April 11, 2025 Police Chief Scott (S) by Maria (M)
M: Chief Scott, what do you love about Rosendale?
S: Rosendale is definitely a diverse community, that’s for sure. I have longstanding ties to the community, it is a special place, so I think you probably heard that quite often from a lot of people that have been here for a long time. It goes back to the days when I was younger. My father grew up in the Rosendale area. I spent a lot of time out here when I was younger and actually was close family friends with Chief Lasher, which I’m sure you’ve heard that name before, and Chief Lasher was the first police chief for the town of Rosendale Police Department.
Prior to the town of Rosendale Police Department, there was a village police department that dates way back. The town took over the police department and it became the town police department in 1975.
So as I said, Chief Lasher was the first chief of the department and a longtime family friend, which ultimately led to me coming here. Law enforcement was not on my radar in the beginning. It’s not what I actually went to school for. But I was working in the corporate world and that changed and I found the law enforcement and it was a very good fit, so this was the first police department that I worked at. And after some time here, I went to another agency and I was there for 24 years and I had been asked to come back to the town of Rosendale. And ultimately, I did. So it’s been good, it’s a really good community, there’s a lot of people that have been here for a long time, it’s quite honestly, it’s a really good place to raise a family. It’s a very good place.
Population wise, we’ve seen the numbers dwindle a little bit with the loss of IBM and then we have a lot of younger families that are moving in. So currently after, as you mentioned, 9-11, we saw an influx of people coming in and now after COVID had happened, we’re also starting to see an influx in people coming in. Williams Lake was a big part of this community for a long time and it has been offline now for several years. They are now charging full steam ahead and that’s going to be bringing more people to the town and it’s going to be ultimately good for the community. There’s a lot of things that are coming.
So I think, there’s a lot of things about Rosendale. You know, when you talk to some people, they, Rosendale, they think that’s Main Street, they think it’s the half mile between the two bridges and Rosendale is much bigger than that, you know.
M: That’s why we included all the hamlets on our little postcard map.
S: I do the exact same thing on our Facebook page and everything I reference, because we do have all the different hamlets and, you know, one of the things that I’ve encountered as an issue is also with regards to when we look at grants and stuff is the actual population because when you go way back, you know, parts of Rosendale are still listed as City of Kingston because of the rural districts for mailing. So a lot of Binnewater area comes under Kingston. I always have to fight to make sure that our population numbers are correct when it comes to grants. And I don’t believe they are. I think we’re closer to 7,000 right around now.
It’s an interesting place where we’re right in the middle of the county. We have three different school districts that all intersect here and we’re halfway between Kingston and New Paltz, but we’re also the direct link from 32 to 209, which is used for all traffic that’s going south down toward the town of Wawarsing or Village of Ellenville. So as a result of those components, we get a lot of vehicular traffic. We have a lot of pass-through people that are not from this area. That is a large burden on the community, because the number of vehicles that are coming through and then if something happens, it happens in Rosendale. You know, it’s kind of the standing joke amongst the other police agencies that our radios are always busy. There’s always something going on. A lot of the public doesn’t always know that.
That’s one of the things that came out when we went through police reform a few years ago because a lot of people don’t know what the police department does. They see the car and they’re like, “yeah, there’s nothing going on in Rosendale.” Again, those are the same people that are thinking that half mile between the two bridges. If you’re out in High Falls Park handling a call and then your next call comes in and it’s on Creek Locks Road and it’s bordering the town of Ulster, that’s a 20 minute ride. There’s no direct routes. One of the things that came about with those meetings was where the people realized that, “oh, wait a minute, this department is a little bigger than what we were thinking that half mile, they are involved in more things.”
One of the things that we did when I came back was we launched onto social media. And given the age demographic of our community, we chose Facebook as our outlet to share on social media. We found this was the most user friendly, especially for an older generation to operate on. So we post our arrests there, but a lot of what goes on there is stuff that is directly related to the communities, things that we’re doing. If there’s snowstorms that are pending, or ice storms or if we’re closing roads for a race and stuff like that.
S: So for us, it’s a newsletter that we can get out directly to the community. And again, that goes back to a lot of people not knowing what your police department is doing. We’re a lot more transparent now than we’ve ever been. Technology has progressed and it’s easier and easier for us to get information out there. I can manage a Facebook page anywhere in the world on a cell phone. I don’t have to be at a desk putting everything in all of the time. What I would say to the community as a whole is you have a very, very good police department. You really do.
