Borough police chief quoted $8,000 per helmet — four times the market rate for the most advanced models available. No documentation was provided to council.
HONESDALE, PA, WAYNE COUNTY — Honesdale Borough Council got a surprise at its April 13 work session: a request from the police department for 10 ballistic helmets at $8,000 apiece. The $80,000 ask would be the first line item in a capital budget the borough hasn’t finished building yet.
Interim borough manager Kevin Kundratic delivered the request on behalf of newly promoted Police Chief Don Thacher, who wasn’t quoted in the discussion. Council president Tiffany Rogers pushed back immediately, noting that ballistic helmets typically cost between $400 and $2,000. She asked for the model and the source of the pricing.
Kundratic didn’t have it. The quote came from Thacher, he said, but he didn’t bring it to the meeting.
Council member James Hamill pressed further, asking about the specific incident Kundratic cited as justification — a trooper shooting where Honesdale officers allegedly responded and were the only ones without helmets. Kundratic didn’t have those details either. His information, he said, came from a conversation with the chief.
That’s an $80,000 capital request backed by a secondhand anecdote and a quote nobody at the table could verify.
The price doesn’t exist on the open market
A Pocono Review analysis of current law enforcement ballistic helmet pricing found no standard product configuration that reaches $8,000 per unit.
The law enforcement market breaks into two tiers. Standard Level IIIA helmets — which stop handgun rounds up to .44 Magnum — sell for $400 to $2,000. The Team Wendy EXFIL Ballistic, one of the most widely used police helmets in the country, retails starting around $1,525. The Team Wendy EPIC Specialist, another popular option, lists at $1,415.
Then there’s the new category of rifle-rated helmets, designed to stop rounds from AR-15s and AK-47s. Team Wendy’s RIFLETECH — the most advanced rifle-rated helmet commercially available to law enforcement — retails starting at $3,494. Even fully loaded with a ballistic visor ($334), ballistic mandible face guard ($528-580), NVG shroud, comms adapters, counterweight kit, and carry bag, a RIFLETECH package tops out in the $5,000 range.
So what costs $8,000?
The gap between market pricing and Thacher’s quote raises a set of questions the council didn’t get to ask because no documentation was on the table. Was this a competitive bid or a single-source quote? Does the $8,000 include training, maintenance contracts, or other bundled costs? Is there a distributor or middleman adding markup? And what model, specifically, is the department looking at?
The incident nobody could identify
Kundratic justified the purchase by describing an incident where a state trooper was shot and Honesdale officers responded without ballistic helmets. He couldn’t say where or when it happened.
The most likely candidate is the August 7, 2025 ambush in Thompson Township, Susquehanna County — roughly 50-60 miles from Honesdale. That morning, Carmine Faino, 61, shot and killed his neighbor Lori Wasko outside her home on Route 171, then opened fire on responding state police troopers Joseph Perechinsky and William Jenkins from an elevated position with a rifle. Faino fired several dozen rounds. Perechinsky was hit twice in the chest and torso; Jenkins was shot once in each arm. Both survived. Both were wearing ballistic vests.
Pennsylvania State Police said multiple agencies responded to establish a perimeter. Whether Honesdale Borough Police was among them is not confirmed in any public account of the incident.
If this is the incident driving the request, it raises a technical problem with the purchase justification. Faino used a rifle. Standard Level IIIA ballistic helmets — the $400-$2,000 kind — don’t stop rifle rounds. Only rifle-rated helmets like the RIFLETECH do. So either the department is requesting rifle-rated helmets (which still don’t cost $8,000) or they’re requesting standard helmets that wouldn’t have actually helped in the scenario being cited.
A second possible reference point is the killing of Cpl. Timothy O’Connor, a Pennsylvania State Police trooper fatally shot during a traffic stop in Chester County on March 9, 2026 — just weeks before the Honesdale work session. That incident received statewide coverage and renewed attention on officer safety equipment. But it occurred roughly 130 miles from Honesdale, and no mutual aid from Wayne County would have been involved.
