ROL: One unanswered question about the constables who patrol Kiryas Joel and control crowds is whether their vehicles may use flashing red lights and sirens when racing to calls.Village officials saw no problem when they outfitted five Chevy Impalas and a Jeep Cherokee as though they were police cars. But questions by the state police and a legal opinion from the state Attorney General’s Office has led to legislation in Albany this year that would ensure Kiryas Joel’s constables can use their lights and sirens.State troopers still patrol this low-crime Hasidic community, but as the population has climbed, village officials have increasingly relied upon their own constables, who are not Orthodox Jews, to patrol overnight, during the Sabbath and on Jewish holidays.
Many, if not all, are trained as peace officers, a designation below that of a police officer.
The Attorney General’s Office issued an informal opinion in February 2005 telling officials in Brocton, a village of 1,500 on the southwestern tip of New York, that state law wouldn’t allow its peace officers to operate flashing lights and sirens on their vehicles.
Because of that opinion and state police questions, Kiryas Joel officials asked their representatives in Albany – Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt, R-Greenwood Lake, and Sen. William Larkin, R-Cornwall-on-Hudson – to introduce a one-paragraph bill declaring that Kiryas Joel’s public safety officers could use flashing lights and sirens.
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