The Tamaqua Police Department has a new part-time officer.

During Tuesday’s borough council meeting, council hired Fred Lahovski for the force.

The hiring of Lahovski, who worked for the department several years ago, is retroactive to March 7.

Lahovski has also worked for Rush Township, McAdoo, Coaldale, Bethlehem Township and Nesquehoning police departments, and had served as chief of the Girardville Police Department.

Also during the meeting, council voted to advertise for part-time officers at a rate of $20 per hour.

In keeping with police matters, both borough Manager Kevin Steigerwalt and Mayor Nathan Gerace said a two-year program that provided sexual/violent crime prevention training for police officers is wrapping up.

In 2023, Tamaqua police received a $150,000 grant from the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative. The department partnered with the Sexual Assault Resource Counseling Center (SARCC) and officers received training on how to respond to and prevent sexual violence.

Because the program was such a success, Gerace said that Tamaqua Chief Michael Hobbs, Micah Gursky of the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership and Ali Perrotto of SARCC have been invited to speak at an upcoming conference.

“I want to commend them for that,” Gerace said. “I think they did a really nice job and they got a lot of really good training.”