Eldred Township's Constable Richard Salter III recently asked township supervisors to request that the Monroe County Control Center include the constables in dispatching.

"We face an issue that puts us in a safety risk. When we knock on doors in remote areas to issue warrants, we often do not have cellphone service, no way to be in contact with anyone. We're asking all the townships to help us get that protection from the control center," Salter said.Salter's office has been issued 944 warrants so far in 2014, 551 now closed, with 23 arrests made. His office is pursuing 393 warrants. His office has been assigned 179 civil cases.Constable Roger Metzgar, president of the Monroe County Constables' Associaton, said they have talked to Gary Hoffman, director of communications of the Monroe County Control Center.Constables would like to be able to call in to the control center to let them know of their location in the event the constable meets with resistance from the person they are serving.He says Hoffman told him they couldn't because of money, but the Monroe County Commissioners said they would foot the bill.Metzgar said Hoffman told him it was manpower issue."We're asking Eldred to ask Hoffman why he won't allow it," Metzgar said.Eldred Township solicitor Michael Kaspszyk suggested the constables' solicitor draw up a resolution to present to all the township supervisors asking for their support, and if passed, to then present it to Hoffman.Hoffman says that he met with three constables who were representing the Monroe County Constables Association."I was under the impression that they were representing all Monroe County Constables to discuss 'safety checks.' The definition being when and if a constable would attempt to execute/serve a 'high risk warrant' we'd check on them after a set amount of time (10 minutes as an example). If we did not hear from them after that time we would then dispatch the local and/or state police to respond," Hoffman said.Hoffman said he asked for advance notice when constables were going into a high-risk situation so the center could be prepared."In addition they should always notify the local law enforcement agency where they're attempting to serve the warrant well in advance of them actually executing any high-risk search warrant.Advance notice would allow police to advise the constables to wait to execute the warrant if help is not available at that given moment, he said.To accommodate this request the constables would be required to modify their actual radio unit numbers so that if the control center move forward with this they have to adapt to its Computer Aided Dispatch protocols."I'm still waiting to hear back from them on this matter," Hoffman said. "The last I heard there are apparent issues with unit numbers between constables and deputy constables. There would be no charge for this 'safety check,' however that would be the extent of our involvement and interaction with them from our perspective."Hoffman said cost would be an issue if there was an expectation that the agency would agree to monitor and track the constables' daily "status.""Meaning that each and every time they get in and out of their vehicles we'd keep track of that and manage that radio traffic. There is no way possible that we could manage that task without adding additional dispatching staff and/or radio infrastructure and that would cost money," Hoffman said.He added that the issue was addressed years ago."At the time there was no municipality that was willing to pick up the cost for us to provide that service.""Unfortunately the constables are not recognized as 'local municipal police' and their duties are significantly different from that of a municipal police department. Under that circumstance any dispatching fees would have had to been paid for by the constables personally. They were not willing at the time to fund that concept."Municipalities with their own local police department pay for dispatching, which includes keeping status, Hoffman said."Those that don't have their own local police pay significantly less for us to dispatch the state police. We do not have the authority to send constables on any type of law enforcement incidents. Any request for police response are directly dispatched either to the local municipal police department or the Pennsylvania State Police," Hoffman said.Hoffman said he plans to set a meeting date after the new year with constables and deputies.