M: So it’s one of the things you love about Rosendale.
S: Absolutely I have a lot of pride in this police agency. Like I say, from the first chief who was a friend, we’ve had a number of chiefs and everybody has contributed something. And you know, I’ve built upon what was started by others and we brought in here a very good team of officers. Our officers are very highly sought out.
M: Do you get cherry picked by other police departments?
S: We do. The officers that come from here traditionally have moved up in the ranks of those other agencies. So that’s a testament to the core training that we do here. And that has only gotten broader and broader. I retired and came back to the town of Rosendale. I’ve just hired a police officer who worked here, similar to me, who went to another agency. He had just retired. He’s going to be coming back here. We’ve held supervisory ranks in the state police and the sheriff’s office and many municipal police agencies in the tri-county areas. I’m very, very proud of this police department. I have a very good team here.
M: Beautiful. And what has kept you in Rosendale?
S: I live locally, that’s probably part of it. When I started back here, I had an expectation of where I wanted this department to go. I am still in the process of completing that goal. One of the things that I wanted was for us to become an accredited police agency, and that was a major undertaking. It was something that I couldn’t have done without the officers and without my core staff here to do. I’d have to go back and double check the numbers, but I want say that there’re 335 eligible police agencies in New York state that can seek accreditation, out of that there are only 175 agencies that have become accredited.
M: And what does accreditation mean?
S: Accreditation sets the professional standards in a police department. You have to have policies, procedures on the way you do things. They have to meet a criteria that the state has put forth. It’s not easy to do. We are very lucky as a small agency to have been able to achieve it. Normally, you need a larger agency that has a lot of different facets that can pull from each other. So us receiving our accreditation was a very big thing.
M: Bravo!
S: Yeah. I’m very proud. We really move forward. Our rules and regulations, policy and procedure manual, you know, it is up to date. We’ve worked for years with a service. If there’s a change in case law that comes down within a matter of 24 hours, we can change policy and stuff.
The police department as a whole has also evolved. One of the things that I brought back in with me is the concept of being a first responder. So my officers are not just police officers, my officers are first responders. Before we had the ambulance shortage that Ulster County is facing now, we have been responding to medical calls as anything from a first responder through an EMT. We hold those ranks. We’ve trained in the past with Mobile Life when they were servicing the community. The officers learn where everything is on the ambulance. They respond with an AED, a turnout bag, an oxygen that goes on patrol with them every day. They go to every medical, as long as they’re available, provide the baseline information, provide basic life support services. And then when we have a paramedic arrive on scene, they can give the briefing as to what is done. They can work hand in hand with the medical team and say, okay, what do you need? Because, you know, you’re always going to, you’re always going to default to the highest level of training there. So, you know, we are it until we get a paramedic on the scene, then it’s “okay, what do you guys need?We’re going to be transporting. We need this, this and this.” The officer can go out to the ambulance, he’s familiar with it because he’s gone through the training, knows where everything is. He can bring the stair chair in, if that’s what it’s needed. Drop the stair chair off, whether they’re still working on the patient, they can get the stretcher ready outside or bring it in, backward, whatever the case may be. And then they can work in tandem together and ultimately get that taken care of.
We respond to fire calls. Some fire calls we can handle. Because they’re fire extinguishers, some things are just an evacuation. Other times, we see that it’s bigger, it’s a fully involved structure fire. We know that we need to start blocking off roads and securing a scene and allowing the fire department to get in.In the town of Rosendale, I have five different fire companies, we work well with every single one of them.
M: Oh, the amount of coordination that that must take!
S: There is. There is a lot of coordination that happens and then we work with Ulster County Emergency Management as well. There’s a lot of things that happen. We put out an annual report every year that explains what we do, that gives you a rundown.
M: And so, what are your concerns for Rosendale? What worries you or what do you think we should look out for? What do you look out for?
S: Well, there’s a lot of things. I see that we have growth and development coming, which is good. I think that as a community, we need to expand the tax base ultimately. That’s something that’s very sensitive to everybody, especially the last few years with the loss of industry, with COVID and the changeover of working from home and things along those lines. After 9-11, we had a large influx of people. We’ve had a large influx of people after COVID. We’re seeing more and more people coming up from down south. I don’t want to just put everything on New York City, but few years ago, we had problems in the High Falls area with large [numbers of] people coming because it was posted that it was one of the top 10 swimming holes in New York State.
