New security director’s mission: Keep schools safe

By Cliff Gorski
Editor

GREENSBURG — When he retired in July after 25 years with the Pennsylvania State Police, Lt. Ryan Maher didn’t have much downtime. A few days later, he began his new job as Director of Security for the Diocese of Greensburg with the mission of ensuring that its 12 Catholic schools are safe environments for students, faculty and staff.

Hired to carry out the vision of Dr. Nancy Rottler, Superintendent of Catholic Schools, and Bishop Larry Kulick of having a trained police officer in every school, Maher spent the summer assembling a police department. One of his first orders of business was to classify the new Diocesan department under Pennsylvania Title 22, which creates a private police department.

Officers now on the job in Diocesan Catholic Schools

The formation provides full police authority on Diocesan property, parishes and Catholic schools. The application process is underway to obtain an originating agency identifier (ORI) from the state police, which is required of all police departments, municipal and private, in order to file charges through Pennsylvania courts.

“Basically, we are a protection force,” Maher said. “We are there to protect the kids and parishioners. We are not actively looking to conduct investigations, but we need the ability to follow through with that if the need arises. If something happens, we need to be able to go hands on and do what we need to do.”

Maher is continuing to staff schools with police officers in school buildings and at sporting events. All officers currently serving the Diocese are retired from the Pennsylvania State Police or a municipal police force and graduated from an Act 120 police academy.

Maher said his requirement is that a candidate have a minimum of 10 years of law enforcement experience. Those already hired all have 20 or more years of experience. Candidates must undergo a rigorous screening process and be a good fit for the school and parish environment.

“We are looking for officers who want to become members of that school community. They want to build relationships not only with the students, but with the families,” he said. “It is those relationships that create the conduit of information back to us that is going to help to prevent the issues that we are looking to prevent. We want to be viewed as a trusted adult that a child can bring information to so that we can conduct an investigation, and whatever the case may be, we want to be able to take action and stop a situation from happening.”

While the Diocese of Greensburg is the first Catholic Diocese in Pennsylvania to form a police force, other school districts across the commonwealth and the nation have already taken the step. Maher said he is looking to the best practices from those departments and adding what is needed to make them more robust for the Catholic school environment.
The role of the officer in Catholic schools and at parishes and Diocesan events is to provide safety, protection and preparation.

“It’s sad that we live in the times that we do; however, we can’t put our heads in the sand and pretend that it’s not going on. Unfortunately, school shootings and school violence are going on everywhere, and the Catholic schools are not immune to that,” Maher said. “Bishop Kulick is very proactive in that. “Parents wanted this in place yesterday,” he said. “Now that we have the officers in the schools and folks are starting to … see the way we are doing business and see the relationships that we are building in the schools, they’re even more excited about it.”