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New Police Chief Plans To Deploy Two Officers On Foot or Bike In Village; Says Community Policing Will Act As Deterrent To Drug Dealing, Panhandling, Loitering
By Tina Traster
For many years, the Village of Haverstraw has been a place to watch: it was infused with motivated arts and cultural organizations, a growing variety of restaurants, new retailers, and most optimistically for revival, the prospect of residential and commercial redevelopment at the former fallow Chair Factory site on the Hudson River.
In 2022, the Village won a $10 million downtown revitalization grant (DRI) from New York State, which helped fund arts organizations like Haverstraw Riverwide Arts, the Brick Museum, and pay for $4 million in infrastructure on the Chair Factory site. The Village tapped MPact Collective LLC, a Huntington Station Long Island-based developer that specializes in revitalization, to build a mixed-use project that includes a combination of market rate and affordable housing, as well as retail, commercial and a hotel for the vacant nine-acre Hudson River peninsula.
Other affordable housing developers chose the Village for projects. A bed & breakfast, Rockland’s only, opened; AirBnBs began to proliferate. The Village of Haverstraw was putting itself on the map.
It might be premature to say the Village was gentrifying but things were looking up. The Village was increasingly included in a lineup of assets to help promote Rockland County tourism. Art murals were commissioned for buildings. An annual Food Crawl that started a decade ago brought people from far and wide. More recently, a weekend ferry has been re-instated between the Village and Ossining.
But progress appears to be threatened on many fronts at once, leaving the Village at an inflection point. Several community leaders and retailers who are responsible for the upward momentum say the Village increasingly feels unsafe and unsavory. The Village is regularly riddled with drug dealing, loitering, homelessness, mental illness, and most recently, a shooting in broad daylight. They do not believe the Town of Haverstraw, which provides policing to the Village, devotes the kind of community policing a dense, urban area calls for. If this downward turn picks up steam, they believe it will undermine a decade of progress.
“We’ve worked our ass off over the past decade,” said Magda Truchan, who heads the annual Village of Haverstraw Food Crawl, which draws roughly 3,000 people every September to sample restaurants. “Now the Village looks dumpy. It’s taken a turn for the worse. It needs a facelift. It desperately needs affordable housing and for the Chair Factory to get built. Most of all, it needs police officers on foot. There is not enough police presence in the Village.”
RCBJ interviewed a raft of business leaders who agree the Village is underserved by the police. But there may be reason to believe things might be looking up.
Chief Jay Gould, recently named the Town of Haverstraw’s new chief of police, agrees community policing is a crucial element in a densely populated, Spanish-speaking urban area that has its sui generis culture and local circumstances that set it apart from policing the town at large.
Gould said his recent request from the Town to redirect two special operations officers to the Village on foot, and for more daytime hours, was approved. Gould said there are six special operation officers on the 64-member police force. He also said the department is underway with efforts to boost the total number of officers on the force to 70.
“They will be on foot or on bicycle downtown,” said Gould. “I want them communicating with business owners, having a steady face, familiar with people so they’ll come to them when they have an issue.” Both officers are bilingual.
The Police Chief estimates between 40 to 49 percent of “penal law offense calls” the force receives comes from the Village, or the zip code 10927. The police department also covers a portion of Pomona, Garnerville, Thiels, and the Village of West Haverstraw.
“Obviously crime is concentrated in the Village of Haverstraw,” Gould added.
However, crime has not necessarily increased in recent years. There were no murders between 2021 and 2024, until the recent shooting of a young man in broad daylight. The assailant is still at large and the police are offering a $5,000 award for information. A look at reported robberies since 2015 bears out a consistency in stats: 17 in 2015, 13 in 2016, 16 in 2017, 10 in 2018, 4 in 2019, 6 in 2020, 3 in 2021, 14 in 2022, and 6 for seven months of 2023. 2021 was the height of the pandemic.
Gould spent twenty years on the police force in Mount Vernon, a larger urban enclave but one with similar challenges.
“In an urban environment, I’ve always found the best way to police is to be involved with the community,” he said. “When you’re involved, when you have a stake in the game, when you show that you care about what’s going on and you’re accessible, you’re more likely to get feedback.”
Insiders say many residents in the Village view the police as the enemy, rather than a safe harbor. Lack of trust – or perhaps fear – prevents them from coming forward with tips, even when they know who’s dealing or who may have shot someone.
“In 2017 to 2018, the Village was starting to feel really positive,” said the owner of a hospitality business, who preferred to comment anonymously. “Since the pandemic, things have changed. People are coming to the Village to deal drugs because they know there are no public cameras, and the police won’t do anything. The TOR buses, free countywide, drop panhandlers in the Village, who are aggressive. We’re a densely populated area. But ‘Howie’ (Supervisor Howard Phillips) does not devote the resources we need.”