M: I’m a Brucevillian and I know about that. Oh my gosh.
S: For a while there, we had, we were averaging a drowning every two years.
M: I remember the last one, It was so sad.
S: Our officers are the first ones on the scene. That actual drowning was about 25 yards over our town line, but given our proximity, we’re always the first ones on the scene. So we have a pretty good working relationship with regards to the handling of drownings with the state police, Ulster County County Sheriff’s office and 911. We’ll establish the scene and start calling in what is needed. When the other agencies get there, everybody has its own component, but we work together. I currently have a member right now who is on the Ulster County water rescue team and he’s going to dive school next week. So it’s a resource that we have.
M: So you see people drawn to the community, though social media, and you need to manage the misbehavior of that.
S: Absolutely. The thing with Rosendale is, our primary industry years ago was cement. The way we get cement is we mined. We have caves and caverns and we have water and we have caves that are flooded with water. And these were all things that I took into account when we looked at a water rescue team. Obviously we, as a small agency, cannot staff and have a water rescue team, but the county has one. I can put somebody there that receives the training and they bring that training back to us. As a result of all the drownings that we’ve had in the past, all of our cars are equipped with throw ropes. When the officers get there, those throw ropes can be thrown to people that are currently fighting to stay afloat. They can also be used to tie off the officers when we have to go in and try a basic recovery. In the case of the ones that we had in High Falls, they end up becoming recoveries.
We had a gentleman who was working for a local power company up on the lines or clearing the right of ways up in Whiteport and he got swept down into a cavern 100 feet down. You know, for that, we have basic training. We could get down to 50 feet, but we called upon the Bloomington Fire Department that came, but also Kingston Fire Department with their rope team.Those guys were great.
We have a lot of walking trails, a lot of caves and a lot of caverns. Last week we actually hosted a school here with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It was a basic wilderness search class. They learn how to work with the forest rangers doing the different search patterns that they do, a grid search, for instance. That need was underscored with this gentleman who went into a cave because he was about a quarter mile up into the woods from the roadway. We look at the Williams Lake property or we look at the properties down in Tillson or even on Mohonk Preserve off of Mountain Road that are attached to the rail trail, it’s only a matter of time before we have people that are coming to this community because they’ve read it on social media or, you know, top 10 swimming holes and they start exploring and find themselves in difficulty, get themselves into trouble. Then we get these calls. So that class was very, very well attended. I think we have 15 people from other agencies altogether that came. They had a classroom in the beginning of the morning and then in the field over here, they started their grid searches and they did their practicals. And then from there, they were into the wooded section here and got to actually apply what they’ve learned.
The next step is we are going to be selecting some people out of that class and they’re going to go to what’s called a “crew chief’s training.” And that training is going to move them up to the next level so that they can start to coordinate before the forest rangers get there because forest rangers cover a region, so it might be easier for us. Let’s say in Ulster County, I have three or four crew chiefs and we have an incident here in town. A, I’ll have a crew chief locally, but B, I could have another one come in from, say, Saugerties and they might be here, you know, 45 minutes to an hour before we get a forest ranger here. They can start to coordinate with 911, with emergency management and with our fire departments and any other volunteers that they may have. The way searches work in state land, the forest rangers are the lead agency. We’re here to support them. If it’s here, they’re here to support us. I’ve been working hand in hand. The Ulster County Emergency Management is something that I saw a need for, proposed it to them and they’re like, yeah, we see the need. It’s very easy to get misplaced and get hurt here. We’re a rural community, still.
M: This is such a rough job, I can’t believe that you’re managing all this. Why? What has motivated you? Why have you become such a wonderful caretaker of all of this?
S: I have a lot of pride in this community and in this police department. I know, I had goals. I know where I wanted it to be and ultimately I’ll hand it off to the right person. I am a father. So both my children are raised and now living outside the area. I do a lot of things, but I have always. There’s things I want to see with the same on the county level. The last three years I’ve been President of the Ulster County Police Chiefs Association. And before that, I was the Vice President and the Secretary for I can’t tell you how many years.
M: So community service is a thing that you’re drawn to.
