Former Ferguson Township Police Officer Accused of Tampering With Records

A former Ferguson Township police officer was charged on Thursday for allegedly deleting files and emails before leaving for a job leading another police department.

Devon M. Moran, 41, is charged with a misdemeanor count of tampering with public records.

Moran was preparing to leave the Ferguson Township Police Department to become chief of police in Logan Township, Blair County, in April 2025 when he was directed by the township to preserve “any and all documents that are critical to FTPD operations/certifications/contacted services,” according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by state police at Rockview. Moran was an administrative sergeant solely responsible for retention of accreditation data and other records.

A review of the department’s servers, however, found that Moran deleted a large portion of the data and a “significant amount of emails.”

Using an automatic backup of Moran’s server space, township IT staff managed to recover more than 13 gigabytes of information that Moran had deleted, a state trooper wrote. The recovered materials included files related to accreditation, the county crisis negotiation team, quotes for camera purchases, call-time comparisons and training materials, among other items.

IT staff told state police that most of Moran’s emails could not be recovered after he deleted then permanently then deleted the file that contained the deleted emails.

In a written statement to a state trooper during the investigation, Moran said the issue was a misunderstanding. He said he backed up the relevant files on external hard drives and a document management system that he gave department officials access to, according to the affidavit.

Moran added that he would have walked department officials through accessing any files they thought were deleted, but that no one from Ferguson Township reached out to him about it.

The state trooper, though, wrote that portions of the deleted materials were only found when IT personnel found the backup of Moran’s server space and were not otherwise on department servers, hard drives, USB drives or the document management system. The trooper also noted that most of Moran’s emails were completely unrecoverable.

The deletion of the files and emails “caused significant hardship for the department,” according to the affidavit, as much of the material had to be reproduced and data had to be recompiled. Other deleted data was only recovered through a “laborious search process” by township staff, the trooper wrote.

Moran was arraigned on Thursday by District Judge Casey McClain and released on recognizance. He waived a preliminary hearing, and formal arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 16.

Moran was announced as police chief in Logan Township, near Altoona, in May 2025. He was suspended without pay on Thursday, the Altoona Mirror reported.

Logan Township Board of Supervisors Chair Jim Patterson said that Moran has kept township administration informed of the administration, according to the Mirror. Patterson added that the board “has the utmost confidence in Chief Moran and unanimously supports him.”