More helmets than officers
Honesdale’s police department currently has three full-time officers — including Thacher — and four part-time officers. Seven total.
The department is requesting 10 helmets.
The three extra helmets presumably anticipate future hires. But the borough has struggled to recruit for years. A 2024 consultant review found that Honesdale’s starting patrol salary of $41,000 falls roughly $27,000 below the regional mean for police officers in non-metropolitan northern Pennsylvania. The 2025 budget originally included funding for a new full-time officer, then removed it at the chief’s request.
A Pennsylvania Economy League study delivered in October 2025 flagged the department’s benefits package as an ongoing concern, noting that legacy contract provisions — including education funding, daily overtime thresholds, and retirement at age 50 with 25 years of service — drive costs well beyond what appears in the police line item. When healthcare for active officers and retirees is included, Mayor Derek Williams estimates the borough spends roughly half its total budget on police activities.
Buying equipment for positions that don’t exist — and that the borough has been unable to fill — is speculative spending from a municipality that can’t cover the basics.
A borough that can’t afford this
Honesdale operates on a total budget of roughly $3.6 million. The police department’s 2025 operating expenditure was $587,465. Capital reserves were projected to be fully exhausted by the end of 2025.
In late 2025, council voted down a proposed Earned Income Tax after significant pushback from residents and business owners, removing $400,000 from revenue projections. The 2026 budget passed 6-1 in December with the lone dissenting vote from Hamill, who questioned the impact of that lost revenue.
Meanwhile, the borough is dealing with active stormwater infrastructure failures — emergency pipe installation is underway right now on Vine and Terrace Streets — along with building maintenance needs, parking infrastructure costs exceeding $100,000 annually, and the fundamental challenge of staffing its police department at all.
Into this environment, the department’s first capital budget request is $80,000 for ballistic helmets. Not a police vehicle. Not building repairs. Not a recruitment incentive to address the staffing crisis everyone agrees is the department’s most pressing problem.
Grant money exists — but nobody mentioned it
Pennsylvania’s Commission on Crime and Delinquency administers the Local Law Enforcement Support Grant Program, which allows agencies to use state funds for equipment purchases and upgrades. Federal Edward Byrne Memorial JAG grants also cover body armor and ballistic protection for law enforcement. The USDA’s Rural Development Community Facilities program can fund public safety equipment for rural municipalities.
None of this came up at the April 13 work session. There’s no indication the borough has explored grant funding for the purchase.
For a department of Honesdale’s size and budget constraints, grant applications are the obvious first step before committing $80,000 in local taxpayer dollars — particularly when capital reserves are gone and voters just rejected a new tax.
What happens next
The helmet request remains under discussion. No vote has been taken, and the capital budget it would anchor is still being assembled.
Council’s initial skepticism — Rogers on pricing, Hamill on specifics — suggests this won’t pass without more documentation. But the fact that an $80,000 request reached a work session without a written quote, a named vendor, a product specification, or a verified justification raises questions about how equipment purchases move through Honesdale’s police department.
Thacher has been chief for roughly a month. This is his first major procurement request. The quote he provided — through Kundratic, not in person — doesn’t correspond to any standard product on the law enforcement helmet market. The incident used to justify the purchase can’t be identified by the person presenting it. The quantity exceeds the department’s current headcount.
None of that means Honesdale officers shouldn’t have ballistic helmets. Active shooter protocols have pushed protective equipment out to patrol-level officers across the country, and small departments face real risks. But the question isn’t whether helmets are a good idea. It’s whether this particular request, at this price, in this amount, with this level of documentation, represents responsible use of public money in a borough that’s already stretched to its limit.
This story is developing. Anyone with information about Honesdale Borough police equipment procurement can contact the Pocono Review newsroom – tips@poconoreview.com