S: I am. You know, when it comes to police work, I learned a lot from very good people along the way, very good police leaders. I’ve also learned a lot from very bad ones, and that is what molded me. I don’t want to see law enforcement in this county as a whole going that way. It needs to go this direction. And that’s what we’re pushing for.
M: I’m getting a good vibe here.
S: I’m glad. When we look at police reform that we went through, we needed to go through it. We saw things on the national level and we tried to bring it into the local level and a lot of it didn’t really carry over. There were definitely some positives. I’m glad we went through it. It gave us some insight as to the way we were perceived, and it also provided our community with some insight as to the way we do things. In the annual report, I think I actually say that in the beginning is just stopping a car because they were speeding or whatever. There’s community problems that happen all the time. I would get an email about a car parked in front of somebody’s house that’s been there for too long. I get that complaint. I get a complaint that they didn’t like that officer. I get tons of compliments about our officers.
What did I want to see change? When I was in the academy back in 1990, I was taught when you stopped a car, you asked the person for their driver’s license. And you would say to me, “why?” And I would say to you, “I’ll be happy to explain to you as soon as you give me your driver’s license and your registration.” That has already set up to be a confrontational exchange because I’m asking you for something. What are the two things that you want to know when you’re stopped? Who stopped at me? And why am I being stopped? Those are the two things that everybody wants to know. But we were trained– “I’ll tell you, but you have to give me what I want first.” That’s, that was always the thing.
M: So that’s a bit of a power move.
S: It is. But what people will say is, “he was on a power trip.” No, he wasn’t on a power trip. (And I say he universally). That’s what he was trained to do. During the course of my career, I went through a lot of different trainings. And one of the trainings was a “verbal judo training”. There were some good takeaways from that. But I didn’t like that program either. Because some of the things were, I would tell you why I stopped you. And I would say to you, “I’ve stopped you for doing 35 or 55 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone. Is there any justified reason for that?” Well, again, that’s creating a contentious situation.
One of the things, one of the things that I instilled here, and I was adamant about, and that I learned and it worked for me, and, and we’ve seen very, very good results here is when we stop you. First thing we’re going to tell you, “hi, I’m Officer Shaffrick. The reason I stopped you, you’re going a little too fast. I clocked you at 55 miles an hour. It’s only a posted 30 mile an hour zone.” It answers the first two questions that you have. “Who are you and why are you stopping me?” And then from there, we can, we can talk about it. Obviously I’m going to ask you for your license because I got to verify who you are. I’m going to ask you for the registration, the insurance and stuff. And then if the officer writes you a ticket, it happens. What he will tell you is, listen, you have the right to plead guilty or not guilty. They don’t look at your driving history when they have you stopped on the side of the road. They’re looking to find out if you’re valid or you’re suspended. That’s the only thing that they’re looking at.
So, knowing that, when you receive the ticket, you have the right to plead guilty or not guilty. Most, most people end up pleading not guilty. When you come to court the officer will look at your driving abstract and say, “oh, okay. Well, I see here you haven’t had a traffic ticket in 10 years, let’s see if we can come to an agreement on something.” That’s normally the way that works. Now, if you come into court and you got, you know, three speeding tickets and you have a whole history, obviously you didn’t learn the lesson the first couple of times and you continue to not obey the law that you signed on the bottom of your license that you’re going to obey. So you might not get the reduction you think that you should be receiving. But the goal with traffic enforcement is to gain compliance. When we post a sign out there that the speed limit is 30, the state or the municipality is asking for voluntary compliance. If we stop you, it’s because voluntary compliance didn’t work.
M: That’s a lot of emotional intelligence that goes into rethinking that, I think.
S: We have to. Law enforcement as a whole has to. We’ve changed our practices over the years, we’ve continued to evolve, sometimes not as quickly as we should, but we’re definitely getting better. I meet with the different police chiefs in the county once a month and we address problems as they’re coming up, things that we see. It’s made for a much better relationship between all of our agencies, but also the trickle down effect that goes to the officers, and hopefully it’s getting out to the public. Does law enforcement have idiots? Absolutely. We have our share of idiots. No different than any other profession. We have bad doctors, we have bad lawyers, we have bad construction workers. There’s “bad” in every single field. We do our very best to weed it all out. When we’re looking at people now, and this wasn’t always the case. When we look to hire somebody now, they’re going through an entire background investigation – medical exams, physical exams, psychologicals, and polygraphs. We do our best to weed them out, but are you going to get one? Absolutely, you are. When I had my background investigation done, when I first started, I would tell you that my background investigation was probably about that thick. [About a quarter of an inch.] That was 35 years ago. An investigation now is probably about that thick. [About an inch]
M: Wow.
