ICYMI: Local Officials Demand More State Trooper Staffing

In case you missed it, here’s a story that appeared earlier this week in Southampton Patch:

Congressman Lee Zeldin, Senator Ken LaValle and Assemblyman Fred Thiele held a press conference on Monday in front of the Riverside State Police Barracks to demand State Trooper staffing be maintained at the premises.

The elected officials have been fighting to “ensure that Troopers assigned to the Riverside area remain in place and the doors are kept open to residents,” according to a press release from Thiele’s office.

“The decision by the State Police to reduce its public presence at the Riverside Barracks is ill-considered and
short-sighted,” Thiele said. “Given issues with drugs and property crimes in the community, particularly the heroin epidemic, the community needs more police not fewer.”

Last March, LaValle and Thiele wrote to Governor Andrew Cuomo requesting that a desk position at the Riverside Barracks be maintained, and stressing the importance of personal interaction between the police and the residents.

In October, following a site visit at the Riverside Barracks, and the officials contacted the Governor and the NY State Superintendent of Police to once again express their concerns, and to request that an additional class of State Troopers be initiated.

The NY State Police Superintendent responded to the legislators informing them that the desk will not be staffed and that the phone at the entrance to the Riverside Barracks will be available for residents to reach dispatchers located in Farmingdale, according to the release.

“I fought long and hard to have the state locate and build this Trooper Barracks in Riverside. Having an adequate level of State Police personnel on-site and publically available is critically important for the community’s protection,” LaValle said. “Additionally, a new State Trooper class needs to be initiated to ensure proper staffing across the state; to better protect the residents; and to battle the growing heroin crisis throughout Long Island.”

Thiele stated that he fears that this is the first steps in closing the Riverside Barracks.

“That would be a public safety disaster. The State Police are attempting to spin this as a move to get more cops on the road,” he said. ”The facts simply do not bear this out. Over the last few years, we have lost police coverage. This is simply a band aid to cover up those losses. Elected officials and the community must stand together to demand
more police services. We deserve nothing less.”

Members of the local community have also expressed concern.

“We have been coping with a terrible surge in crime recently and an unacceptably sluggish response to this crime wave by a poorly funded town police force,” Vince Taldone, President of the Flanders, Riverside and Northampton Community Association, said. “People are afraid to go out after dark, and in some homes, children must learn to hide in closets when gun fire is heard on the street. We need our state troopers to be there now more than ever.”

In addition, Southampton Town Councilwoman Christine Scalera wrote two letters, one in November and one in December to the Superintendent of Police expressing her concern.

In the letter, she stated that not having a desk trooper position at the barracks is “problematic.”

“While you have stated that it is being done in order to deploy more troopers on the road in order to patrol the area, I have been informed to the contrary,” Scalera wrote in the letter. “I have been told that plans are actually to actually remove a car from the Riverside area during the midnight to 5 a.m. shift, providing less coverage. This, if true, contradicts your stated purpose in cutting the desk Trooper position, but more importantly, creates an even worse scenario than anticipated.”

According to Scalera, taking out a car would leave only one New York State unit to patrol the North and South Forks and Shinnecock Indian Reservation.

She also goes on to express concern on a situation where a call is made to the State Trooper building and no one is is in the building to take the call or that a dispatch will come from too far away.

“I can appreciate that the call will be dispatched, but what is the likelihood that such dispatch from Farmingdale will require a car, perhaps the only one on the road, to come in from points as far as Montauk,” she wrote.