Whitesboro Police Cited By NYAPT
Chief Dominick Hiffa receiving the Law Enforcement Partners Award
The New York Association for Pupil Transportation named the Whitesboro Police Department as its 2012 Law Enforcement Partner of the Year. The award is presented annually to police agencies that have demonstrated a long-term commitment to the Operation Safe Stop program and to the prosecution of illegal passing violations.
It is significant that a Mohawk Valley-area police department was cited because the Safe Stop program actually began in the Mohawk Valley. Whitesboro Chief of Police Dominick Hiffa was on hand to receive the award and to reflect on the close partnership between the school transportation community and local police departments in the Mohawk Valley.
Illegal passing continues to be a major problem in New York and across the nation. NYAPT has partnered with local police departments since 1993 in targeting motorists who pass school buses that are stopped to pick up or drop off students. The schools provide local police with ‘hot spots’ that are prone to having high rates of passers and the police patrol those areas aggressively on one day each year. Those efforts have yielded on average some 1400 tickets per day. NYAPT estimates that some 50,000 motorists pass stopped school buses every day.
Congratulations to Chief Hiffa and the Village of Whitesboro Police Department.
Pictured here are NYAPT Executive Director Peter Mannella, Hiffa, Paul Overbaugh (Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee), Whitesboro CSD Transportation Supervisor Andy Kirk, New York Mills SD Transportation Supervisor Mike Klenotiz, Minisink Valley CSD Transportation Supervisor and Safe Stop Chair Delos Luther III.
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