S: I have them locked in my cabinet. We just got done doing some. It takes better than two months to do a background investigation on somebody now, before we can hire them. We are getting a different caliber of people. One of the problems that we’re having in law enforcement was that we were vilified, and some rightfully so, I’ll say that, but as a result, we don’t have the numbers of people taking the tests that we used to have. Locally we’ve had a real hard time the last few month. We’ve had guys that will go to other agencies, remember, they’re cherry-picking, because you get a larger agency. I’ll use the Town of Poughkeepsie as an example. I’ve lost several members to the Town of Poughkeepsie police department. I can’t compete. We can’t compete with them, money-wise, benefit-wise, or anything else. I want to make sure that we are providing the best service we can, so that you get the most bang for the dollar here, from your police department. That’s what I said. We’re not just police officers. I always refer to us as first responders, because we are responding to everything.
M: What would you like to see happen here? What ideas do you have? And it could be about everything.
S: I don’t know. I tell you, I’d really like to see Rosendale succeed. I’d really like to see it.
M: And what does success mean?
S: We’re going to see more growth – it’s already started. We are coming out of a depressed time with the loss of Williams Lake, IBM, and then the younger people that were the children of, whose parents worked at IBM, some have stayed, some have moved on. I believe that Rosendale, the entire town, not just the little hamlet between the two bridges, is a good place to raise a family. We are centrally located. It’s a beautiful area. When you’re coming up the throughway, you start by seeing Sky Top from the thruway down by the Plattekill service area, and as you continue north, you’re following that entire ridge right into Rosendale. When you get above exit 18 and we’re going into the dip there, that’s all our community.
I go to the Woodcrest Bruderhof on a regular basis, I do a lot with them. They have a breakfast that they opened up to the community once a year, and they bring business leaders and things like that, and it’s kind of a standing joke because a lot of people talk about the amazing view that they have on the on the terrace, and that’s normally my cue, and I’ll get up and I do my portion of the speech, and I’ll say, “you look out over this beautiful view and everything from that window right there to that window right there, that’s all the town of Rosendale. That’s what you’re in.
It is a beautiful, beautiful community. Tying back into what I’m doing with the water rescue team, and doing the search and rescue stuff as well, it’s a rugged terrain, and if you really get off of the rail trail like in Tillson, and get up into the Mohonk preserve, and the big rocks and the crevices that are up in there and stuff. I’ve mountain biked up there in the past, and it’s not uncommon to see me out on my bicycle here in town on a nice day or on a weekend, yeah, it’s gorgeous. I may not stay in Rosedale, but I come through and I’ll stop on Main Street and have a cup of coffee on a Sunday afternoon if I’m out for a ride.
I’d like to see us continuing to develop. I think that the town is doing it smartly. I think there’s more people that have expressed an interest. There’s a good community vibe here. I’d like to see businesses mesh that are going to support that and that it grow a little bit. We don’t need strip malls, and conversely, we don’t need a bunch of artist studios either, but we need a nice blend of both
M: Anything else you’d like to share?
S: I can’t think off the top of my head right now.
M: This is so fun. I had a feeling it’d be really interesting. On 9-11, I lived way, way downtown by the World Trade Center. I worked for months in one of the respite centers for the recovery effort. It was the first time I’d ever hung out with cops before. And it really changed my attitude.
S: In all honesty, New York City is a little different. We actually have a department psychologist on staff who is from New York City. He was actually one of the people assigned to 9-11. And he did that for about three years.
M: Oh, that was terrible. We all were traumatized then.
S: We actually have a very good wellness program here that we put into place. We’ve put together department chaplains, we have a peer-to-peer program and we tie into a wellness program that the county is running. Excuse me, that they received funding for. So, to try to address some of the issues police work as a whole is evolved, which is a good thing.
M: Thank you so much for taking time out to talk. Everyone who gets interviewed gets a sticker!
S: Well, thank you.
M: Don’t get it wet. It’s only paper!
