The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge‎ to Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania. A discussion on how much to merge can be handled editorially and does not require a relist. Star Mississippi 01:32, 4 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whitehall Township Bureau of Police (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Police department for a town of 20k people. A cursory Google search doesn't turn up any particularly notable incidents that attracted wider media attention. WP:ORGDEPTH BrigadierG (talk) 22:22, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Police and Pennsylvania. Cooper (talk) 22:34, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Every town has a police department but they don't usually need standalone articles. Like, do they not all have basically the same rank structure? Reywas92^Talk 15:00, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Police ranks of the United States. Yevrowl (talk) 15:44, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Four external links added, thanks. Yevrowl (talk) 16:36, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Every town in the country has routine crime news, these don't actually add anything to the article. There would need to be significant independent coverage about the department itself. But again, small towns generally don't need separate pages for their police departments, fire departments, councils, etc., and these sources don't justify one. Reywas92^Talk 20:05, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep or Merge - There's a whole category of local police departments Category:Municipal police departments of Pennsylvania. Given that it's a police department, there's coverage of the actions of its employees in case law. Alternatively, merge into Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania. GobsPint (talk) 18:02, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The existence of other articles isn't a reason to keep an article (WP:WHATABOUTX), only Wikipedia policies and guidance are. If you think there is significant coverage, I would invite you to reference it, rather than simply stating that there WP:MUSTBESOURCES. Note that the burden here is not just reliable sources proving that the subject exists or that it has done something, but significant secondary coverage indicating its notability in particular.BrigadierG (talk) 00:27, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to the township article at Whitehall Township. Every town of 10k to 20k has its own police force, which generates some local news (see If it bleeds, it leads), but as everyone knows, there are thousands of local government police forces in the United States. This similar to, say, a county sheriff's office, which covers a larger territory and population, but was merged and redirected after a vote to keep. Bearian (talk) 13:47, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  What content would you actually want to merge? I don't think this should be a redirect or a merge, there's no actual content in the article to merge aside from a sentence about the date that the police org was founded which I'm not sure really matters. BrigadierG (talk) 10:44, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.