that he hopes that Council will approve an appointment at its regular September meeting. The starting base salary for Lowellville’s police chief is $42,500. Copolla and part-time patrolmen JR Blakeman and Dan Lamping have expressed interest in the position, Iudiciani said.
Capts. Coppola and Karis are heading the department. They are the department’s only full-time officers.
Iudiciani stated that the police department has not been negatively affected by the lack of a chief or by the reduced number of officers.
“The captains have taken the responsibility to organize the department and are doing a great job,” he said in a written statement. “It is running smoothly with only better things to come in the future.”
The village is looking into hiring more part-time officers, according to Iudiciani.
“We will consider new rookie officers, and even retired officers that may want to become part of the police force to mentor some of our younger officers,” he wrote. “We have always been a training ground for young officers for other departments. We understand that, and we are fine with this philosophy.”
Coppola and Karis said the department is staying afloat, despite being shorter staffed.
“We’re stretched thin sometimes, but it hasn’t affected our ability to police,” Coppola said.
“We make do,” Karis said.
EQUIPMENT RETURNED
Recently, the police department had to return $7,573 worth of ballistic shields and Samsung Galaxy tablets due the department’s mishandling of a grant.
The Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services provided the grant, which police applied for in September 2014, Coppola said. The state discovered that the police department purchased some of the items outside of the time frame designated by the grant, which resulted in the department returning the shields and tablets July 22, Coppola said. The OCJS did not charge the police department for the returned items. As of press time, officials from the OCJS did not respond to requests for comment.
“It was a misunderstanding and a miscommunication on the dates and it was upsetting that we lost the equipment,” Coppola said. “But, [the equipment] is not something that we use every day which made it a little easier to swallow.”