Friday, July 2, 2010

Operation Expanded Shield Floods the Streets With Police

If you noticed more police presence than usual on Middletown streets between four and 10 PM Thursday, it wasn't your imagination, but a planned surge of police presence and checks to rout out parole violators, non-complying registered sex offenders and motor vehicle violators.

Designed, not coincidentally, to culminate just before the 11 PM TV news (in addition to the arrests tonight, the chief promised the gathered TV reporters more information for their "next news cycle"), the completed surge in police presence, which included officers from all departments including administrative staff, state police, state drug enforcement officers and at least one DEA officer, proved successful, according to Acting Police Chief Patrick McMahon, and Captain William McKenna who ran the operation.

"And not a dime of overtime was spent," McMahon said.

The regular night shift of 10 patrol officers was augmented with 37 more and netted 11 arrests including 3 parole violators, 3 non-compliant registered sex offenders, and a drug arrest of a parole violator, Andre Allen who was caught possessing 12 grams of crack cocaine and 7 grams of powder cocaine.

There were also 36 vehicle stops for a variety of offenses.

When asked whether Expanded Shield was a gimmick that would only net short term effect, McMahon said that the success of the operation would encourage the force to recreate the surge at another unannounced occasion, but that the expanded presence proved that if the department were fully staffed it could have a positive effect on stemming city crime.

6 comments:

Mr. Fixit said...

WOW! The police forego overtime while pursuing criminals. How about foregoing overtime for civic events such as the Fireworks????? Or, perhaps some police would volunteer their time - like the many other volunteers that contribute their presence to the success of such events. The same goes for other city employees. It's the right thing to do. Other Unions, such as the Trades and the Musicians do the right thing; why not the Protective Services?

Anonymous said...

I watched this on TV last night and had to ask the all to obvious question...if crime is as evident as they made it out to be, why aren't they catching criminals every night. yea, I get that they are understaffed and were saying, "see what we could do if..." I'd ask what kind of corrective measures be put in place to catch criminals the other 364 days with the same urgency without it costing 3-4X more.

Anonymous said...

DOING DUI CHECKS AT 6 PM ON A WEDNESDAY IS SILL, POLICE WEREN'T AROUND BY THE TIME THE BARS LET OUT

Anonymous said...

i disagree i think they're more likely to find the chronic alcoholic type DUI people who are out there every day at this time

mdtwngrl said...

They should do this on a weekend, that's when more of the DUI's occur at all hours of the day.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.