A look inside the Warwick Police Department

WARWICK — Last year in June the Town of Warwick Police Chief Thomas McGovern Jr. promoted Greenwood Lake native John D. Rader from sergeant to lieutenant in a ceremony held at Warwick Town Hall. That provisional appointment is now in the final stages of becoming permanent and Rader described his first six months in his new role as eye opening.

“The first six months has been an education in the administrative functions of running a police department,” said Rader who is a 2009 graduate of the FBI National Academy. He is the liaison for all of Warwick’s fire departments, ambulance corps, police and public works departments.

In his new position Rader oversees training for the department, which includes work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through the National Incident Management System (NIMS). And he has been focused on overseeing patrol operations and working with the sergeants on a daily basis.

Modernization
Warwick now has two lieutenants, Thomas Maslanka who works during the day and Rader who works evenings. The department is also bringing on new equipment like an all-terrain vehicle and remote cameras that can be monitored from inside the police station.

“Police work is expensive and difficult,” said McGovern, who has kept a level budget since 2008. The department’s new five-year plan includes the recording of interviews, a new booking area that includes digitizing fingerprints and new breath testing equipment.

Guns
The tragedies in Aurora, Colorado, Oak Creek, Wisconsin and most recently Newtown, Connecticut, have prompted letters to the editor about guns and the fear of gun violence among residents.

“Guns always draw the most attention but in reality there is a percentage of every society that is insane,” said McGovern about people who will use whatever means they have to inflict lethal damage.

Nonetheless, shrinking funding for law enforcement at every level of government has made it more difficult for police to prevent the kind of violence seen most recently inside an elementary school.

“The Newtown incident has redefined our relationship with the school districts in town and officers now randomly patrol the schools during the day to be visible and be vigilant,” said McGovern, who also supports the county’s Save a Life gun buyback program.

The chief was critical of the recent publication of the names and addresses of pistol permit holders saying it “invites danger for those innocent people.”

Whether it is homegrown or from abroad, “terrorism knows no rules,” said Rader, who added that Warwick participates in local counter terrorism efforts by conducting monthly interviews with businesses perceived by the state police as avenues for terrorism.

A busy department
Each year the department gets approximately 28,000 calls, making it among the busiest in Orange County. Although the department has five fewer full-time police than it did six years ago, the number of calls is increasing. Calls to police include complaints about barking dogs and bears rummaging through garbage. Police responded to an armed bank robbery in October 2009 in pastoral Pine Island and investigate many fatal motor vehicle accidents.

Warwick has also become a tourist destination with visiting traffic increasing seasonally. One of the advantages to having a second lieutenant is that sergeants can patrol the miles of road around town that include county road intersections that are known to be dangerous.

Traffic safety is the department’s primary objective and Rader oversees the traffic safety grants that help police enforce seat belt and child safety seat laws as well as enforce drunk and aggressive driving laws.

“If there’s a way to make the roads safer we want to make them safer,” said McGovern.

Drugs not an inner city problem

Both Rader and the police chief agree that drugs – both synthetic and prescription – are the number one problem facing Warwick police. Heroin specifically is a big problem because it is cheap. Drugs also drive up numbers of other crimes. For example, burglars used to steal electronics but now addicts break in to get prescription drugs from the medicine cabinet. Since 2009 there have been 417 cases involving drugs and 285 drug arrests in Warwick.

In addition to drug-related crimes, police also respond to medical emergencies involving drug overdoses of which two or three happen each month.

Roots run deep
Rader is the first in his family to serve as police. He is a graduate of John S. Burke Catholic High School in Goshen where he then attended the police academy. He began his career as a part-time police officer in Greenwood Lake in 1993, went full-time in 1995 and moved over to the town’s police department in 2000. He also is Greenwood Lake’s fire chief.

“I’m living the dream,” said Rader about his call to serve the community in which he was born and raised and where he is raising his own family.

By Birgit Bogler