Monroeville added three new officers to its police force this month, including its first officer fluent in Spanish, bringing the department to 49 officers.
Grady Fagan, Michael Ragan and Miguel Armijo were sworn in at council’s March 11 meeting.
For the past few decades, all of the officers that have joined Monroeville’s force have come from elsewhere.
“Grady and Michael are the first two officers we’ve sent through the police academy as cadets since the early 1990s,” Chief Doug Cole said. “They both graduated from the Allegheny County Police Academy, and that’s the first time we’ve sent cadets to that academy. Last time we did it, they went to the Pennsylvania State Police Academy, years ago.”
Fagan is a 2019 graduate of Saltsburg High School. Ragan is a Pittsburgh Central Catholic graduate who earned a bachelor’s degree in science in 2022 from Penn State University. Armijo graduated from high school in Chile before coming to the United States, where he attended the City of Pittsburgh’s police academy and worked briefly for the city before coming to Monroeville.
Armijo is the department’s first fluent Spanish speaker, which Cole said will be an asset.
Training for Monroeville police officers includes more than 900 hours of education.
Secret Service award
The department also was presented with an award of recognition from the U.S. Secret Service, after Cole aided in arranging security for Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit to Monroeville last fall, when he was campaigning during the 2024 election.
Hundreds of rally goers, some clad in gear with variations of the MAGA slogan, came to the Monroeville Convention Center in late September 2024 for Lance Wallnau’s Courage Tour, a ticketed, all-day revival where Vance was a special guest.
“This was just a few months after the Butler assassination attempt, so obviously the Secret Service was a little bit on their heels and they wanted resources from other agencies,” Cole said. “In addition to Monroeville, we had Plum and Penn Hills police helping us. The municipality provided some large vehicles to make things a little more secure for a vice presidential candidate.”
The plaque acknowledges Cole and the department “for outstanding assistance and support on behalf of the investigating and protective responsibilities of the United States Secret Service.”
“Mark Kernan, the special agent in charge at the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh office, told us he’d never seen such cooperation from a smaller municipality outside a major city,” Cole said. “(Vance) was only in our town for maybe an hour and a- half. But we had to make sure things were secure.”
Cole said he was just doing his job.
“I think you’re probably being a little bit humble, chief,” said Monroeville Councilman Eric Poach. “Because they called you on a Thursday and you pulled this all together by Saturday, just a couple days later.”
“We’re lucky,” Cole said. “We’re blessed with resources that we’ve gotten through our elected officials and the citizens who support us.”