 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Roddey names county police superintendent
Thursday, May 11, 2000 By Jeffrey Cohan, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The Allegheny County Police have a new superintendent. Again.
Ken Fulton, a 26-year veteran of the department, was named superintendent yesterday by County Executive Jim Roddey. That makes Fulton the fifth man to hold the police force's top job in five years and the third in two months.
Fulton, 49, will take the reins from Acting Superintendent Paul Wolf, who succeeded Tom Sturgeon on March 10.
Sturgeon was demoted to assistant superintendent one day after the Post-Gazette revealed that county police Sgt. Lee Torbin had written a letter denouncing the coroner's office for recommending the filing of homicide charges against North Versailles Sgt. James Matrazzo, who shot and killed an unarmed man in the line of duty.
The letter had been written on official county police stationery bearing Sturgeon's name as superintendent.
Wolf will return to his former position of assistant superintendent, joining Sturgeon in the force's second level of leadership.
Roddey said he hopes Fulton will have a long tenure as superintendent.
"I'm determined that we're going to have stability and we're going to have continuity," the county executive said. "I think that's very important for the county police."
Roddey said Wolf and other candidates from inside and outside the county were interviewed before Fulton was selected.
County police provide investigative help and other services to the 115 police departments scattered across the county and patrol the county airports and parks. Fulton will oversee 206 sworn officers, 26 building guards and 20 civilian employees.
"I'd like to see a more disciplined department," Fulton said, but he declined to identify any changes he has in mind.
He said he expects to work well with the scores of police chiefs in the county, many of whom he already knows after more than two decades on the force.
Fulton, a Lawrenceville resident, has been working as an assistant superintendent since January. He spent 19 years as a detective.
He will receive a $78,000 salary as superintendent.
Other appointments announced yesterday were Thomas E. Youngs Jr., purchasing manager, and Jodie M. DeLia, safety officer.
Youngs, formerly a sourcing manager for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, will receive a $65,000 salary for administering the county's Purchasing Division, which buys more than $200 million in goods a year.
DeLia, formerly a safety consultant for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, will have a salary of $39,000 and will fill a new position. Her assignment is to reduce the number of accidents in county workplaces.
County General Services Director Norman Mekkelsen said he intends to cut the county's workers' compensation costs from their current annual level of $10 million to under $3 million within four years.
In the short term, Roddey said, he is expecting $7 million in state assistance to stabilize the county budget this year. He said he will detail the budget situation in a "State of the County" address to the County Council in late June or early July.
He also said he anticipates holding closed-door negotiations with County Council members this week to reconcile differences between his proposed administrative code and theirs.
|
||||||||||||
