Second Safest City Blog

Clarkstown Police arrested 24-year-old Jessica Toodle of Vallejo, California on charges that she possessed a forged North Carolina driver’s license and nine forged credit cards. She was arrested when police responded to the Best Buy at the Palisades Center mall after she allegedly attempted to purchase merchandise with the forged documents. Store employees claimed Toodle tried to purchase three cell phones valued at $1,650 with the forged documents. Police also discovered she had eight other forged credit cards and receipts totaling over $20,000 for merchandise.

Toodle was charged with 21 counts of possession of a forged instrument in the second degree, nine counts of criminal possession of stolen credit cards and four counts of grand larceny in the fourth degree.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing more than 100 kids running amok in the Palisades Center yesterday, screaming and breaking glass. Police were unable to locate any one of the teens. Rockland Journal News reported police spokesperson Sgt. Harry Baumann as saying, “We did have several calls of suspicious incidents with kids, but every time we got to the location, there was nobody there.” Broken glass could still be observed where the teens had been hours later. The story also mentions the February 2006 McDonald’s riot, when fight broke out between 40 children aged 12 to 19, resulting in felony arrests and charges of rioting.

The Missouri Highway Patrol has decided to mark 142 of its unmarked vehicles because it will improve traffic safety. Missouri Highway Patrol Superintendent James Keathley said, “When the motoring public sees a trooper, they pay closer attention and improve their driving habits, making the roadways safer for everyone.”The Clarkstown Police should adopt a policy to mark its vehicles for enhanced public safety.  The benefits of having plain clothes officers performing traffic stops in “taxis” and other completely unassuming vehicles are dubious at best. Contrary to public efforts by Clarkstown Police that would lead us to believe our fleet of “taxis”, Honda Civics, and mayors from Spring Valley are contributing to enhanced safety, the inability of drivers to discriminate legitimate police officers from impersonators is obviously a serious issue, as has been learned numerous times in our area.

Notably, on December 21, a FedEx delivery truck was hijacked in Manhattan by a group of men who displayed fake badges and forced the driver to follow their instructions.  While being driven around for the next three hours, the driver said one of the men taunted him by saying, “I paid a couple hundred dollars for that badge. Did you think I was police?” Interestingly, the robbery was bungled when the crooks failed to open the specially designed aircraft flight case filled with goods, so they ditched the truck in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and let the driver go unharmed and even allowed him to keep enough of his own money to get home.

A Valley Cottage man was arrested for DWI on Thursday afternoon, after he ignored a police officer’s request to leave his car in a parking lot and take a taxi instead. The officer assisted Burke into a taxi and left the scene, but it wasn’t long before the taxi driver called the police to let them know Burke was trying to go back to his car. Police arrived then and discovered Burke leaving the parking lot in his car, when he was stopped, arrested, and charged with DWI.

The Urinal News doesn’t explain how police initially discovered he was drunk when he wasn’t already driving, before they advised him to take a taxi instead.  Perhaps they should have had him take the town’s police “taxi” instead.

Clarkstown Police and fire officials are investigating a small albeit suspicious fire at the Palisades Center IMAX theater that caused a temporary evacuation of about 50 people. The fire started around midnight, and the local fire departments responded to find that a tarpaulin had apparently been placed over a light, leading to the fire.

So, did the fire alarms at the mall go off this time?

Two Acura Integras and one Audi A4 went missing from the Palisades Center mall between 2:30pm and 9pm yesterday. One of the Integras belonged to a Yonkers resident, the other Integra and the Audi belonged to residents of Nanuet. The Audi was recovered in Newark this morning. No arrests have been made. Anyone with information is asked to call Clarkstown Police at 845-639-5800.

The problem is that we don’t have an undercover stolen car unit driving around with a computerized, camera equipped automatic number plate recognition system, constantly running license plates looking for stolen cars.

Wait, we do have one of those.

Interestingly, unlike other unmarked units that carry around undercover or plain clothes officers, this special stolen car unit is said to always be manned by a uniformed officer despite its complete lack of markings. Hopefully this makes these officers easy to distinguish as real police as opposed to impersonators interested in hijacking FedEx trucks with fake badges.

