A NEW CHAPTER
Police Chief Foltz to retire after 32 years with department Lower Pottsgrove Police Chief Mike Foltz watches as speed enforcement is conducted along Bleim Road in 2013. Lower Pottsgrove Police Chief Mike Foltz
— Lower Pottsgrove Police Chief Mike Foltz
LOWER POTTSGROVE » After 32 years of service to the township, Police Chief Mike Foltz has announced his intention to retire.
A 1986 graduate of Pottsgrove High School, Foltz, 52, has spent all but the first four years of his life in the township.
And he has spent all but one year of his professional career with his township’s police department.
“It’s been an exciting career,” Foltz said as he reflected on the cases and the people that have crossed his path during his time in uniform.
“I started young,” said Foltz, who graduated from the police academy in 1987 at age 20 and immediately took a job with the now-defunct Upper Perkiomen Regional Police Department.
One year later, almost to the day he started as a police officer, Foltz was hired in Lower Pottsgrove by former chief Richard Lengel and he spent 13 years on patrol.
And under Lengel’s predecessors, former chiefs Ray Bechtel and Mike Shade, promotions followed for Foltz, first to detective, then detective sergeant, lieutenant and finally, eight years ago, Foltz was selected as the department’s chief.
“I’ve always been a believer in excellence in yourself and in your image,” Foltz said. “I learned from my predecessors in the importance of that first impression. If I step out of the car and my shoes aren’t shined, that first impression will be a poor one.”
“As most of our residents know, I am a big proponent of community policing and this will be the hardest part to walk away from. I cherished the Lower Pottsgrove community and enjoyed the time I had keeping it safe and making a difference for all those that were lived in or visited our community.”
He has carried that philosophy forward to his department as well.
“I expect excellence in my department and I think the community does as well,” he said.
That excellence has manifested itself in numerous ways, such as Foltz’s push to have the department accredited, which involves a rigorous review of procedures and policies, among other things.
Foltz and several of his officers were also afforded the opportunity to attend the FBI Academy’s intensive policing program.
Foltz said he is also proud of the department’s involvement with the national Missing Kids Readiness Program, designed to train officers to react quickly to missing children reports during the crucial first few hours.
His focus on protecting children can also be seen in his work with the regional children’s task force.
“I worked a lot of sex abuse cases, cases that involved the exploitation of children,” said Foltz.
“I feel good that I was able to resolve those cases and when you’re involved in cases like that, you develop bonds with the families of the victims,” he said.
That happened in 2004, he said, when the department investigated the case of Christian Oaks, a band teacher convicted of having sex with two Pottsgrove High School girls.
It was the first of a string of such cases involving high school students and teachers and coaches that followed in 2010, 2014 and 2016.
“I remember another case of an overdose, a young lady found in her car,” said Foltz. “We have to treat all deaths as a homicide and work backward and I became close with that family as we determined the cause of death.”
Other cases that stand out in his mind include helping out after a tornado hit Limerick Township in 1994 and a massive accident on Route 422.
“A driver crossed the shoulder and seven people died in that crash,” Foltz said. “I was one of the first responders to arrive and I still remember that feeling of being helpless. Many of the victims had already died, or they were so trapped, we could not get to them quickly.”
Foltz said the decision to leave policing was a difficult one, but he had reached a crossroads in his police career.
Under the township’s pension rules, he could retire at age 50, or after 25 years with the department, milestones he has already crossed.
“So I had to ask myself, am I going to stay another 10 or 12 years, or do I want to start a new chapter?” Foltz explained.
His new job will be as a manager for safety, security and environment for “a major health care network,” the name of which he is not yet at liberty to share.
“When I got my master’s at St. Joe’s, I was very interested in the risk management courses I took and I always wanted to do more with that, so I’m excited,” Foltz said.
Less excited was his father, Bruce Foltz, who is also the chairman of the township board of commissioners.
“I had been in the department long before he retired and ran for office, and there were times it was tough; every time I got a promotion it was under my own power, but we had to be aware of how it could appear,” he said.
Foltz’s father was always careful to recuse himself from decisions that involved his son, but that didn’t prevent him from occasionally expressing his obvious pride in his accomplishments publicly.
Nevertheless, the two each knew they had to step carefully. But as anyone who knows Foltz’s father knows, he is not shy about expressing his opinion.
“It made for some interesting Thanksgiving dinners,” Foltz said with a laugh. “He would tell me that we needed more speed enforcement here, or complain about all the police cars being at the station at a shift change, but he never interfered.”
Foltz did his father the courtesy of letting him know of his decision to retire before making the announcement public. “He was disappointed, I think, but he knew I wanted another chapter in my life.”
Foltz’s last day in the office is June 12, “but I have some time, so I’ll still be on the books until July,” he said.
Will James, who was appointed to the position of lieutenant in January, will take on the “acting chief” post while the commissioners decide how to move ahead with a replacement, Foltz said.
“I will definitely miss the friends I developed in our retirement communities, where I enjoyed chats over coffee and discussions over matters that impacted their communities,” Foltz wrote in his retirement announcement.
“As most of our residents know, I am a big proponent of community policing and this will be the hardest part to walk away from,” wrote Foltz. “I cherished the Lower Pottsgrove community and enjoyed the time I had keeping it safe and making a difference for all those that were lived in or visited our community.”