NEW BERLIN – The Town of New Berlin Police Department’s annual report for 2009 shows more arrests, more traffic tickets and more calls than in the last two years.
Officer in Charge Dominick Commesso has been the administrator of the department since the previous police chief was excused in 2008 by the Town of New Berlin Board.
Commesso directs five other part-time officers who cover 92 hours of every week, working a rotating schedule that includes nights and holidays.
“I’m a believer in having police on duty when they can make the most impact. That means having late night shifts on the weekend and scheduling officers to be active when criminal activity tends to happen. It might be easier for us to work a nine to five shift, but that’s not what the community pays us to be here for. We’re here to do the best job we can with the resources we’ve got,” said Commesso.
All of the officers working at the New Berlin Police are part-time; some only help the agency during annual events or to fulfill special state grant programs such as Buckle Up New York and Stop DWI, which pay local departments for the additional staff to be on patrol without additional cost to the town’s taxpayers.
Each of the officers at the New Berlin Police also work at other area police departments, including the Norwich PD, the Chenango County Sheriff’s Office, the Owego PD and the Binghamton University Police. Altogether, the staff has more than three decades of combined law enforcement experience.
According to Commesso, the department handled 704 complaints in 2009 an increase of about 36 percent from the 451 complaints in 2008 or the 412 recorded in 2007. “These are the calls we don’t hand off to other agencies. These are the ones we go out to and take care of ourselves,” he explained.
New Berlin also saw a rise in the number of traffic tickets and criminal arrests made in the last three years. In 2009, police issued 677 traffic tickets, a 20 percent rise from the 539 handed out in 2008 and nearly double the 365 issued in 2007.
New Berlin officers issued 64 criminal charges in 2009, about a 40 percent increase from the 39 made in 2008 and more than double the 24 made in 2007.
Of those 64 arrests, 16 of them involved felony level charges – 12 of which were made in a single month after police charged multiple people in a case involving felony grand larceny and scheming to defraud charges. Four Utica women were charged with multiple felonies after writing several bad checks for hundreds of dollars each and using them at a New Berlin business. The women then took the merchandise they stole back to their hometown and resold it for cash.
Another large case for the department took place Sept. 8, when the PD and the New York State Troopers raided a local property and discovered a fledging marijuana growing operation, seizing 35 plants estimated to have a street value of several thousand dollars.
Commesso said many of the maturing plants were around 6 to 7 feet tall and were hidden among thick foliage and thorn bushes about quarter of mile into a wooded area.
