BULLVILLE – On May 9, at Bullville Fire Station, the Town of Crawford Democratic Party sponsored a talk by Lieutenant Dominick Blasko on the topic of "Crime In Crawford." They could have added "Then and Now" to that title, as Lieutenant Blasko began by reviewing the history of the department, which was entirely part-time back in the 1960s and before.

"Back then you could get pulled over for speeding by a guy in a pickup truck!" quipped Blasko.

The first full-time policeman in Pine Bush was today's Chief of Police, Dan McCann, who was hired in 1976. From that small beginning, the department has grown and today has seven full- time officers, seven part-time officers, two full-time civilian employees, seven part-time civilians, one dog control officer, and three crossing guards.

That staff includes two evidence technicians, two DARE officers, four school resource officers, four certified instructors, and one officer (Sergeant Meier) assigned to zone four counter terrorism work.

Lieutenant Blasko turned to some recent statistics to help fill out the picture of crime and police work in the district today.

In 2006 there were 4,176 calls for Police Service in Crawford. That includes everything that the police were called on for.

In 2007, there were 4,515. In 2008, 4,515 again, and so far in 2009 there have been 1,115.

Place those statistics next to those for arrests: there were 228in 2006; 242 in 2007; 249 in 2008; and 82 so far in 2009.

Lieutenant Blasko explained that the slight jump this year is related to a more aggressive policy of enforcing the highway safety program. That spike shows up as well in the numbers of traffic tickets given out. In 2007 it was less than 1,000, in 2008 it was slightly more than 1,000, and so far in 2009 it's 518.

Lieutenant Blasko emphasized that good police work meant being as "pro-active as possible."

"It's far better to get at the roots of something, to get deeper and to get rid of a problem, than to just react to it and keep making arrests."

Naturally, for the police of Crawford, the Pine Bush School District looms large.

"It's a small city," said Blasko. "It brings up all sorts of issues." The department has responded to the challenge in a number of ways, and Blasko enumerated some of them.

• The driving safety training program at the High School.

• The D.A.R.E. program to warn kids off drugs and gang violence.

• The presence of School Resource Officers.

• The Law & Leadership Academy, which has been going for several years now in conjunction with the School District and the military. Blasko noted that he'd seen that when troubled kids went through the Law and Leadership Academy, their problems declined."

"Referrals in those cases went down a lot.

Turning to other areas, Lieutenant Blasko discussed traffic safety and said that "selective traffic enforcement" had worked well. He said that the license plate reader, which reads passing plates and matches them with computer records of things like Amber Alerts for sexual predators, has been a success. Blasko noted that the device is on the road 16 hours a day and that it works on vehicles passing at up to 110 miles an hour. The license plate reader has recorded 36 "hits" in its first month of operation.

Lieutenant Blasko then said that the Call 911 program was still going, because many residents had not yet recognized that they can get police service with that number.

The second part of the talk was about terrorism and the local police response to that global threat. Lieutenant Blasko listed the known threats, the Islamic jihadists like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, as well as the right wing extremists right here in America, the skinhead Nazis, and the anti-abortionist bomb-throwers like Eric Rudolph.

Lieutenant Blasko reassured the audience that although the department moves to a high state of alert for the week of April 19/20, when many grisly anniversaries fall, such as the date of Adolf Hitler's birth, there is at present no real extremist activity in the town.

At the end, there was a discussion of the rash of burglaries in 2007 — 51 of them in fact. Lieutenant Blasko said that cooperation between the Crawford police and other agencies in Orange County had brought arrests in those cases. Burglaries in 2008 fell to a more normal level of 22. Blasko said that, for better protection, homeowners should talk with their neighbors and even create neighborhood watch groups.

Finally, Lieutenant Blasko said that response times in the Town of Crawford to a 911 call is kept to "five minutes or less. More than five minutes and I want to know why."

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