WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. November 13, 2006: Deputy Commissioner Daniel Jackson spoke at length with WPCNR Monday morning on the matter of the gridlock on Hamilton Avenue and Broadway had seized White Plains in a paralyzing grip last Wednesday evening. In a telephone interview this morning, Commissioner Jackson advised WPCNR that the Police were busy handling other matters in the city at the time and did not have the manpower to facilitate the traffic exiting the city along Hamilton Avenue (1 hour to travel from Westchester Avenue at the East Gateway to the City to the West Gateway of the City, the Comp USA store). WPCNR has asked the Commissioner to elaborate on the manpower situation and exactly how much manpower was there , in the meantime, this is Commissioner Jackson’s comment on what happened to White Plains traffic last Wednesday evening:

Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety Daniel Jackson on Gridlock. Shown April, 2006. Photo, WPCNR News Archive.

Mr. Bailey,

I apologize for the fact that you got stuck in traffic last week. Unfortunately, the traffic problems were caused by the intense rainfall, probably also aggravated by the amount of leaves on the ground.
The closing of the Bronx RIVER parkway, partial flooding of the Hutchinson RIVER parkway and a Parking lot on 287 all contributed to the mess.

The Department of Public Safety does not agree with your “Informed Source” that it is too dangerous to put an officer in the intersection to keep the traffic flowing when possible, and the manpower is available. That evening was particularly busy as well with calls for service to both the Police and Fire Bureaus, all of which they handled appropriately. Including two pedestrian accidents  during the rush hour which further acerbated the issues. Fortunately, neither was hurt seriously.

We also disagree on the sensational :
“Hey – if you had a heart attack or your house caught fire and you lived in the Park Circle Section of town or North Broadway – you were dead or burned out because there was no way fire engines were getting into the Northend in 4 minutes and no way ambulances were getting into the Northend past Hamilton”

We would get there as we always do.  Traffic congestion aside.

We work closely with the Traffic department and are always evaluating the data and constantly making adjustments to accommodate changes in the city.

Finally, as for responsiveness of Public Safety, you and I exchange e-mails at all hours of the day and night, you have my cell number and address for that reason. My Blackberry is on 24×7  (including at 01:29 hrs this morning when you asked about the fire.) 

 

 

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WPCNR BATTLE HILL Constitution. From  WP CitizeNetReporters and Department of Public Safety. November 12, 2006 UPDATE From Commissioner Daniel Jackson,  November 13, 9 AM EST: We were coming home this evening and came upon a raging house fire on the corner of Harmon Street and Chatterton Parkway. As usual, our  fabulous Police officers and brave Fire Fighters arrived quickly and  had things under control and everyone got out of the home safely.  Keep up the good work!!!

Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety, Daniel Jackson gives these details Monday morning: “The police and fire bureaus responded to 45 Harmon St. Shortly before 5 p.m. Last night to a report of an active structure fire received via 911 call. Upon arrival they found a single family home with fire showing from the top floor master bedroom area. All of the occupants were out upon arrival. The fire was knocked down quickly and under control in about 25 minutes. There were no injuries reported and the cause is under investigation.”

Housefire at 45 Harmon Street and Chatterton Parkway last night, 5 PM. Photo, Courtesy, John Matero & John Lindauer

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WPCNR BUMPER-TO-BUMPER. News Commentary By John F. Bailey. November 12: Hey, Mr. and Mrs. White Plains were any of you in the secret jam Wednesday night? The jam no one knew about?  The White Plains crosstown gridlock? Not pleasant was it?

 

Bring Back Officer Bill (Biolsi). We need a Traffic Directing Consultant NOW. Photo WPCNR News Archive.

It took me an hour, yes, one hour to travel from Westchester Avenue at Nordstrom’s west to the County Center. (Using North Broadway and Hamilton Avenue to Route 119). Sure we had 2.35 inches of rain in 24 hours. Yes the Exit 8, Cross Westchester Expressway is a mess thanks to the chimpanzees at the Department of Transportation who came up with that Exit 8 closedown (which WPCNR reported on the first week of September on that folly). However, chimpanzees might have done a better job. More on the DOT chimps later.

 

But the White Plains Department of Public Safety did not do all they could have to expedite traffic across downtown White Plains last Wednesday night in this reporter’s opinion. In this reporter’s personal observation from 5:45 P.M. to 7 P.M. – they did nothing.

 

Hey – if you had a heart attack or your house caught fire and you lived in the Park Circle Section of town or North Broadway – you were dead or burned out because there was no way fire engines were getting into the Northend in 4 minutes and no way ambulances were getting into the Northend past Hamilton. Perhaps Fire Station One could have handled you. It was a dangerous situation if you had a health emergency.

 

This is why you have to make a token attempt at directing traffic through the White plains downtown, Department of Public Safety. I do not fault the White Plains officers – I fault the management of the department.

 

The WP Department of Public Safety was asked Friday morning by yours truly why they could not have dispatched some “traffic specialists” – they did not respond. They should start giving traffic control response some serious thought.

 

Informed sources have told us that the police feel it is too dangerous for police officers to “person” the intersections in gridlock conditions because motorists do not pay heed to the officers. Come on, Department of Public Safety!

 

 

Officer Bill — We need you now! Off-duty White Plains police stand by street construction routinely risking hip-pointer shots from passing cars weekly, so don’t tell me directing traffic in gridlock conditions is too dangerous for our guys and gals. That’s insulting to them. They want to help. Perhaps we should bring back Officer Bill Biolsi (shown at his retirement in March, 2005)  who used to honcho Bank Street and Main for many years. Where’s a Wag-and-Whistle Swat Team when you need them? Officer Biolsi took care of business at Main and Bank for years with his white gloves and whistle and it moved. Photo, WPCNR News Archive.

 

To not move officers into position to address developing gridlock from unusual traffic conditions is not good practice. The only answer is the White Plains Department of Public Safety just does not care about the motorist plight.

 

In New York City the brown shirt traffic specialists are out there nightly. If the police monitored traffic in coordination with the Traffic Department it has got to help somewhat.

 

How could the police have helped Wednesday night? They could have held traffic back on Central Park Avenue, and cleared out gluts of cars onto the relatively wide open route 119 just past the County Center. Believe me I thought it would be backed up clear across Route 119 to Tarrytown Wednesday evening considering how traffic was not movin’ on Hamilton Avenue.

 

But, I was shocked, shocked I tell you when I passed Comp USA and bingo – we started to move as soon as we motored into Greenburgh. Lousy job, Department of Public Safety. A Police Officer at each intersection moving them out and through, would have helped just a little Wednesday night.

 

 

 

What could they do? Move traffic out. Keep lanes moving. Coordinate better with the County Transportation Monitoring Center. Since this motorist was stuck in the Hamilton gridlock Wednesday night, WPCNR had ascertained the traffic lights were 30 seconds in length, but you needed more than that to handle that volume. There was no flooding on Hamilton Avenue. It was all volume.

 

Need I point out that we have spent millions of dollars on coordination communications between county and local police departments? How about developing a plan on how to use it?

 

If you can’t control traffic and move it with extra volume, how can you do it in an emergency?

 

The Department of Public Safety has great personnel and we love you all, but I believe the Department of Public Safety has lost its ability to communicate with the public effectively to ease emergencies. Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety Daniel Jackson is trying, but his hands are tied. He is just one person trying to do hands-on control of developing situations and handle public information at the same time. WPCNR deliberately does not badger the Department of Public Safety during developing situations to allow them to handle it.

 

However, that is no excuse for the do-nothing Mayor’s Office press spokespersons for not knowing what is going on at a given point in time. You cannot contact an official of White Plains after 5:30 PM.  

 

They either do not know what is going on or do not care to tell the press at least what is happening. Because they don’t. Do a little work guys. Give out cell-phone numbers to all media and have one person in charge who knows what’s going on. This worked a little with Dave Maloney on the last big Con Ed outage. David tried his best. But they obviously do not know how to do it. They need to find out how to do it. Or let Bud Nicoletti and Tom Soyk handle it. If the Police are too busy to advise the citizenry, the Mayor’s Office must.

 

How about a real-time White Plains traffic alerts on the moribund Department of Public Safety website, for example? It’s not much, but it’s a start. How about a tapeloop number the public can call for construction sites in the city blocking traffic?  How about a Mayors’ Office who knows what’s happening in its own city in real time? That would be a start. This is nothing new. I have pointed this out for years. Reading about it the next day in paper media does not deal in real time.

 

These are issues that a Common Council and a Traffic Commission that was paying any attention to the welfare of its residents might, just might call the Traffic Department, the Parking Department, the Public Works Department and the Department of Public Safety and get them on the same page and tell them get your acts together. Last Wednesday night was pathetic. No trees were down in the road. There was electricity. There was no flooding in White Plains except on Bronx River Parkway. It was just heavy traffic. Mind you the shopping season is coming up. Does White Plains have a plan?

 

Traffic is a quality of life issue, too. Besides look at the revenue potential, Department of Public Safety for writing all those cellular telephone tickets for persons using a cellphone with their bare hands during one of those slow downs. This could be a new Department of Public Safety revenue initiative.

 

As they say south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Git ‘er done.

 

As for the chimpanzees at the Department of Transportation – could any chimp tell this reporter why we are redoing all of the Cross Westchester Expressway bridges now – when we are going to have to do it all over again when and if we rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge and plug in light rail? Hoo Boy!

 

Seems like wasted work to me. Why build new bridgeovers if you’re going to ream light rail across the Cross Westchester Expressway?

 

I’ll take an answer from any bright press person on that one.

 

And, another question, you need a more intelligent group of chimpanzees to plan the Tappan Zee Bridge-Cross Westchester Corridor fix coming up – because if the Exit 8 make over  is any example of how the present Zippy engineers at DOT think – well I shudder to think.

 

However the Common Council should be thinking about it. White Plains and Andy and Bill Ryan and the whole chummy concerned County Gang have to seize the DOT and Eliot Spitzer by their overalls and Brook Brothers lapels and get a handle on what is going on, before Eliot allows the DOT to turn Central Westchester into what happened when Robert Moses ripped The Bronx apart with the Cross Bronx Expressway.

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WPCNR SCHOOL Days. From Michele Schoenfeld. (EDITED) November 11, 2006: The Board of Education meets Monday evening at Education House at 7:30 P.M. The Superintendent of Schools, Timothy Connors is scheduled to brief the meeting on the District Enrollment Data as of October 1 and report on the progress in implementing the recently voter-approved $69.6 Million Capital Project which includes synthetic turf installation and stands renovation at Loucks Field and Parker Stadium, scheduled for next summer in time for the 2007 football season.

At this time, to WPCNR knowledge the architects have yet to meet with the Athletic Director and Coaching Staffs to discuss details and intricate policy matters on how the stadiums will be built, such as length of synthetic grass blades, lining of the fields, and key matters affecting the competitive use of the fields. The Superintendent may also announce plans on when and how the architects, Kaeyer, Garment & Davidson, now embarked in preparing “detailed plans” for submission to the New York State Education Department on the Post Road School, Mamaroneck Avenue School,  will be meeting with the school staffs to finalize the actual physical implementation of the new construction.

The School Board will also approve a new certiorari settlement and announce the beginning of the 2007-2008 Budget Development Process.

WPCNR understands that the architectural firm, Kaeyer, Garment & Davidson, according to the Superintendent of Schools will present a timetable on the Capital Project November 27.

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WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. By John F. Bailey. November 10, 2006: Reporters were introduced to the real cost of the unsupervised homeless in White Plains Monday afternoon by Mayor Joseph Delfino: White Plains Police have spent a great deal of their time the last ten months responding to “incidents” where homeless persons were involved in assaults, shoplifting, fights, street drinking, collapsing on the street, trespasses, indecent exposure, narcotics, and other quality of life miscues.