A couple from New York City was arrested after they were found to have stolen $3,500 worth of merchandise from Woodbury Commons and the Palisades Center mall.

Crimes happen on a daily basis at the Palisades Center, no matter how small.  Ever been in the stairwells around and in the parking garage?  You’d think you were in the bad guy’s underground lair in a Ninja Turtle movie, seeing leaks, rust, burned out and flickering fluorescent lights, and a seemingly endless amount of graffiti and discarded drug bags.

While Clarkstown is claimed to be the second safest city, this statistic would seem to ignore the fact that we have one of the largest 5 malls, connected to three major state highways — 59, 303, and the Thruway.  The mall, and the community at large, have a connectedness that provides an easy entrance and escape for people going to and from New York City.  The size of the mall provides a great deal of anonymity during busy times.  And despite the fact that the mall has more cameras per square foot than the Big Brother house, the responsiveness of the security guards watching it and handling it are the weakest link.  With 30 million people in the New York metropolitan area, how many bad apples pop up at the mall?

But maybe these criminals wouldn’t have shoplifted in the first place if Mayor Darden was on patrol at the mall with his police lights like last week. Mayor Darden may have just pulled these people over and then took their parking spot, causing them to get frustrated and leave, preventing them from ever reaching the stores they stole from.

Four men were arrested after Clarkstown police stopped their car on Route 59 after an officer ‘recognized’ a man that lived in North Carolina and discovered that him and his buddies were loaded up with one handgun in the trunk. Seven police cars responded and they had all four men get out of the car at gunpoint. Richard Williams, 36; Sante Ballard, 23; Raymond Jones, 27; and Michael Batts, 22, all from North Carolina, were charged with 4th degree gun possession.

Just to clarify: according to the official story, these men from out of state were driving through with a gun stored in the trunk - but all four were pulled out at gunpoint by seven responding police cars and charged with weapons possession.

How can four people all be in possession of one gun? How serious of a threat is a gun in the trunk during a traffic stop to warrant that?  As for the need for 7 police cars to respond, considering they found only a single .25 caliber handgun, and considering police carry .40 caliber handguns and wear body armor, it just makes it look like we’ve never seen a gun before.

It’s interesting to note that the article doesn’t mention that there was a warrant on any of these men, just that the officer recognized one and ‘believed’ he had charges pending.

Thankfully we have an army of Honda Civics, taxis, and mayors from nearby towns patrolling the streets, keeping us safe.

According to the Rockland Urinal News, crime takes no holiday vacation, not even in the Second Safest City.

Clarkstown Police are on the lookout for criminals this holiday season. According to Clarkstown Police Detective Fred Parent, who works with the mall stores on security and crime issues, “There are organized [criminal] groups coming to the mall.”

Even Mayor Darden from Spring Valley got in on the action and tried to help fight crime at the mall … passing traffic with police lights to keep people safe during the holidays.

The Rockland Urinal News broke the story on Spring Valley Mayor Darden using illegal emergency lights to get through mall traffic.

For this gross abuse of public trust, what happens? Did he get charged with public corruption?  Did he resign?  Did he apologize?  Did he get charged with class E felony criminal impersonation of a police officer? Maybe he was issued a ticket for having illegal red lights?

No, he got a warning from the Clarkstown Police. We can only speculate, but here’s why we think this is so.

As many readers here know, Clarkstown is said to be the 2nd Safest City(tm).  Everyone’s entitled to their own interpretation of that statistic.  To the writers here, it is actually a farce that is used to justify high property taxes and unjustifiably high salaries and benefits for municipal employees including police.  But Clarkstown Police claim it is because of strategies including using completely unmarked cars with officers in plain clothes carrying only a badge that we are so safe.  Mayor Darden was simply establishing a low profile presence and policing the area during the busy holidays. He is just pitching in with the effort to keep the mall free of crime. We are the 2nd Safest City(tm) because even neighboring town’s mayor have police lights now and patrol our streets at no cost to us! The officer that issued him a warning was merely saying thanks to Mayor Darden for helping pitch in and keep the crime down in the 2nd Safest City(tm).

The Urinal News claimed that it would follow up on this story, but it did not.