Date: Fri 02-Aug-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

Lysaght-police-chief

Full Text:

with cut: Newtown's New Police Chief Talks About His Priorities

B Y A NDREW G OROSKO

Since he began work here in mid-July, Police Chief James E. Lysaght, Jr, has

been learning the lay of the land, driving an unmarked police car in exploring

the town's southeast, southwest, northwest and northeast police patrol

sectors.

He's also been meeting the many people he will be dealing with as the town's

top law enforcement officer.

The police chief spoke about his approach to local law enforcement in a

wide-ranging interview this week at the police station.

The public is bombarded with misinformation on the nature of police work on

numerous television programs, creating a false sense of what law enforcement

entails, the chief said. Law enforcement isn't simply a series of guns being

fired and criminals being pursued in high-speed motor vehicle chases, he said.

The sheer repetition of such televised images, though, tends to reinforce such

a concept of police work in the public mind, he noted.

To explain the basics of law enforcement to the public, the police department

plans to hold a fourth session of Citizens Police Academy starting in

September, Chief Lysaght said. Former Police Chief Michael DeJoseph started

the instructional program.

Chief Lysaght said he intends to make traffic law enforcement a priority. At

Monday's police roll call meeting before the day shift began, police discussed

their traffic law enforcement duties.

Chief Lysaght, a former Bristol Police Department captain, comes from a police

patrol background. His identification with the uniformed patrol officers is

apparent. He wears a crisp police uniform bearing pairs of gold stars on the

collar of his white shirt, signifying the rank of chief. Previous police

chiefs have worn business suits.

"Traffic enforcement is very important," he said, adding the public must obey

motor vehicle laws. If the public adheres to the traffic laws, then the police

are doing their job, he said.

"I'm going to use the media as much as possible to get my word out to the

public" about the need to prevent auto accidents, he said. Such accidents

exact a heavy toll on those involved, he said.

Businesses have a stake in preventing auto accidents because business owners

don't need traffic mishaps occurring in front of their properties, he added.

The Windshield

Looking at the world through the windshield of a police car is quite different

from being a civilian, he said.

On encountering an accident, police may face the screams of children, the

smell of blood, and streets covered with broken glass, he said. Chief Lysaght

said he would rather have patrol officers hand out traffic tickets to

teenagers than have those officers tell the teenagers' parents their children

are in the hospital with serious, and possibly fatal, injuries from a traffic

accident.

Chief Lysaght said he is developing a working knowledge of which local

intersections and road sections are the most likely scenes of auto accidents.

He noted the police department operates with limited resources, so priorities

must be set on which areas will receive the tightest traffic control.

Analyzing statistics on accidents creates a basis for traffic enforcement, he

said. The police chief's use of statistics to analyze traffic problems is

evident at the police station where a set of color-coded, large-scale town

road maps are displayed to depict the sites of motor vehicle accidents and

crime incidents.

Besides focusing on keeping local roads safe, the police will work to enforce

laws concerning narcotics, drugs and alcohol, Chief Lysaght said. Alcohol is

the most-abused drug in society, he said.

"In any community, if there's money (to buy drugs), there are drugs," he said.

"Drugs are an important concern to me as a law enforcement officer and as a

parent," he said. The police department's Drug Abuse Resistance Education

(DARE) program prepares school children to avoid the perils of substance

abuse.

Ultimately, both the Board of Education and the Police Department share the

mission of helping children mature, he said. Due to social changes in recent

years, police departments have assumed more and more of the social role model

duties which had been held by families, churches and schools, he said.

Burglaries

To deal with local burglaries, police plan to increase the local number of

neighborhood crime watch programs and focus efforts on crime prevention, Chief

Lysaght said.

To explain the problems that police face in responding to false burglar

alarms, the police chief said he's interested in producing a cable television

program on the topic to be aired on the local community access station.

Last calendar year, the police responded to about 2,200 burglar alarms.

However, only 11 of those alarms actually involved burglaries, the chief said.

Conservatively, two policemen spend about 30 minutes each responding to such

calls, thus pulling them away from their regular duties, he said.

Chief Lysaght came to Newtown after working for more than 24 years in Bristol,

rising to the second-in-command there.

Although Bristol is almost three times larger than Newtown in population, "The

crimes are the same," he said. Newtown may have a lower crime rate than

Bristol, but the types of crimes are similar, he stressed. Newtowners suffer

from the effects of crime as do people in cities, he said.

Of the local police, Chief Lysaght said "We have a tremendous number of

well-educated, college-trained officers in this department."

"Your greatest strength is your people," he said of the need to provide

continuing training to police officers to help them maintain a "fine edge"

while working in the field. There's a tremendous potential for improvement, he

said.

Besides added training, the police department's physical facilities need

improvements and additional equipment is required, he said.

According to the new police chief, the police department will seek to meet the

public's demand for service in a reasonable, responsible manner.