Auxiliary Police Force Terminated

what does it matter now? the aux. is no longer around. you hardly see a cop in the town anymore. benjamin, proffitt and a few others were aux. kenworthy and a new guy named ben are paid, so is breeden, he is the sgt. hoffman no longer works for the town.

why is being a volunteer police officer so "no way" to you? it isn't much different than being a volunteet fire fighter. is that so crazy? you'd be pretty greatful if you were being robbed and an aux. police officer came to help you (most of the time they worked more than the paid officers) or if they arrested a drunk and possibly saved you or a family members life while you were driving home or your house was burning down and a volunteer fire fighter came to put the fire out. they all have to have a minimum state required training (police and fire volunteers alike).

but like i said, what does it matter, they aren't here anymore!

LorR, You missed the tiny little word "my" in that sentence. Police work and/or firefighter may not be "my" cup of tea. I was in no way demeaning their choices...only trying to understand. I am VERY grateful they are there. And provide my support accordingly to both HPD, GVFD and EVFD.

Can anyone else elaborate on the Aux Police requirements / questions from my previous post?

Thanks, CF

i think i can answer a few...
yes they have to go through state training like leftorright said
previous exp. differs for each officer
they carry weapons
they can arrest
i suggest you call and ask the town about insurance, i can't imagine that they don't carry insurnace, too much liability

Your timeline has a small mistake. Jan.24 the accessory charge was not thrown out of court. The charge was Nolle Prosequi, more commonly called Nol Pros. This simply means that if the accused does not break any laws in a 12 month period of time, the charge will then be dismissed.
Any one can access court information at the Virginia Court Case system web site.
http://208.210.219.132/vadistrict/select.jsp

It appears that the timeline was copied from the paper so the reporter made the mistake.

Also, if the accessory charge was Nolle Prosequi (it was, I double checked), then there is NO requirement whether or not the accused breaks any laws or not within a certain timeframe. That particular case has been finalized.

Copied from an newslink, and right on the absence of a timeframe...common misconception by a layperson.

It would be nice if the auxiliary officers were given part time status where they would be paid for their expertise as police officers. They should be put on a schedule to do police work in the Town of Haymarket where and when the time best fits the needs to curb criminal activity. And, the schedule would need to be setup by the Chief and/or the Sgt. of Haymarket's Police Department.

Why would you want to pay someone who is willing to volunteer? I mean, really, the only "crime" I see constantly is speeding through town. Most of the volunteer cops probably had jobs, so they probably worked evenings and weekends, which seems ideal. I want speeding enforcement when my family and I are in town, not just during the middle of the day when everyone is at work or in school.

Its a way of compensating for a job well done.

Criminal activity does not necessarily know any given time. The problem that most do not understand is, that if there is a set time for Police Officers to be on duty - it becomes a well defined pattern; if given this information, think about it, when would you plan criminal activity?

Again, the schedule needs to be set by the Chief of Police and/or the Sergeant! And, I invite you to sit on my front porch anytime during the day (and sometimes at night) so that you can observe the unsafe vehicle driver behavior that I see every day and night. There are only a few stipulations that I ask: 1) You do not park your car in a way that will allert drivers, 2) You do not wear a Police Uniform, 3) That you do not make obscene jesters towards the vehicle operators nor my neighbors while here, 4) And please do not argue any points or try to get me to side with your intentions/opinion(s); you are invited to observe.

You answered your own question of when the Police need to be on duty. Perhaps you have not been in the Town Of Haymarket during any given 24 hour period of time. For example, I, along with a Haymarket Police Officer observed motorists running the red light at the intersection of Jefferson Street and Washington Street at 1:30am on three different occasions/days; twice traffic/motorists who had the greenlight right of way had to abruptly stop their vehicle to avoid a collision. Fortunately for those motorists, who ran the red light, the officer was not in a Police Vehicle.

During any daylight hour and at any given day of the week, Jefferson Street sounds and looks like a high speed road way. I have actually seen two drag races between a Mustang and Camaro performed on Jefferson Street without regard to public safety.

If I park our red Crown Vic across the street for a few days, motorists drive at reasonable and safe speeds. On occasion the Haymarket Police Department parks one of its marked cruisers on Jefferson Street in the Mayor's driveway; this seemly innocent act causes motorists to slow down. So in my opinion a Police appearance deters crime to a certain degree before enforcement needs to intercede.

Would you take me for a ride in your Crown Vic too? Can we count the cars that go by? Maybe I should go buy a radar gun from the sports store (you know, the one's that pitcher's uses to see their ball speed) and we can make citizen's arrests. Since you are tight with the chief and all, you think he'd give us a ticket book to use?

