TimesLeader.com

November 14

Police Academy teaches about fire and polygraph

Fire marshal, state police polygraph officer tell local residents about specialties.

By Jen Marckini jmarckini@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

FORTY FORT – Residents participating in Thursday evening’s Pennsylvania State Police Citizens’ Police Academy learned about the organization’s polygraph and fire marshal units.

The first part of the class was on the fire marshal unit.

Trooper Ronald Jarocha, a member of the state police for 17 years, is one of two full-time fire marshals for Troop P, Wyoming. His job is to find out where the fire started and how it was caused.

Jarocha, who has investigated about 18 blazes in the past three months, is called out to fires that are suspicious, deadly or the cause is not known.

The main thing fire investigators look for is burn patterns. Various photographs were shown to Thursday’s class of these pattern types found at fire scenes.

One of the photos Jarocha talked about was of a residential blaze three years ago in Wilkes-Barre Township.

In this case, Jarocha said the only fire damage was a chair in the basement of a room. The investigator said the blaze was determined to have been caused by a slow smoldering fire.

What was thought to be a careless smoking incident turned out to be the unintentional works of a burglar instead, Jarocha said.

“A simple case that I, 100 percent felt like was a careless smoking incident was a burglary,” Jarocha said. “There’s always something else. There could always be another reason for it.”

Jarocha has investigated close to 1,000 fires – 49 percent of those blazes were intentionally set. Eighteen percent were ruled accidental.

“My job is a big puzzle,” said Jarocha who investigated a rash of vehicle fires, including the torched vehicle of 34-year-old homicide victim Donnie Skiff.

Municipalities in Luzerne County do not have fire marshals with the exception of Wilkes-Barre City.

Cpl. Gerald Williams, of the state police polygraph unit, spoke during the second half of the class at the organization’s training facility in Forty Fort.

“Polygraph works on the involuntary muscle structure of the body,” said Williams, who has been a state police trooper for the past 19 years.

A polygraph examiner looks at three systems of the body that can’t be controlled, Williams said. They look at the how a person breaths, sweats and how the person’s heart beats.

Williams said there are changes in the body of a person who might not be telling the truth.

The polygraph is inadmissible in court, but investigators use it as a tool for their investigations.

The 10th annual citizens’ police academy concludes next Thursday.