State College Police chief retires after 35-year policing career

By Bret Pallotto
Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.)

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The borough’s police chief is nearing the end of a nine-year run as the department’s top officer, closing out an era marked by modernization, reform and unprecedented challenges.

John Gardner will retire at the end of the month, finishing a career that began in 1990. He rose through the ranks until he was appointed to the top spot in August 2016.

Gardner counted the implementation of body cameras, the addition of two social workers and his department’s cooperation with the borough’s Community Oversight Board among his biggest accomplishments. He took pride in a roughly 60-person police force that became more diverse during his tenure, in solving a pair of high-profile cold cases and in being viewed as a trendsetter by larger police departments.

But his tenure, he acknowledged, was not without its challenges.

His department investigated Penn State student Timothy Piazza’s hazing death in 2017. He led the force in January 2019 when a gunman killed three people and seriously injured another before fatally shooting himself. Two months later, a white borough police officer fatally shot a Black man — the department’s only fatal shooting in its 109-year history. And when the coronavirus pandemic arrived the following year, Gardner said he found himself wondering “What’s going on here?”

Most recently, Gardner and the department have come under scrutiny after a Spotlight PA investigation found that hundreds of rapes were underreported from 2013 to 2021. Gardner told the newsroom he wasn’t aware until 2022 that the FBI had updated its definition of rape and that the department corrected the record coding error once it was discovered, though it was not previously disclosed to the public.

The eighth police chief in the borough’s history reflected on his decades with the department during an hourlong interview with the Centre Daily Times in August.

“Thirty-five years seems like a long time, but I don’t know where the time went,” Gardner said. “There were midnight shifts that I thought were 35 years long and then in the blink of an eye here’s 35 years. I honestly can’t tell you where it went. That tells me that I made the right decision and the right choice in coming here all those years ago.” Early career

Born and raised in the Philipsburg area, Gardner took an interest in policing when a state trooper visited his middle school. He graduated from Penn State and Shippensburg, then worked as a juvenile probation officer in Clearfield County . But the pull toward policing never faded.

He was among more than 900 applicants vying for one of five open positions with State College police — and he finished at the top of the list.

“The first couple of years were kind of a struggle because State College police back then is not the State College police right now,” Gardner said. “We had some older officers who were transitioning out, didn’t have much time to go.”

Even when he questioned whether he made the right decision, he stayed. Over the next decades he served as officer, detective, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain and assistant chief.

Gardner and his wife of 39 years — parents of two adult children who now work in the State College area — put down roots in what he described as a “pretty special place.”

“We love this community. We moved here, took a chance on this place and they took a chance on us,” Gardner said. “You don’t know if you’re going to work out or not, but we did.”

Reform and modernization

As part of a push for transparency, officers began wearing body cameras in July 2019. While footage has rarely been released publicly, Gardner said the cameras have been a useful tool to protect both community members and officers.

He also praised the borough’s social worker program, which reshaped how the department responds to mental health calls in the aftermath of the March 2019 police killing of Osaze Osagie. Two people now staff the unit, which Gardner said he is “very proud of.”

Another point of pride, he said, is the department’s growing diversity. As of August, nine women served in the force along with five officers who are not white.

“Our agency should reflect the community in which it polices and I think we’re getting there,” Gardner said. “We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there to where I think people see that and they like that.”

When Gardner’s retirement was announced in February, borough Manager Tom Fountaine said he led the department with professionalism, integrity and a commitment to community-oriented policing.

“I am grateful for Chief’s leadership through some challenging times and the community continues to be served by an exemplary department,” Fountaine said in a written statement. Crisis and change

Gardner said he feels he is leaving behind a stronger department — one that has grown “leaps and bounds” since he joined — and that he has no “major regrets.”

But he acknowledged one area in which he wishes he had acted differently: communicating more directly with his officers after Osagie was killed. He said some officers felt he wasn’t there for them, a sentiment that has occasionally surfaced on social media.

“They were scared and we didn’t have a playbook for this,” Gardner said. “… I was getting pulled in so many different directions and even though I had one of my captains dealing with the rank-and-file, guess who they wanted to hear from — me. I didn’t have as much time as they wanted (and) they took that as I didn’t care, so that’s probably one of the regrets.”

He believes he has made up for that since, he said, by making a more intentional effort to connect with officers.

“We very much appreciated his 35 years of service to the community and we wish him the best in his retirement,” State College Police Association President Barrett Smith told the Centre Daily Times.

Retirement and legacy

Gardner isn’t quite sure what retirement will look like, but he knows he won’t sit still. Consulting and teaching are possibilities — after he catches up on some home repairs he’s been putting off. His wife has mentioned the idea of spending winters in Florida, but Gardner laughed that off: that’s Penn State wrestling season.

As he steps away, Gardner will be succeeded by State College native and Altoona police Chief Joseph Merrill. The borough may also replace Gardner’s second-in-command, who left to take the top spot with Ferguson Township police.

Asked what legacy he hoped to leave, Gardner said he wants to be remembered as someone who did his best and tried to “do the right things for the right reasons all the time.”

“If I’m remembered in those ways I’ll be satisfied with that,” Gardner said. “… I’ve been here 35 years and that doesn’t happen by accident. That’s something that was a conscious decision on my part. I wouldn’t have stayed here if it wasn’t the right place — and it has been the right place.”