Laurel: To a good trend. Scott Township is expanding its police department with a new hire. This one will not be a police officer. It will be a social worker.
The department looks to add the employee by summer. The goal is a full-time position to augment response to cases involving mental health, addiction, homelessness and other instances less about crime or safety than social need.
“The social worker will function as a co-responder, not in place of a police response. This addition strengthens our overall response model, supports our officers and reflects the township’s commitment to proactive, community-focused public safety,” Chief Matthew Podsiadly said.
This is the kind of response needed when an incident may overlap complicated areas. It is not a disregard for what police bring to the table but rather an acknowledgment that different tools are helpful for different challenges.
Kudos to Scott Township for not only recognizing that reality but also embracing it.
Lance: People fail to appear for court every day. They skip hearings. They miss pretrial conferences.
Not showing up for your actual trial is rarer. It is especially remarkable when you are already in custody.
It took a Westmoreland County jury nine minutes to convict Rysheid Malik Baldwin, 44, of Philadelphia of three drug offenses — two of them felonies. The charges stemmed from 115 stamp bags of heroin found in his vehicle after he offered to sell drugs to an undercover officer in Hempfield in 2021.
The verdict came quickly because Baldwin, who was representing himself, refused to leave his holding cell at the courthouse to attend the trial. Meagan Bilik-DeFazio tried him in absentia.
The court did the right thing. The law allowed the trial to proceed. Had Baldwin been represented by counsel rather than acting as his own attorney, that lawyer could have questioned witnesses and presented a defense.
The justice system cannot be held hostage by a defendant who refuses to participate — even when that refusal works to his own detriment.