Police K-9 dog
Police Chief Dan McMahon asked the board to authorize the expenditure of $10,000 to purchase a new K-9 dog to replace the one that died recently. He said that the town has had two dogs since the 1970s and that one was trained for drug detection and another for missing persons. He explained that the dogs accompany the officers on their regular patrols.
In response to Councilman Bianco’s questions regarding whether there was a need for the dog and why the Town couldn’t use either the state or county dogs, Chief McMahon explained that the state dogs weren’t appropriate because they were trained as bloodhounds. He said that Yorktown’s dogs were “invaluable”when they were needed, adding that they saved manpower when the PD had to check alarm calls for large commercial buildings and to search for missing persons.
Councilman Bianco also raised the question of other municipalities requesting the services of the dogs. In response, the Chief explained that we’re a regional facility and that there’s a mutual sharingamong the municipalities, but that if some don’t have anything to offer Yorktown, then his department is less likely to offer them a service. Emphasizing the regional nature of some of our services, such as the pending Citizens Emergency Response Team program (CERT), Supervisor Grace said the town should start looking for money to help finance these services.
As for the expense of the dogs, Supervisor Grace said that the $10,000 purchase price for “a piece of equipment” was very minor in the department’s $9 million budget.
The board will vote on the authorization at the June 5th meeting.
School Resource Officers (SRO)
Town Board, 5/22/2012
Without any discussion, the board approved SRO contracts with the Yorktown and Lakeland school districts.
Cortlandt has not signed a new contract to cover its share of the SRO at Cooper Beech Middle School.