Truchan and others say the Village’s efforts to be tourist-worthy will be unsustainable if crime – or at least the perception of unsafe streets – is not dealt with. At least one insider said Rockland County Department Economic Development and Tourism Director Lucy Redzepowski has expressed concern over including the Village on a bus tour route the county and its marketing agency Alon Tourism Solutions, a Long Island-based marketing company hired in 2024 for $500,000, is planning for the fall.
RCBJ reached out to Redzepowski, who responded in an email: “Haverstraw is one of our river towns and premier tourism destinations and we will continue to promote it along with the rest of Rockland County.”
But Rockland County Executive Ed Day, also in a written comment, wrote “concerns being expressed are being addressed in a proactive manner.” However, Day did not elaborate on what specific steps are being taken to address crime apart from saying there are “increased patrols.”
Ask Gould and he’ll say the reason for the uptick in crime is bail reform. Many who live or run businesses or cultural entities in the Village say people living in facilities housing the mentally ill along Route 9W flow downtown, sometimes causing disruptions such as yelling or urinating.
“Our number one priority is to keep people safe, to make people feel safe,” said Gould. “Bail reform raised the age for juveniles. The problem with the system is frustrating for police officers who patrol, who arrest offenders. People are out walking the streets before we’re done with paperwork.”
And Gould added: “People who are acting disorderly and threatening and harassing people are turning things upside down. Nothing happens to them. They know it. They say: “I’ll be out in 15 minutes.”
Still, the Chief agrees greater presence will act as a deterrence.
“This is a high priority of mine,” he said. “I’m in a position now to implement changes, to have a community policing unit that is in tune with the community, that is known.”
Richard Sena, who wears several hats, including Village of Haverstraw Board Trustee, said there’s a link between public safety and economic development.
“As President of Haverstraw River Wide Arts and The Haverstraw Brick Museum, we are deeply committed to the success of our village’s NYS Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) in which both nonprofits have received grants,” said Sena. “Recent incidents have highlighted the urgent need to address public safety concerns, which are paramount to the economic growth and vitality of our community. Law enforcement officers walking the streets is a visible and effective deterrent to crime. A proactive police presence fosters a sense of security. When people feel safe, they are more likely to shop, dine, and invest locally.”
Some retailers, especially bakers and food purveyors, have been successful at attracting people from both within and beyond the Village, and the county, to their establishments.
One retailer said he’s seen an increase in loitering, panhandling, “waiting right outside the store, hassling customers.” The business owner said he’s not sure whether it’s homelessness or drug addicts, adding “there’s a need for greater police presence.”
Those in the hospitality business say it’s not unusual to get a last-minute cancellation, presumably from a potential guest who’s driven into the Village and has a change of mind because the streets feel uninviting or unsafe.
Several interviewed said it often takes the police ten to 15 minutes to respond to a call in the Village.
“I feel like I’m trying to push a boulder up the hill,” said a small business owner, who asked not to be named. “All the small business owners provide a service, pay taxes, and we’re not getting the support from the government we need to provide protection.”
While several business owners and community leaders agree a seedy downtown will erase years of progress, they are equally worried about the Village’s future and affordable housing. Several aired fear over a potential backslide on the Village’s commitment to build affordable housing, particularly the Chair Factory site.
Mayor Michael Kohut, Village Trustees and affordable housing advocates are running into an obstacle: Howard Phillips. The Haverstraw town supervisor has said publicly and privately that Haverstraw “has done its fair share of affordable housing and doesn’t need any more,” according to sources, and is holding up projects by expressing his opposition to PILOTs (payment in lieu of taxes.)
MPact Collective has proposed a $340 million project including 450 housing units, 70 percent of which will be a combination of affordable and 40-year rent stabilized workforce housing. The developer, which is circulating a petition to gain support, has said it cannot build the $340 million project without a PILOT.
RCBJ earlier this month reported that Phillips and his board had orchestrated a plan to get the Knights of Columbus to donate its brick building at 56 West Broad Street rather than follow through with a two-year negotiation to sell the building to St. Katherine Group of Port Chester for $2.4 million. The developer had promised more than 100 affordable units, space in perpetuity for the Knights, and a parking deck for the Village. The developer was also amenable to allocating space for a senior center.
“The Chair Factory can be taken off the table because Howard Phillips doesn’t want it?” asked Truchan. “This is going in the wrong direction. It’s very important to keep the middle class here. We need affordable housing. Who’s going to live here? EMT workers, firefighters, teachers, home health aides, keeping the elderly in place – we need to think about this.”
