By Bonnie L. Cook
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — When Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Bill Colarulo takes the reins of the Radnor Police Department next month, he may be in for a surprise.
That BlackBerry that now buzzes incessantly with the last city crime report - well, it will be a lot quieter.
So say other former Philadelphia commanders who have traded the city’s mean streets to run a suburban police department.
“It was a cultural shock,” says Jim Donnelly, inspector for the city’s turbulent East Division before becoming police chief in Doylestown Borough in 1995. “You went from every day a tragedy to every day was nice. It was a change.”
Colarulo, 52, who rose from patrol work in 1981, joins a mini-exodus of top brass leaving the rough-and-tumble of Philadelphia for the sleepy world of suburban command.
The trend isn’t new. In 1983 Mike Chitwood helped start the flow, leaving a 29-year career in Philadelphia to become chief in Middletown, Bucks County. He detoured to Portland, Maine, and has since returned to the region to lead Upper Darby’s department.
Now, there are former Philadelphia police officials serving as top commanders in municipalities from New Jersey to central Pennsylvania. When Colarulo makes the switch March 14, he will make it an even dozen.
The chiefs: John Theobald in East Coventry; Eugene Dooley in East Whiteland; Brian Craig in Swarthmore; Michael Sinclair in West Conshohocken; Thomas Nestel III in Upper Moreland; John Norris in Cheltenham; Keith Sadler in Lancaster City; Richard Wiley in Lower Swatara; Dominick Bellizzie in Solebury; Kenneth Coluzzi in Lower Makefield; and Benjamin Braxton in Willingboro.
The jobs are attractive to Philadelphia police who dream of becoming police commissioner but find that path blocked. Suburban departments offer them a substitute career move.
The money can be surprisingly good: Colarulo will earn $150,000 a year in Radnor, a bump from his $133,755 city salary. Others earn in the low six figures.
And the average Philadelphia commander leaves the city department with enough time in hand to draw a pension, making even a lesser-paying suburban post seem lucrative.
“The jobs are close to home, they pay well and have great benefits,” Chitwood says. “It gives you an opportunity to apply the experience and skills you have learned on the job.”
In 2007, Nestel had 22 years in, and had risen to staff inspector, when he saw an ad for a police chief job in Upper Moreland.
A fourth-generation officer, he jumped at the chance to have a more grassroots work life.
“I loved being a district captain. You have contact with officers and the people that live in the district,” he says.
But the higher he rose in the Philly ranks, the more his attention was claimed by budgets and politics; the move to the suburbs offered him “the best of both worlds.”
“You can be a CEO, and still have contact with the troops and the citizens,” Nestel says.
Suburban work, though, has its pitfalls. Frustrated by the growth of thefts from vehicles last October, Nestel recommended a $25 fine for residents who left their cars unlocked on township roads.
Township officials nixed the idea; Nestel knows he overstepped his bounds.
On the other hand, the resulting publicity made residents more aware of the problem, and thefts from cars have dropped. “I’ll take the hit,” he says, cheerfully.
Suburban policing seems “satisfying” to Nestel, but he had to absorb the difference in scale: Upper Moreland, with its domestic crimes and gunpoint robberies, doesn’t come close to the murders or shootings in Philadelphia.
“In the city, I would drink coffee in the morning, and boot up the computer and read about the shootings from the night before,” he says. “Now I drink tea and read about auto accidents.”
Colarulo, incoming chief in Radnor, hasn’t had the chance to see that his new digs are a quieter, gentler place than what he’s used to.
“You don’t fly an airplane any differently when you have one passenger than when you have 100 on board,” he says. “The mechanics are the same.”
Others have made that error. In 1995, Donnelly, used to crowds in Center City, asked a sergeant to clear part of Main Street in Doylestown before a visit from Santa Claus. The sergeant said, “Watch,” Donnelly recalls.
“I saw the vehicle with Santa make the turn onto Main Street, and it was like the parting of the Red Sea,” Donnelly says of the crowd. “I’d never seen anything like that. Then they had hot cider and cookies.”
In 2004, John Norris was a deputy commissioner in Philadelphia when he decided to sign on as police chief in nearby Cheltenham. He, too, has adjusted.
In the city, he recalls, he was lurching “from crisis to crisis.” In the suburbs, he has taken advantage of the slower pace to start a chaplaincy program.
“The police chief out here has a lot of leeway to get something accomplished,” he says. “You know you’re not going to get transferred. You can team up with the citizens and really talk to them.”
Copyright 2011 Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC