June 17 to 30
Officers handled 699 calls, including 12 auto accidents and 21 domestic disputes. This is a selection of their reports.
Friday, June 17
4 a.m. – Report of shots fired at Tompkins Terrace. Luis Rodriguez, 27, of Beacon, and Richard Bosque, 29, of Katy, Texas, each charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
6:40 a.m. – Caller reported a flag stolen on Eliza Street.
11 p.m. – After a traffic stop on Main St., Jujuan Taylor, 20, of Beacon charged with driving without a license, endangering the welfare of a child and possession of marijuana.
Saturday, June 18
9 a.m. – After police responded to a disabled vehicle on Wolcott Ave., Kim Carroll, 50, of Beacon charged with driving without a license and false personation (giving a false name).
1:15 a.m. – Maurice Frye, 52, of the Bronx charged with disorderly conduct after a fight on Fishkill Ave.
Sunday, June 19
11:55 a.m. – Caller reports damage to vehicle parked on Tompkins Terrace.
2:15 p.m. – After a traffic stop on Verplanck Ave., Jesus Martinez-Reyes, 46, of Wallkill, charged with driving without a license or a valid registration or insurance, failure to stop at a stop sign, and failure to yield to pedestrian in a crosswalk.
Monday, June 20
8:35 a.m. – Counterfeit money reported on Wolcott Ave.
Wednesday, June 22
4 p.m. – Several business owners on Main St. reported receiving counterfeit bills.
Friday, June 24
10:30 a.m. – Caller to headquarters reported ongoing harassment. Both parties spoken to.
3:15 p.m. – After a traffic stop on Route 9D, Jing Chen, 53, of New York City was charged with having a counterfeit inspection sticker and failure to signal a turn.
Saturday, June 25
6:30 p.m. – Following a traffic stop on East Main St., Michael Dopazo, 36, of Beacon was charged with driving while intoxicated and not wearing a seat belt.
Sunday, June 26
6:30 a.m. – After a report of a disabled vehicle on Route 9D, Corinne Hrinko, 21, of Montgomery, was charged with driving while intoxicated.
7 p.m. – Caller reported damage to property on Spring St.
Monday, June 27
11:10 a.m. – Caller reported graffiti on a building on Mason Place.
10:15 p.m. – Caller reported a fight on Liberty St. between neighbors.
Wednesday, June 29
8:45 p.m. – Darryl Randolph, 39, of Beacon was arrested on Main St. and charged with possession of counterfeit money.
Thursday, June 30
2:30 p.m. – Following a traffic stop on Simmons Lane, Douglas Sawyer, 46, of Beacon was charged with driving without a license, circumvention of an interlock device and failure to signal a turn.
4:45 p.m. – After a fight on Main St., Gary Vantassel, 54, of Chelsea was charged with aggravated family offense and criminal contempt.
No, please no police blotter. It puts the paper squarely into a different category and is so disappointing. I cannot support a paper with that kind of content. Please stop.
I agree. These names will be on the Internet forever, even though no guilt has been assigned, harming their reputations and limiting future opportunities. Please don’t.
I tend to agree with the two previous comments. Certainly names could be removed from these reports. General interest I would think is limited to traffic accidents, their locations and any significant injuries, as well as reports of counterfeit money. The petty stuff is, well, just petty.
We requested that the Beacon police share this information with us. We publish such news because we believe the public should be aware of police activities. The issue of how much to report and whether all names should be used is of concern to us. We welcome reader comment.
Why don’t you just put “All people listed here are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”
Routine police activity is news? What criteria did you use when selecting the items you chose to include? Will you ask for and publish from Cold Spring PD or Putnam Sheriff’s Department blotters?
It seems so trivial and gossipy, Using a police blotter your own information may help you identify trends or spot concerns that are of interest to your readers but simply listing police blotter items and associated names starts to suggest tabloid — something this paper has never been even close to.
Other recent comments in this newspaper have raised the matter as to whether the Village should continue with or even needs the Cold Spring Police Department.
A CSPD police blotter without offender names could assist us in deciding whether we need a local police department. For example, counterfeit currency could be a serious problem for our merchants. Or fake automobile inspection stickers could suggest safety issues on the streets. And on and on.
So I agree with most of the comments above about not listing names of offenders but the offenses themselves might be worthy of note.
I think there are a lot of great ideas about the police blotter, especially posting the Cold Spring police blotter — that would really open people’s eyes as to how few actual crimes are committed in the Village. As far as using the names, it probably would be wise to have the “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law” caveat or else not use them. As one reader mentioned, according to the Internet, the opposite can be true, especially if a potential employer is looking you up on Google to check out your background.
It’s a mistake to include the names of persons accused of a crime in newspaper articles, except in the rare case where, say, a public figure is accused and the public has a clear interest in being informed of that fact. Wholesale publication of names from a police blotter is just bad journalism.
There is, however, real value in stories that aggregate the data taken the blotter so taxpayers have a better understanding of police operations. Why not sum up the incidents according to the shift in which they occur, for example? This would tell those with oversight responsibility over the police whether it might be wise to discontinue staffing of some shifts. Why not break out the incident report data by important categories — such as mutual aid calls, calls from outside the village, calls requiring county or state assistance — and by the source location of the call? Why not summarize the statistics in a graph, presented at each monthly meeting of the Cold Spring Village Board, and show any trends? Why not make it a practice, at the beginning of each annual budget review, to publicize and then publicly discuss those statistics, and compare them to prior year statistics?
Do we even know if the Cold Spring police will make their blotter available to reporters (notice that this blotter was from Beacon)? If not, wouldn’t that be a story worth telling?
Replace the blotter dump with a cogent report of police activity, one that helps the public make wise choices.