Message from the Mayor: Emergency Protocols, Independence Day
Posted on: July 1, 2016 - 8:31am
A brief note heading into the long weekend on a recent emergency, and a bit of local Revolutionary history.
Emergency Protocols
This past week, we had an incident involving police pursuit of a suspect who escaped a crashed vehicle on the Major Deegan and made his way west along Jackson Avenue. It was not clear at that time whether the suspect was armed (he was not), but the authorities had to assume he was. Helicopters and a K-9 unit also participated in the search. The County Police, Greenburgh Police and Hastings Police were all mobilized during the time that the suspect was at large and closely coordinated their efforts in the search. As the situation evolved, the police learned more about the fleeing man - that shots had been fired in the crashed car, that the woman had been kidnapped, that he was injured.
There is always a dynamic tension in how much you report out and what you say - unconfirmed rumors fly in social media, and the police work more methodically and only report what they know for a fact, while they act on their most pessimistic assumptions. They did their duty well, deploying both to protect children in their (first day at) summer day camp while also participating in the search, and providing several alerts during the day out to the Village while all this was going on. In the midst of the crisis, it's easy to lose sight of what their primary responsibility is - our safety - because social media and rumors fly and you want to know *more*. We've put in place a text messaging system so that you can receive important updates to your phone (sign up at http://www.hastingsgov.org/subscribe-text). We'll never move as fast as the rumor mill, but we will put out critical information and alerts in a timely way. Thank you for your patience and forbearance in these moments of crisis. Let the police do the jobs that they are well-trained to do, and unless you have material eyewitness evidence you feel might contribute to resolving the emergency at hand, refrain from calling the police and please await official reports.
July 4th and Hastings
July Fourth, of course, marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence and what most consider the formal start of the revolution. Hastings played a bit part in this effort, located as we were in the no-man's-land between English-occupied (and, truth be told, happily Tory) New York City and the revolutionaries encamped further north, in Dobbs, White Plains and other places. A patrol of 80 Hessian mercenaries came marauding through the area on September 30th, 1778 from a camp in north Yonkers. They were pointed north toward the Dobb’s Ferry by Peter Post (who owned a tavern on Broadway, then known as Albany Post Road, where people of both sides used to stop en route to points north or south). The Hessians were ambushed by 90 foot soldiers and 15 cavalry of the Continental Dragoons, who were awaiting them at approximately where Edgar's Lane crosses Broadway. (The Continentals were eager to avenge a massacre two days earlier of Continental soldiers caught sleeping in a farmhouse across the river at Old Tappan.) The initial ambush killed eleven Hessians, and the Continentals pursued the mercenaries down a ravine that existed then to the water's edge, killing another 12 along the way, with the many of the rest taken prisoner. The Continental forces lost no men and took no injuries. Known as "The Battle of Edgar's Lane", it is enshrined in a sign marking the spot approximately where the ambush occurred. Supposedly, in a particularly grim detail, one mounted Hessian cavalryman was decapitated by an American dragoon’s sword, and this may have led to the story of the headless horseman popularized later by local author Washington Irving. Now there’s a cheery story to kick off the weekend!
Village offices are closed on Monday. The weather is picture perfect. There are local firework displays at kid-friendly events on July 4th in Yonkers, Dobbs and Irvington. Details at the uniformly excellent http://Rivertownsguide.com
Enjoy,
Peter Swiderski
Mayor