Renovo at 150 – The Top Cop
by Lou Bernard
Some people are straight out of the movies.
Most people are not. Most people do not come across as movie heroes; you meet them and they’re perfectly normal people. But every once in a while, someone shows up who is, basically, a movie character.
Michael Sicuranza was one of those.
You know those movies and TV shows where the cop chases down the bad guys? Arrests the ones nobody else can get? Is better at bringing in the criminals than anyone else?
Yeah. That was Sicuranza.
Michael Sicuranza was born in Renovo on August 9, 1889, the son of Ralph and Rose Sicuranza. He grew up there, attending Saint Joseph’s Catholic School and the Renovo High School.
In 1905, at age sixteen, Sicuranza went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad as a machinist’s helper. (By contrast, at age sixteen I was playing a lot of Pac-Man.) While working for the railroad, Sicuranza saw the need for some added security, and created his own detective agency, specializing in railroad work.
He married Margaret McNeil on November 11, 1911, because presumably the date of 11-11-11 made it easier to remember his anniversary. They had two sons, Ralph and Jack.
On the strength of his reputation as a detective, he was elected the chief of police by the Renovo Borough Council in 1930, and continued to be chosen by every new council after that. Sicuranza was one of the best police chiefs Renovo ever had, taking part in 707 arrests by 1938, when an article about him appeared in the Clinton County Times. But, you say, how many of those did he have help with, and just happened to be around? Well, imaginary reader who talks back to me, remarkably few. Out of those 707 arrests, only sixty-five were assisted by other officers. The rest were all Sicuranza singlehandedly, 364 of them as police chief, and 278 while running his detective agency—Which he continued to do while acting as police chief, by the way.
When he wasn’t chasing down the bad guys, he was hunting and fishing. The article puts it exactly that way, too: “Next to maintaining peace and order in his home town, Mr. Sicuranza’s favorite occupations are hunting and fishing.” He had recently shot a six-point buck, which he considered important enough to mention to the newspaper.
His personal favorite arrest, according to the newspaper interview, was an arrest that happened in 1935. On December 12, the Loganton National Bank was held up by Raymond Simcox, a criminal from Coudersport. All-Points Bulletins went out to all the local law enforcement agencies, but it was pretty much assumed that Simcox had taken the money and fled the country. But apparently he wasn’t really all that smart, because Sicuranza recognized him up in Farwell, in Chapman Township. With some help from Patrolman Clarence Keegan, also of the Renovo Police Department, he arrested Simcox.
Bank robbery being a federal crime and thus generally frowned upon, Simcox went to trial in Scranton, and on March 11, 1936, he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Sicuranza was involved in a lot of these sorts of cases; his name comes up repeatedly in the old newspaper archives of that era. He was involved in most of the police work in Renovo, at least until 1957, when he passed away.
Sicuranza became ill on Valentine’s Day of 1957, and checked into the Renovo Hospital. After ten days in the hospital, he died quietly on a Sunday afternoon, February 24, 1957. He was buried in the North Bend Cemetery.
So don’t go thinking you can commit a crime in Renovo and get away with it. Sure, Michael Sicuranza had been dead for almost sixty years now. But he was really, really dedicated to his job, and you just can’t rule out a guy like that.
