Psst. Who\u2019s that guy standing over there on the corner?
\nIs he a banker? A highway foreman? A fast food worker? A drug dealer?
\nSure, he could be any one of these. But did you ever think it might be a police officer?
\nThat\u2019s the idea behind the Tyrone Borough Police Department\u2019s newest program aimed at alleviating crimes associated with the use of illegal substances.
\nNARC, or Narcotics and Residual Crime, is a program that places plain-clothed Tyrone Borough Police officers in the streets of the community to protect residents against the burglaries, thefts and car break-ins associated with the drug trade.
\n\u201cThis team has been put together to focus more on the addicts that the dealers,\u201d said Tyrone Borough Police Chief Joe Beachem. \u201cAbout 80 to 85 percent of the crimes in Tyrone can be attributed to being associated with drug use. This program is not a catch-all, but it\u2019s definitely a nice tool that allows us to prevent some of these crimes.\u201d
\nAccording to Beachem, the NARC team consists of five officers with narcotics training. These officers are sent into the community in their jeans and sweatshirts when police believe the need arises. Beachem said continuing trends of car break-ins and home burglaries give the department reason to send the officers onto the streets.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s no set scheduled for these guys,\u201d said Beachem. \u201cWe\u2019ll send officers out on an as-needed basis.\u201d
\nAccording to Beachum, the program has thus far been successful.
\n\u201cThis is something we\u2019re all really proud of,\u201d said Beachem. \u201cWe\u2019ve been on the streets for six months now with this program and it\u2019s already producing results. It\u2019s working better than I thought it would.\u201d
\nAccording to Beachem, officers have already made two arrests on drug dealers who attempted to sell them marijuana. The force has also solved five vehicle break-ins and a home burglary.
\n\u201cThe arrests are important, but there are other advantages to this program,\u201d said Beachum. \u201cOur guys on the streets do a lot of intelligence gathering and receive a lot of good information that we can use in later police activities.\u201d
\nDespite the early success of the program, Beachem continues to look to the community as another tool that helps his department protect the residents. He said residents that observe any suspicious activity need to contact police.
\n\u201cWe believe that we\u2019re addressing the issue of dealers here in Tyrone pretty well,\u201d said Beachem, noting the intense involvement with the Tyrone Police Department and Blair County Drug Task Force. \u201cBut if we only target those dealers, the addicts are still out there committing the crimes that help them get the drugs. We need to curtail this type of activity and believe the community is a great source of eyes and ears that can provide us with that important information.
\n\u201cThere are no stupid calls,\u201d he continued. \u201cSure, we\u2019re always pretty busy here, but we need the community\u2019s help. If anyone sees anything they believe is suspicious, they need to contact us. If it turns out to be something then that\u2019s good and we perhaps prevented another crime from happening.
\n\u201cIf it turns out to be nothing, then there\u2019s no harm done.\u201d
\nBeachum said the community\u2019s help has really assisted officers with investigations over the past year. He said since Yanick was arrested on 13th Street last November, the number of calls from residents concerning illegal activity has increased 100 percent.
\n\u201cWe have a good and clean community that really respects itself and is willing to step up and help male this community the safest and crime-free town it possibly can be,\u201d said Beachem. \u201cWe need to keep that up.\u201d
\nThe phone number for the Tyrone Borough Police Department is 684-1364.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Psst. Who\u2019s that guy standing over there on the corner? Is he a banker? A highway foreman? A fast food worker? A drug dealer? Sure, he could be any one of these. But did you ever think it might be a police officer? That\u2019s the idea behind the Tyrone Borough Police Department\u2019s newest program aimed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}