Meet Bethel Park police Chief Timothy O’Connor
With 35 years of experience as a police officer with the City of Pittsburgh, Timothy O’Connor has seen it all, worked in every city neighborhood and held almost every imaginable position a police officer can have, except one – police chief.
That changed in October when O’Connor, 57, was the unanimous choice of the Bethel Park Council to become its new chief. O’Connor beat out 65 applicants for the post. Bethel Park Chief John Mackey retired last October, and David Rogan had been serving as acting chief since then. However, Rogan also retired.
“With his vast and previous experience, we made the right choice,” said Councilman Don Harrison. “We saw eyeball to eyeball.”
Said Councilman John Pape: “We liked the way he did things.”
In a recent interview in his Bethel Park office, O’Connor said he had wanted to be in law enforcement since he was a small boy growing up in Carrick. He is the oldest of three. His sister is a homemaker in Ross Township, while his brother is an engineer with NASA in Cleveland. Their father, Bernard, now 88, was the office manager of an electrical insulation company in Munhall Borough. He still lives in Carrick in the family home.
“It’s about people,” said O’Connor of his interest in law enforcement. “It had also been my goal since I was a child.”
O’Connor was in the U.S. Army’s military police and was also a corrections officer at Western Penitentiary before joining the Pittsburgh police force in 1980 as a patrolman in the Hill District. His last position with Pittsburgh Police was commander of Zone 5 in the East End, where he had 90 officers under him. By comparison, Bethel Park has 30 full-time police officers.
Even though it may sound like a big change, O’Connor said going from a large, urban police force to a smaller suburban police department, like Bethel Park, is not much of a change. Crime is crime, he said.
“I walked the beat on Liberty Avenue before there was a Cultural District,” said O’Connor, who has a master’s degree in leadership from Duquesne University and a master’s degree in public policy and management from the University Pittsburgh. In addition, he is a graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.
“Both Routes 88 and 19 run through Bethel Park,” O’Connor explained. “There are a lot of calls for service and it is still police work and interacting with people. “
O’Connor said he misses going out on patrol with his fellow officers. He has responded to some calls, but said he still spends a lot of time in the office learning the Bethel Park way of doing things.
“I have been able to pick up a lot of the streets and I have learned my way around,” he said. “It’s almost like learning a new language, emails, forms, et cetera.”
O’Connor said he is a good administrator and is always available to his officers “if they need advice.”
“I have always seen myself as a mentor,” he said. “I give advice and try and be a role model.”
Because he is only a month into the job, O’Connor said he has not made many changes in the department.
“But, I would like to see us become one of the best police departments in the county.”
O’Connor and his wife, Diane, live in Pittsburgh’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and recently put a successful offer on a house in Bethel Park, where they hope to relocate by this summer. They have two sons. Justin, 23, is getting his master’s degree in education from the University of Pittsburgh and wants to teach high school. Thomas, 21, is studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Neither of their sons ever expressed an interest in law enforcement, he said.
O’Connor said he doesn’t really have time for hobbies and is a self-described “workaholic.” With what free time he has, O’Connor said he is usually at the gym three times a week, where he does a lot of cross training. During football season, he said he prefers watching games on television from the comfort of his home.
“I don’t travel well,” he said. “I am real comfortable here in Western Pennsylvania. I am really a pretty basic person.”