There is a vehicle counter in place on Jefferson Street (two trip wires), I doubt that I could get the information that it records.

If you are serious I will ask Chief Roop or Sergeant Breeden when will be the next time they set the speed display unit up (I do not know what it is called), but they frequently set it up on Jefferson Street. If it can be set up here in the front yard, it will probably serve its purpose; there have been times during the past several years that it was set up across the street (from my front porch). I can invite you to come here to observe.

Of course you could poll any or all of the adult residents on Jefferson Street to see if anyone else feels that unsafe traffic conditions exists.

I honestly do not think that Police Officers give the traffic ticket books out to citizens to use for citizen's arrests. But you know what, I will ask Chief Roop or Sergeant Breeden or Officer First Class Kenworthy the next time I see either. And may I have your real name? I have a feeling that either one will want to know where I got that notion. What the heck, if its a joke then I am sure they will get a laugh out of it too. I can imagine Sergeant Breeden with his laid back southern friendly draw and laugh. And, Chief Roop, well he will probably laugh that all to familiar and friendly deep good hearted laugh that many of us are familiar with, and he will with his friendly manner tell me. And if I ask Officer First Class Kenworthy, and he finds the request comical I can imagine the grin, and I am quite sure I will get a friendly appropriate answer from that fine example of a Haymarket Police Officer.

It is your money, if want to buy a radar gun, have at it. If you need transportation here, sure I will drive to wherever you are within a 20 mile radius and bring you here. I do not know if it necessarily has to be in the Crown Vic.

several times during the last few years? The dang thing has only been arround for less than a full year. So who was setting up the portable radar stand years ago?

The way you talk about Roop, Breeden, and Kenworthy...I'd think you were enamored with them in some fashion. Southern friendly drawl, deep good hearted laugh...I mean really, are you responding to a blog post or writing a romance novel?

My real name, since you ask, is James. But sorry, since you don't promise me a ride in the cool crown vic, I can't provide you with any further details prior to our first date.

I do not know where the speed display unit (whatever its called) came from, or for that matter, which Police Department set it up. I have seen one, in the past, at different locations in Haymarket besides Jefferson Street before the one with the Haymarket Police Department decals on it showed up. One spot used to be between Bleigh and Pace School on the west shoulder of Rt 55, close to the Haymarket Corporate Limits sign.

Enamore never crossed my mind, at least not in the context that you infer.

I kinda figured your name might be Jay or James a day or so ago.

you are so good at guessing games...how in the world, with all of the names in the book, did you figure my name to be james...did you know that I have two middle names... one is bryan? Come on, what's my other middle name and my last name?

But really...I'm glad you observe the traffic on Jefferson each day and see the speeders and wreckless drivers...have you had a chance to look at the records and see how many traffic citations have been written for those offenses on your street? It's a good bet, that not too many. So lemme ask you this...if there is such a problem and residents such as yourself vocalize these problems to the Town and to the PD...why is there not a commanding presence of a white police car there on a daily basis to help end this rash of traffic violations?

Oh wait...I know...because one of the officers hangs out at a tractor store all day long and the other is too busy playing fetch with Fido. As for Officer K...well, he's just one fellow and can't keep everything in check...besides, he'd probably be late for class if he had to sit in court to help prosecute all of those violators.

Talk to you later...
James B.

Police presence is a deterance to crime.

SkinsFan - You told me your name.

How often did auxillary officers work anyway? Couldn't have been much - try finding ANY police in town most of the time.

I think they worked about 16-20 hours a month...mostly evenings. They all had full time jobs as well. But when they did work...they often wrote more citations and assisted the public in more ways than some of the full time paid officers.

You could usually see the auxillary officers at dinner time at one of the local restaraunts with their families in tow. Nothing beats going to eat at Foster's and seeing three marked Haymarket patrol cars parked in front of it, and when you walk in the officers have wives and kids at the table eating with them. Talk about back up

Ok Ms. Voice-

I see that all your postings are now intended to slam the mayor candidate. At least I know where you are coming from now.

As one of those former officers, I can say that I have had dinner with my wife over the past 2 1/2 years maybe 6 times while volunteering my time to the town for free. I am unsure what problem you see with this. All officers have a radio and are allowed to eat and are available for calls. The auxiliary officers I worked with didn't sit in the office all day and did patrol the town.

Mr. Benjamin donated more time to the town than any other auxiliary officer. How many hours a month do you donate to help your town?

Therefore, if he wants to have a 30 min dinner break with his children, I don't see a problem with it. I am sure the rest of the even minded citizens of the town don't either.

