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An Evening with John Dolce
Public Safety Commissioner encourages residents to call police to point out law enforcement issues in all neighborhoods.
Reports September traffic enforcement blitz yields 261 tickets issued in first 21 days.
Says violators mostly live in neighborhoods where traffic citations are issued.
Invites neighborhood associations to tour police department.
Will fingerprint children for identification purposes free on request.
By John F. Bailey, WPCNR
CityLine: Battle Hill, October 23, 2000
Twenty-five residents of the Battle Hill Neighborhood Association asked Public Safety Commissioner John Dolce about their premier concerns involving law enforcement issues in their neighborhood last Thursday evening: loitering at neighborhood stores and sites, speeding and parking violations, and homeless "squatters." The meeting took place at the Community Room in the Battle Hill Condominium Apartments.
The Commissioner was joined by Captain Daniel Hickey, Deputy Public Safety Commissioner, Captain Tom Kelly, Chief of Patrol, and Lieutenant William Bertram of the Traffic Division who "met the neighborhood."
Traffic enforcement of speeding laws yields 261 tickets in first 21 days across city.
Residents raised issues about speeding through the Battle Hill streets of Chatterton Parkway, Battle Hill Avenue and Chatterton Avenue, ignoring stop signs on Chatterton Parkway, double parking and illegally parked cars at Central Avenue and Chatterton in particular and parking on the sidewalks.
Dolce said there is a new policy in the Police Department for patrol cars that are not answering calls for help. Dolce said that patrolman are instructed to be on heightened enforcement alert for traffic violations. He said that the department has added 4 new radar units, bringing to 12 the total of units that can be used by both patrol cars and motorcycle units.
Since the new policy of heightened speed control enforcement which began September 28, the department has issued 261 citations in 21 days as of Thursday evening, October 19. Twenty-one of which were issued in Battle Hill.
"You will not know whether a patrol car or an unmarked car will be carrying radar," Dolce said.
The Commissioner explained to residents that the department has a strategy for blitzing different areas of the city for traffic and violations by flooding an area with a full tour of duty of patrol cars, if a neighborhood requests it.
He cautioned residents that police records from the past show that the majority of citations written up during such neighborhood traffic enforcement sweeps are handed out to actual residents of neighborhoods. He reported that such a special traffic blitz was put in effect in the Highlands recently, with unmarked cars on watch from residents' driveways (with permissions of the residents). He said that in 7 days, the department wrote 98 speeding tickets on Ridgeway Avenue. The vast majority of violators were residents of Highlands.
One Battle Hill resident complained about double side of the street parking on Lincoln Avenue which prevented fire and emergency apparatus from accessing the streets. Others cited parking on sidewalks. Dolce said he would look into the double-parking situation for stricter enforcement, and discuss double side of the street parking with the city traffic commission. He mentioned that a neighborhood traffic violation blitz could be used to the effect of citing such parking violations.
Other residents asked for a lowering of the speed limits from 30 MPH to even lower speeds. Dolce said that the speed limits are set by the state and the city does not have jurisdiction to change them.
Council considering speed humps, not bumps.
Another resident brought up a common request around residential neighborhoods in White Plains: speed bumps. Dolce said that speed bumps are illegal on city roads and public property, and that they are only legal on private property, such as privately owned parking lots.The speed bump is inclined more sharply and in more of a sharp rise than a speed hump which are legal, but Dolce described them as expensive to install and having restricted deployment capabilities.
He said the Common Council was considering the possibility of building speed humps on city owned roads, but that installation was pretty much limited to straight-aways where visibility was clear where motorists could pick them up in time to slow down.
Loitering at stores; squatting: Police want to know about it.
Dolce said that the department welcomed reports from the residents of Battle Hill regarding loitering in front of local stores, and in some areas of Battle Hill where homeless persons were even staking out lean-tos and makeshift shelters. Recently some shanty shelters were removed from a portion of vacant land near 285 Central Avenue, now persons are reported setting up "lean-to's," complete with cooking fires near a closed bank building on Central Avenue. Dolce said he would direct his department to look into the mini encampments.
