Second Safest City Blog

On May 5, a Clarkstown Police car and a ‘civilian’ vehicle collided. The civilian was hospitalized, but is recovering. The civilian was issued citations for failure to yield right of way, making an unsafe turn, and unlicensed driving (although the linked article notes he was driving with a suspended license, not simply without a license).

The carefully crafted newspaper article does an excellent job at making sure the reader cannot fully reconstruct the accident by using abstract words like “intercepted” to describe the moment of the actual collision. The photo of the civilian vehicle is also taken from an angle that hides all of the damage. But one thing is clear from the photos: The front the police car, on the passenger side, collided with the passenger side of the civilian’s vehicle, towards the front. A passenger-side to passenger-side collision involves some pretty poor driving.  The article notes there is video footage of the accident, but naturally, we are left to trust the official police interpretation of what the tape shows.

One thing that particularly is annoying is the use of the word ‘civilian’ to describe the driver of the SUV. Police are civilian law enforcement; they are civilians as well.

The article also notes that the officer was not driving with his siren on. But perhaps we should ask Clarkstown police to adopt a policy like those in Puerto Rico where police drive with their lights on any time they’re on duty.

Also, what’s up with the tag “SPORTS” at the end of the Journal News article URL? Is this some kind of sport to anyone?

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.