Looking forward to your other posts!

-CTP

How about when they are over at Blue Ridge Seafood?

Also, from a security standpoint, what good is it to have all the reserve officers sitting together, with radios ready to be dispatched to a call. When a smart criminal (I know, there are not supposed to be smart ones), tracks down the schedules of these outings and times their crimes.

But hey, they are only unpaid reserve officers who are not being paid and volunteering their time.

I personnaly would rather pay higher taxes and have a paid police force out patrolling

I personally haven't eaten there.

You ARE paying for a police force. You have been paying 60,000 a year for a Chief that only has only come to work 2 -3 days a week for the past 2 1/2 years that I have been at the department. It is funny how he just recently admitted it to the paper although he has denied it the past 8 months. Your town council has failed to even look into him not showing up for work.

You pay $40,000 a year for a Sgt. that didn't patrol the streets but remained in the office almost each day from Sept. 2004 through Nov 2005 and only wrote approximately 30 traffic citations, if that many during that period.

The town spends $100,000 of YOUR tax money a year on two people that do the least amount of work in your town. You probably don't see them out eating at restaurants because they aren't at work that often.

When the town's paid police dept is at full force of 4 officers and 1 Chief, the have the capability to be a 24 hour police department. However, due to the Chief's refusal to put a proper schedule in place, the town NEVER has full 24 hour coverage. This inept schedule has been pointed out to council many times.

Really, what is your complaint about officers eating together for 30 mins? It isn't at the same time each day. It is at random hours and days. The auxiliary officers didn't work set schedules so a "criminal" isn't going to take advantage as you say. You see police officers eating together all the time.

What is your real argument or complaint?

CTP

What I am trying to say is that volunteers or not, they are serving as a police force, in the absence of the our paid officers.

We should have at least one on and two off, maintain at least 33% security, rather then having a criminal see all three cops sitting on one spot, and pulling off a crime.

As for the Blue Ridge comment, I can understand sitting at PW's, or Foster's, that is right in town. Just looking at response times.

Also you might want to look up what a supervisor does, ie: a Chief of Police, and a Sgt. Granted they should be working more then anyone else due to the fact that they are in charge of the patrols.
I do believe however if these two are doing such poor jobs as you suggest, they would not have stayed here as long as they have.

Maybe at the next council meeting you should get them paid as hourly, rather then salary. You know, have them paid for the amount of work done.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

I agree with your Supervisor comment. However, this town being as small as it is, doesn't need two supervisors. We used to only have the Chief until his one secretary left that used to do most of his work for him. Then he needed someone to handle all of his workload since he doesn't come in that often. So he promoted that person to a Sgt. in 2004. He doesn't really supervise in a sense as a Sgt does in Prince William Police Dept. Only because this is such a small town. We have two "Chiefs" and now two "Indians"

So what we need to do is have Jim who is the chief, be on call at all hours of the day to come in, if there is couple of officers who are trying to decide how to write a ticket the proper way (example). And Greg who is the Sgt. should be on seperate times from Jim (because he is our other supervisor) who can make calls on what to do. And while we are at it, we need to hire two more officers, one to be the K9 handler(Jim's other position), and one to be our motorcycle unit (Greg's other duty).

Just curious, if a dispute arrises, do you want to have to sit around and wait for one of these guys if they are writing tickets (as you said they need to do more of), and end up getting a criminal that they have to ride into the ADC, and do a report. So there you are waiting all this time, because they did what you wanted to a wrote extra tickets.

Also if Jim and Greg are working as few hours as you say, how are they making overtime? And if they are getting paid for 40 hours and only working 20, would that not be a breach of contract and be grounds for termination? Maybe we should get Councilman Tobias to motion for a vote on this.

My take on this, is that I have seen the reserve officers hanging out doing radar together. Although it would be good to have them at different areas of town, it helps pass the time for them.

I had served with Voiceoffreedom at Camp Lejeune, and he has no room to talk about guard duty. Anytime we were on guard duty down there, you worked in a pair, and you walked sentry duty. So he does not know anything about police work in a small town.

Bottom line is that if you want to have a security guard with a gun, serving and protecting as a police officer, you need to pay and make them act like a police officer. And that would entail a total restructering of the police force. And for that to happen, alot of feelings would be hurt.

First, thanks for your sevice to our Country.
Second, thanks for reminding "voice" of how guard duty works.
Third, thanks for pointing out the facts on the PD restructuring. I believe that is what most our our Council is afraid of, hurting people's feelings who already have the badge (but who don't do the job).