Other residents complained about loitering in front of convenience stores in the Battle Hill area. Dolce said the police are limited in their ability to ask "loiterers" to move on, because there is no law against loitering.
Regarding loiterers, Dolce explained to the audience the circumstances under which people can be moved: "It depends on what they (the alleged loiterers) are doing. There is no law against loitering. You have to be looking to do something, in order for us to ask you to move on. Under what circumstances can we move someone?... If they're harassing you."
Crime rate low in Battle Hill
Burglary rate in entire city up this year,
50% less than White Plains burglary rates of 20 years ago.
Dolce said that Battle Hill accounted for only 4% of the serious felonies or Part I crimes (as the government crime statistics call them), committed in the city, consisting of murders, grand larcenies, burglaries, robbery, rape, and assaults.
In general remarks, Dolce said the burglary count was up in White Plains this year but well-below the level of fifteen years ago when there were over 600 burglaries annually. Now, he said the number per year averaged 200 or so. Dolce attributed the decrease to the installation of electronic security systems in many homes, apartments and businesses.
Burglaries due to careless home security.
Increase swelled by small home/office thefts.
Deputy Commissioner Hickey said that by far the majority number of burglaries in the city were the result of careless home and office security, with entry gained through open windows or doors with no signs of forced entry. "Very few burglaries are a result of force," Hickey said, encouraging both residents and office workers to lock down and secure their premises routinely when they leave the premises unattended, if even for a few moments.
Last week, in inquiring about another story, WPCNR learned from Captain Peter Viviano that the burglary rate has been inflated by very small burglaries of residences and offices where loose change, bicycles, and items of little monetary value are taken. There is no pattern to these thefts, Viviano told WPCNR last week, and two arrests have been made after investigation of residential thefts recently. Based on WPCNR observation of police reports from other towns, theft of laptop computers from offices and cars is a new trend recently that owners of such devices should be aware.
Call rate: 189 calls for help in one day in the city.
Dolce gave residents a rare glimpse into police department operations. He showed residents a computer printout of police calls received by the department on Tuesday of last week. It detailed, he said, 189 calls for police assistance, 12, he remarked were from Battle Hill. This total of 189, he said, were only calls for help, and did not reflect routine police business. The department receives 67,000 requests for assistance a year, Dolce said.
The Commissioner encouraged residents in attendance to keep those call coming by reporting observations of their neighborhoods about matters that concern them.
Department improvements
Dolce said that the department now has a Life Scan Fingerprinting System where a single print on glass can be immediately digitized and sent anywhere in the country for checking against records.
He reported that every officer is now trained to use new photo-imaging technology. He mentioned that lineups are now done in digitized form, and that the department is "getting into" Crime Analysis Mapping, "so if you're having a pattern of crimes, you can plot the cases for similarities in a minute." He mentioned that the Department now possessed defilibrators in patrol cars which can be dispatched and used by responding officers to restart a person's heart when they have gone into cardiac arrest.
Invites Association to tour the Department of Public Safety
He expressed great pride and respect for the officers who have configured and designed the Department of Public Safety AS400 computer. He invited the Battle Hill Association to come on a tour of the Public Safety Department to learn about the department's operations and technological strides.
Free fingerprinting of White Plains children offered.
In response to a audience member's question about registering White Plains children for identification purposes, Dolce said the Department of Public Safety would fingerprint White Plains Children free on request, and parents would be given a fingerprint identification for their child. To arrange for a free fingerprinting of a child, Dolce said residents should contact Captain Tom Kelly or Sergeant Linda Steele to arrange an appointment at 422-6111.
WPCNR was unable to confirm with Commissioner Dolce whether he would be willing to conduct similar meetings on neighborhood safety and enforcement issues for other neighborhood associations. However, the Thursday meeting was received very enthusiastically by the residents and most seemed to have left with a greater understanding of how to report matters of concern to the police and what to report.
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