Second Safest City Blog

The Second Safest City blog sometimes recognizes that Clarkstown Police aren’t all that bad, and sometimes do have sensible policies (even if we bury that between criticism). Today’s case involves a police officer from the nearby Ramapo Police, who was accused of being ‘insensitive’ for requring a Hasidic woman, charged with first-degree welfare fraud, to remove her wig for her mug shot. Clarkstown Police Chief Peter Noonan said he would expect that his officers would have done the same thing. “The objective of the photograph is to identify the person,” Noonan said in an interview with the Journal News. “You want to know what the person looks like with or without the wig.” And the authors of this blog agree.

The Journal News article goes out of its way to fail to describe the nature of the woman’s charges, or how prevalent such charges are in the area, or even what is being done to combat welfare fraud, in a likely effort to avoid also being ‘insensitive’ to the needs of the Hasidics. We have no such qualms and will keep this story and more updated as it happens.

19 year old Patrick Coudin was arrested by Ramapo Police and charged with first-degree assault and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, both of which are felonies, in addition to a charge of possession of crack cocaine. According to the Journal News, this incident of epic proportions included 30 people armed with improvised weapons including tire irons and box cutters. This is the third gang attack in Rockland since April. Coudin allegedly fired a single shot, wounding the leg of another teen. The article does not describe if the wounded teen was armed at the time, but as the old saying goes, never bring a knife (or a tire iron) to a gun fight.

Overpaid, underworked suburban cops are brushing up on their crime solving skills by searching social networking sites (like Facebook, Myspace, etc.) looking for underage after-prom drinking parties.  The article’s sidebar has an interesting anecdote where police crashed a party because the party’s description included the words “cheese platter”. You can’t make this stuff up. To be fair, Clarkstown Police Lt. Steve Morgan said the department is skeptical of the effectiveness of such tactics, preferring instead to target alcohol vendors that sell to minors. Despite this sensible policy, Lt. Morgan also admitted that there’s no way to verify the veracity of the information they find online: “there’s counterintelligence,” he said.

After grand juries indicted 46 Rockland residents on various gun and drug charges, police launched an early-morning blitz on all the alleged drug dealers and gang members.

Less than two months ago, 21 people were arrested in a cocaine raid in Nyack. Both raids were part of the larger “Operation Clean Sweep”, a massive multi-year cross-jurisdiction effort to crack down on gangs and drug dealing in Rockland County. Despite the massive effort required to combat gang, gun, and drug crime in Rockland County, Clarkstown, the county seat of Rockland, remains the Second Safest City!

A man from Ohio, who was in Rockland county selling magazines door-to-door in violation of local solicitation laws, tried to kill his girlfriend by choking her at the Holiday Inn in Montebello last night. The article notes that illegal solicitors have been arrested in the past and it is a recurring problem each year.

Despite being directly in violation of state vehicle and traffic law, county legislator Jacques Michel, D-Spring Valley, insists that he is allowed to have them.

The Journal News article, titled “Rockland legislator not allowed to have red lights in his car” notes:

This is not the first time a public official has been found with emergency lights. In December, Spring Valley Mayor George Darden was issued a warning by Clarkstown police after illegally using emergency lights in his car while he was navigating traffic at the Palisades Center in West Nyack. Darden said at the time he was allowed to have the lights as the mayor in case of a disaster or other emergency. In 1997, then-Spring Valley Mayor Allan Thompson was investigated by state police after reports surfaced that he was stopping people by using the emergency lights on his car. Thompson admitted he pulled two people over. He was never charged.

This is simply disgusting. Please read the Journal News report on the exorbitant amount of overtime paid to cops. Take some time to wrap your mind around statements like this:

“According to their contract, [Clarkstown] police officers [can] receive pay for overtime hours they did not work.“

Rudy Alvarado, a 22-year old former Rockland resident was arrested in connection with an earlier armed robbery on Freedman Ave, in which the bungling crooks made off with $15 and left a handgun at the scene. Police are still searching for the other three men involved in the robbery.

In April 2007, Russel Trojan, 51, was at his home on Jerry’s Ave in Nanuet, when a building inspector came onto his property and started photographing some broken down vehicles parked in violation of town code. The incident escalated and Trojan stabbed the inspector multiple times with a kitchen knife before being subdued by a neighbor. The inspector was hospitalized but did survive. Trojan was convicted of attempted murder in the second degree. A sentence is still pending.

Clarkstown police found a man barely alive in the woods near the Hub shopping center in West Nyack after receiving a call about a dead body. Police said homeless people sometimes squat in that spot and that a dead body was found there a few years ago. The man was taken to Nyack hospital for examination.