Good: they were always just ineffective, expensive theater, and once they were allowed to leave their white gloves at headquarters, it was lousy theater at that

Greenwich petition calling for cops to direct traffic on the Avenue withdrawn

tough love (I don’t know who that third leg belonged to, but we’ll go with it)

GREENWICH — The debate about putting traffic-directing police officers back on Greenwich Avenue may have ended before it even started.

Proponents of a petition asking that Greenwich police redeploy officers to the Avenue have withdrawn it from the Representative Town Meeting's March 10 agenda, so the item will not be discussed.

Beth MacGillivray, an RTM member who is involved with the petition, said she did not know if the proponents would introduce the item at another RTM meeting later in the year.

Police chief James Heavey was ready to debate the department's current configuration and he did so in an open letter sent out on Feb. 28 … [laying out] Heavey's reasoning, primarily that bike-mounted officers and plainclothes members of the Organized Retail Criminal Activity Team are doing a better job of policing downtown these days because they are not bound to an intersection.

"I sincerely believe that the use of foot and bike-mounted patrols, alongside our ORCA team, provides the best service to the Greenwich community, and that the return of police officers directing traffic on Greenwich Ave. would be a detriment to these efforts," he wrote. "The most visible enforcement isn't necessarily the most effective enforcement."

The ORCA team has recovered more than $261,000 in asset forfeiture and more than $110,000 in merchandise, Heavey said. Additionally, ORCA investigations resulted in 130 arrests last year for 363 felonies, 391 misdemeanors and dozens of other infractions.

"ORCA has prevented countless crimes, assisted agencies in solving similar crimes in other communities, and is now a model for other police agencies nationwide," he wrote.

Earlier this year, when the petition to return the cops to the Avenue popped up online, First Selectman Fred Camillo said, "it's never going to happen." He also likened the stationary police officers to expensive, living stop signs.

….

When Heavey joined the department in 1986, there were 175 police officers, but the department had 152 officers as of July 1 last year. Heavey said the department has shrunk about 10% during his tenure, but the town's population has grown about 5%.

Despite a shrinking force, Heavey said there is the same number of officers working the Avenue as there was before, when officers were on traffic duty.