Suffern Police Department members pictured with their new ranks are PO Ryan Ortiz, PO Billy Simurra, PO Andrew Yorke, PO Mike Careswell, Lt. Ed Dolan, Chief Clarke Osborn, Det. Sgt. John Mallon, Sgt. Jose Martinez, Sgt. Andy Loughlin, Sgt. Jim Giannettino and Sgt. Rick Marsh.

The Suffern Police Department recently welcomed aboard new police officers and promoted a hand full of others.

During last week’s Village of Suffern Board meeting, the Suffern Police took center stage with the department’s promotion ceremony, where six officers were promoted to new ranks and four officers were formally sworn in.

Suffern Police Chief Clarke Osborn introduced each of the newly offices, then called up each of the new police officers, including Ryan Ortiz, Billy Simurra, Andrew Yorke, Mike Careswell. The officers were then sworn in by Suffern Mayor Trish Abato and given a welcome salute by Chief Osborne.

Suffern Mayor Trish Abato (far right) swears in new Suffern police officers at a September 8 Village Board meeting.

When Mayor Trish Abato first took office in 2014, one of her first acts was to promote an early retirement program for long-serving Suffern police officers — an overall effort to help reduce the number of high salaries on the department’s payroll as well as open up slots for new officers.

According to Suffern’s 2013 budget figures, the department had 29 full-time officers, with 18 earning more than $100k per year — with 12 of those officers due to earn over $130k. Top earning officers on the payroll cause an escalation in salary and benefits that raises the rate of pay for the entire department.

The early retirement effort was an aggressive measure to reign in the Suffern Police Department budget. The village Public Safety line item comes in at approximately $4.5 million, with the police department accounting for nearly a third of the village’s projected 2015 budget.

The Suffern Police Department’s recent promotion and swearing in ceremony was a direct result of Mayor Abato and Chief Osborn working to reign additional escalation of the department’s budget relative to the overall village budget.

The SPD has lately been promoting community policing standards and practices as a way to better interact with the Suffern community. The effort has included social media updates on village news and events as well as regular messages from Chief Clarke Osborn.

The department just announced an updated emergency and community information text alert promotion with Nixle.com. Residents interested in receiving SPD mobile phone alerts can sign up for the service by simply entering the numbers 888777 in a new message address and then entering the zip code 10901 in the message part of the text.

Induction ceremony still photo and video courtesy of Bruce Simon.