The Story of Shorty The Cop

Frank Short (“Shorty the Cop”) was a traffic patrolman at Lynbrook’s Five Corners from 1918 to 1926.  In those eight years he became a Long Island landmark. 

He had a dangerous job, directing traffic through Lynbrook’s main intersection from each of five directions in the days before traffic lights.  Adding to the confusion was that in the mid-1920s, Atlantic Avenue and Broadway were converted from two-way streets to one-way streets – first in one direction and then the other (ending up as they are at present). 

Shorty directed this vehicular mayhem with a shrill police whistle, crisp arm movements, a broad Irish smile, and a sense of style that kept pedestrians and drivers grinning whenever they saw him “performing” at the Five Corners.  Shorty was so well known all over Long Island that when folks asked directions to, say, East Rockaway, they would be told, “Go along the Merrick Road until you see Shorty The Cop, then make a right.” 

Frank Short was much loved by the residents of Lynbrook. When he died of natural causes in 1926, his body lay in state with a police honor guard in Lynbrook’s Municipal Building.  An overflow crowd of 2,000 people attended.  Hundreds of admirers raised $1,500 to pay off the mortgage on Mrs. Short’s home at 33 Wright Avenue.

From the book, “The History of Lynbrook,” by Arthur S. Mattson, available at Amazon.com.