The Altoona Housing Authority is using a private security service this month to patrol its public housing projects in what may turn out to be a de facto tryout.

City police have patrolled Fairview Hills and the towers downtown for years, but the cost has risen, even as the authority has had to rely on capital funding to cover it.

The authority is using Securitas for December because Denny Myers, the regular city project officer, is on medical leave, and the city doesn't have enough manpower to dedicate another individual full time to the beat.

The authority will consider next month whether to keep a private firm, go back to the city or hire a part-time officer separately from the city department.

Securitas is providing a full-time individual at $12.55 an hour, for a total cost of about $2,000, authority Executive Director Cheryl Johns said.

Because of the city's manpower issues, it would need to charge the overtime rate of $39.25 an hour for officers who might be able to work only four instead of eight-hour shifts.

And the individuals assigned would vary.

"That would kind of be defeating the purpose," Johns said.

The authority needs the same person day after day, so he or she knows the residents and issues and can more easily recognize suspicious activity, and so management and the residents have a single go-to individual, Johns said.

It doesn't matter so much that the private security guards don't have full police power because the authority is mainly seeking visibility, she said.

There are few arrests on authority property, and most of those occur when an officer isn't there anyway, she said.

If there is trouble the assigned individual can't handle, police are summoned.

Securitas wasn't the cheapest firm but seemed the best of those she recently interviewed.

"We're trying it out to see how it works," she said.

In a report to the board, Johns wrote that she was impressed with the tracking and incident reports provided by the company.

Next year, the authority would need to pay the city $67,200 for coverage, which includes benefits.

Securitas is covering December at a cost that extrapolates to $26,175 a year.

The authority also will consider whether to hire instead a full-fledged police officer or officers, as recommended by board member Scott Brown.

That would not necessarily be easy, as officers don't have powers outside their jurisdictions, except in specific limited circumstances listed in Title 42 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, solicitor William J. Haberstroh said.

The authority continues to seek grant funding. No federal money will be available soon, but state lawmakers plan to reintroduce a measure they tabled at election time that would allow authorities to hire their own police forces, Johns said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.