Photo by: Shutterstock The Suffolk County Police Department and Suffolk County Crime Stoppers will highlight several unsolved cases on the department’s social media pages during National Crime Victims’ Rights week from April 18 through April 24. Crime Stoppers is offering fast-cash rewards for information leading to an arrest in each of the cases. The rewards will be issued within 72 hours of an arrest. Crime Stoppers has been proven to be an effective crime solving program since its inception in Suffolk County in 1994. During that time, more than $665,000 has been rewarded to tipsters who reported information anonymously and close to 2,800 arrests have been made.
The Reporter honored by New York Press Association Credit: Don Bindler
Your hometown paper brought home some prestigious awards for editorial excellence from the New York Press Association’s (NYPA) spring convention, held April 7 to 9 in Saratoga Springs.
The association’s “Better Newspaper Contest” fielded 2,440 entries from 151 newspapers across the state, and were judged by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association.
Peter Waldner, the Reporter’s editorial cartoonist, took first place in the Reporter’s circulation division for his stunning cartoon paying tribute to front-line health care professionals, which the NYPA judges, honoring his work, said: “Mr. Waldner captures the overwhelming feeling or gratitude that most readers feel (felt) during the first few months of the pandemic.”
Shelter Island Police Department (Credit: Tara Smith)
The Police Reform Committee members spent Thursday morning reviewing questions to include in an online survey likely to be made public by the end of February.
The committee was set up in response to a state mandate for all departments within New York to determine ways to improve policing.
Committee member Don D’Amato, who has been researching platforms to offer a survey to the public, said Survey Monkey is the best platform for this particular effort.
The survey shouldn’t be confused with complaint forms filed by those who have issues with the handling of a particular case. Those issues should be filed either with the Shelter Island Police Department or with Supervisor Gerry Siller so they can be investigated and appropriately handled.
Shelter Island Police Department officers on Oak Tree Lane in Silver Beach the afternoon of March 19, 2018. (Credit:STRINGER NEWS PHOTO)
At the beginning of the year, the Reporter is looking back on some significant stories we brought to our readers in 2020. He thought he was prepared for the worst. But what Father Charles McCarron discovered, checking on an elderly friend and colleague one midday two years ago, was a horrific and heartbreaking crime, something he said he could never have prepared for.
A crime that is still unsolved
“It’s been kind of like a PTSD event for me,” Father McCarron, the pastor of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, said last week.