 

 

A Busy Month of August for the White Plains Police chasing Homeless Calls. The Mayor and Councilman Glen Hockley released a White Plains Police computer-printout of over 600 incidents in 2006 alone, allegedly all involving “Homeless” persons in the White Plains downtown. The report shows how busy the homeless population is keeping the police. Photo of Report by WPCNR News 

 

Asked by reporters about the breakdown of the types of incidents, and where —  the Mayor said they did not have that available. WPCNR was given a copy of the report pages by Councilman Hockley and has reviewed the incidents. Here is what the printout pages tell us:

The report shows that over the first ten months, there were 622 incidents that White Plains Police were called to respond to and patrolmen were sent to investigate. The most frequent “incident” was Drinking (alcoholic beverages) from Open Containers (76), next was dealing with homeless with warrants out on them (75).  Police made 53 Miscellaneous Arrests (where the offense was not clear to WPCNR), and responded to 41 Calls for Emergency Treatment, ranging from homeless found unconscious, to bleeding, to injuries; there were 35 responses to reported Trespassings and 25 Shoplifting arrests at stores, Target and Macy’s among them.  

 

Chart Compiled by WPCNR News Based on Review of  Police Homeless Incident Reports

 

 

January Page of “Homeless” Incidents. The 17 Pages of Incidents provided by the Mayor’s Office, cover ten months of 2006 calls police took and responded to that are  classified as involving the homeless. Photo, WPCNR News

 

Altercations and Lewd Behavior.

 

Police Responded to reported altercations frequently: There were 11 responses for Disorderly Conducts, 13 for Unruly Behavior (shouting, acting out, threatening), and 8 responses to disputes, and 6 to Fights.

 

Nineteen times police responded to reports of a homeless person exposing themselves.

 

Twenty times police responded to complaints of finding homeless persons sleeping in stairs and lobbies around the city.

 

Since most of the homeless sleep in shelters at night, these incidents appear to be being called in during the daylight or early evening hours. Times of the incidents were not readily determined from the report and White Plains Police declined to clarify the nomenclature of the report when WPCNR asked them to do so, saying I had to refer my questions to the Mayor’s office.  As of nightfall Thursday evening, the Mayor’s Office had not responded.

 

Rick Ammirato, the Executive Director of the BID at the news conference did say there were more homeless incidents taking place during the day in the business district, and more panhandling by the homeless.

 

JULY INCIDENTS INVOLVING THE HOMELESS. Photo by WPCNR News

 

Homeless Presence in the Downtown

 

There were 73 Incidents on Main Street, 40 at the City Center, 37 on Mamaroneck Avenue, and 34 on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Fisher Avenue saw 22 Calls for police due to homeless situations, Tibbetts Park, 22. One of the more intriguing Tibbetts Park incidents involved police being called to remove homeless campers there June 23.

 

The majority of incidents are reported in the White Plains downtown with  East and West Post Road the leading locations where police responded 140 times from January 1 to October 31. (The Post Road figure contains 43 incidents where police were asked to appear at 86 E. Post Road, the home of the Grace Church-run Open Arms Shelter).

 

 

Locations of “Homeless Incidents” Predominately in the White Plains Downtown. Chart Compiled by WPCNR News from Review of Police Homeless Incident Report

 

 

Three Times more Police Calls to Open Arms Shelter

Than 85 Court Street

 

At Mayor Joseph Delfino’s news conference Monday afternoon where he introduced his ill-fated resolution calling for Westchester County to close 85 Court Street, the “drop-in shelter,” opened last January  the Mayor said White Plains houses 15% of the homeless population in the county. He said the White Plains share was more than any other city. They are housed overnight at 85 Court Street, supervised by the Department of Social Services (opened last January), at Open Arms Shelter supervised by Grace Church Community Services, and at the Coachman.

