Sewickley Heights Borough Council has unanimously installed Patrick Fosnaught, a 49-year-old former Pittsburgh police commander, as the borough's new police chief, effective Monday. He steps into a department of just four full-time and four part-time officers serving roughly 850 residents, a dramatic scale-down from the roughly 750-member force he oversaw in the city, and he arrives at the tail end of a scandal that forced out his predecessor.
Fosnaught's appointment, first reported by TribLIVE, is still pending physical and other exams, and he has not set an official final day for his Pittsburgh retirement. He told the outlet he is very excited about the opportunity, adding that he needs to learn a lot of information and will face different challenges than he did in the city. Fosnaught said he had put in 20 years with Pittsburgh and it was time to move on.
He was promoted from lieutenant to commander two years before the TribLIVE report by then-Chief Larry Scirotto, who left the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police in October 2024 after announcing his own retirement, as Hoodline reported at the time. In that administrative role, Fosnaught led operations for a department that then comprised 751 sworn members. His Pittsburgh salary was about $146,000 according to city records; in Sewickley Heights, his starting pay is set at $125,000, per borough manager Nathan A. Briggs.
A Career That Started at a Convenience Store
Fosnaught's path into law enforcement began decades earlier and far from Pittsburgh. He grew up in Lawrence County and started his career as a convenience-store security guard in New Castle before becoming a part-time corrections officer at the Lawrence County Jail in 2000, according to the New Castle News. He later worked as a sheriff's deputy in Knox County, Maine, a rural area more than 80 miles north of Portland and about 145 miles from the Canadian border.
An Army veteran, Fosnaught was deployed to Iraq for a yearlong tour of duty around 2004 before joining Pittsburgh police in 2007. Cara Cruz, a spokesperson quoted in the same report, confirmed that Fosnaught no longer works for the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. He now lives in West Deer, according to the reporting.
The department Fosnaught is joining bears little resemblance to the one he left. Pittsburgh's Zone 4, headquartered in Squirrel Hill, patrols a neighborhood of about 27,000 residents on its own. Sewickley Heights, by contrast, reported zero violent crimes and just nine property crimes in FBI statistics from 2016, when its population stood at 821, underscoring how different the operational demands will be for a chief accustomed to urban policing.
The Scandal That Emptied the Chief's Office
Fosnaught's hiring closes out an eight-month leadership vacuum that began when James Harrison resigned as Sewickley Heights police chief in March, following more than two decades on the municipal force. According to WPXI, Harrison was placed on administrative leave after an anonymous letter sent to residents and borough officials contained screenshots of text messages and memes displaying overtly racist attitudes. Borough officials received the letter containing purported copies of the controversial communications, and civil rights groups including the Black Political Empowerment Project called for Harrison's termination.
Sewickley Heights borough engaged an independent third party to investigate the anonymous allegations, per a borough letter. TribLIVE reported that the probe, conducted by the law firm Strassburger McKenna Gutnick & Gefsky between late January and mid-February, cost the borough approximately $12,000. Harrison resigned amid that investigation into controversial communications, and the borough later paid him about $120,400 in severance, per documents acquired by the outlet, including more than $80,000 for unused sick, vacation and personal days.
Whether the investigation into Harrison was ever formally completed remains unclear. Briggs, the borough manager, declined to say whether the probe concluded, leaving unresolved a question that has lingered over the borough for months.
Filling the Gap and Funding the Search
While the borough searched for a permanent replacement, retired Edgeworth Police Chief John English was hired as a police management consultant to handle administrative duties for the Sewickley Heights Police Department. English, who is a retired Edgeworth police chief, handled those duties while the borough sought Harrison's successor, drawing on decades of regional police leadership from the neighboring community.
The search itself came with its own price tag. Sewickley Heights Borough Council approved a $14,000 consulting agreement with the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association to manage the process, which drew 26 applicants before a June 12 deadline, the borough's community news site reported. Under Pennsylvania borough governance guidelines published by the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh, borough councils hold the legislative authority to hire officers and set compensation, while mayors retain executive supervisory oversight over local departments — a division of power reflected in council's unanimous vote to install Fosnaught and set his salary.
A Borough Defined by Wealth and Homogeneity
Sewickley Heights is among Allegheny County's wealthiest and most homogeneous communities. Its median household income topped $200,000 in 2024, nearly triple Allegheny County's figure, according to census data cited by TribLIVE. U.S. Census data reported by PublicSource shows the borough's Black population stands at just 2.2%, compared to 13% for Allegheny County overall and 5.2% in neighboring Sewickley Borough — demographic context that has shadowed the fallout from the Harrison allegations.
With roughly 850 residents as of the 2020 count, Sewickley Heights now hands its small, low-crime police force to a chief whose most recent job involved managing administrative operations for one of Pennsylvania's largest municipal departments. How that experience translates to a department of eight officers remains to be seen, but for a borough eager to move past months of turmoil, restoring stability appears to be the immediate goal.