 

The Mayor and Mr. Hockley pointed out that 85 Court Street houses some level 3 Sex Offenders, and cited the severity of the incidents the computer printout detailed, as the reasons why the county should close the 85 Court Street shelter and move it elsewhere. The Mayor and Mr. Hockley said nothing about removal of the Open Arms Shelter, The Coachman or the Grace Church Samaritan House on Church Street.

 

The incident report examined by WPCNR indicated only one incident at The Coachman, and none at the Women’s Shelter run by Grace Church on Church Street because that has not been open for most of the 10-month period, and has recently reopened.

 

However, police responded 43 times to Open Arms Shelter to what appear to be more violent and serious incidents in a better appointed facility.  The county negotiated a new contract with Grace Community Services for $600,000 a year to run Open Arms and Samaritan House, and an additional fee to counsel persons at 96 East Post Road.

 

The atmosphere at 85 Court Street apparently has a more stable crowd based on the statistics: there were only 15 incidents police responded to at 85 Court Street.

 

Life at the Shelters:

 

Police Calls to Open Arms dealt with the following 43 incidents:

 

Active Fight; Field Interview; Male Refusing to Leave Property; Warrant Arrest; Male to Emergency Room; Party Refusing to leave Non-Combative; Party Refusing to Leave Non-Combative; Man Unruly; Male Refusing to Leave; Man Fell Down Stairs, Bleeding from Mouth; Male Refusing to Leave; Suspicious Person; Miscellaneous; Man Not Breathing; Man Passed Out; Man Unconcious; Man, Difficulty Breathing; Warrant Arrest; Female: Male Shoved Her; Miscellaneous; Female: Dizzy Chestpains; Warrant; Possible Overdose; Female Fell Injured; Female High Fever; Female Active Seizures; Harrassment; Missing Items from Wallet; Field Interview; Warrant Arrest; Man Will Not Leave Premises; Trespass; Party Acting Up; CO Violation; Man Refusing to Leave Lot; Complaint of Assault; Warrant; Open Container; Stealing Complaint of IPOD; Man with Warrant; Man Having Seizure; Tresspass Arrest.

 

At 85 Court– The County “Drop-In”. Police were called to deal with 15 Incidents;

 

Verbal Dispute; Homeless Initiative; Interview-Warrant; Warrant Arrest; Sex Offender Failure to Register With County; Man Suspicious; Female Unconscious on Street; Field Interview; Man Wants to Leave; Arrest, Open Container;  Subject Left Shelter; Subject Left Shelter; C/0 and Warrant Arrest.

 

Summer Months Higher Incidents.

 

The months of June July and August and October showed the highest number of incidents involving the homeless, with August the leading month with 95 incidents.

 

2006 January 1 Through October 31, Month-by Month Homeless Incident Totals:

 

January:  69

February: 69

March:  44

April:  48

May:  44

June:  51

July: 75

August: 95

September: 54

October: 73

 

Police Demur to the Mayor’s Office

 

WPCNR asked Deputy Commissioner Daniel Jackson of the White Plains Department of Public Safety to comment on the figures we derived from the Incident Computer Printouts, including the figures presented above, and if the police could provide their own official totals of the reports for accuracy.  Jackson said I should refer my questions to the Mayor’s Office.

 

WPCNR asked Deputy Commissioner Jackson  how the 2006 Crime Statistics look for White Plains after 10 months, and how much of the homeless incidents contribute to those statistics. Commissioner Jackson said that question would have to be referred to The Mayor’s Office. 

 

At the News conference Monday afternoon, Mayor Delfino said the City houses over 500 persons at shelters in White Plains, 15% of the county homeless population, though the city is only 5% of the county population. He called on County Executive Andy Spano to start a dialogue with other cities and towns to deal fairly with the homeless problem. Asked if he had any suggestions in White Plains where the 85 Court Street shelter could be relocated the Mayor said he did not and would not suggest one, saying it was the County responsiblity to seek a site.