OVERVIEW AND HISTORY
The Greece Special Police Department's building entrance
Welcome to the Greece Special Police Department. New York State Town Law 158 establishes a Special Police Department for towns. The Town of Greece created its own law regarding the Special Police Department that allows us to do several different functions. These functions include traffic control, the writing of parking tickets, patrol of public property such as parks and schools, ride-a-longs and other functions deemed necessary by the Chief of Police.
The Greece Special Police Department was originally the Greece Auxiliary Police Department that served the Town of Greece from the 1950’s to 1997. The Greece Auxiliary Police Department was a county-controlled group that worked under the Civil Defense Laws of New York State. In 1997, the County of Monroe gave up control of all the Auxiliary Units and it was up to each town to adopt a law for the Special Police.
The Town of Greece took over where the county left off. Under the town law, they supply us with all of the necessary equipment to perform our duties along with any necessary training. The Greece Special Police Department plays a major role in the Town of Greece and the Greece Police Department. Each year, the Greece Special Police Department volunteers an average of six to eight thousand hours of service. We are an extra set of eyes and ears for the Greece Police Department while we are out on patrol.
The main role of the Greece Special Police Department is traffic control at all major functions within the Town of Greece. These functions include parades, carnivals, races, power outages and special requests such as funeral details. Another responsibility is parking enforcement that allows us to enforce all parking laws within the town. We patrol the town plazas and town streets enforcing the handicap parking spaces, fire lanes, no parking areas and the winter parking restrictions.
The Greece Special Police Department patrols public property to ensure town property is not being vandalized. While on patrol, we ensure the town parks are safe and no illegal activity is taking place. We also secure the parks at closing time.
SPECIALTY UNITS
The Specialty Units cover assigned details as mobile units that can move quickly to different locations to direct traffic, provide crowd control or other duties as needed.
ATV UNIT
SNOWMOBILE UNIT
BICYCLE UNIT
The mission of these units it to be a high visibility patrol as needed along the bike trails, Town land and in the parks by being visible and alert to the citizens and their needs if called upon.
The ATV and Snowmobile Units will patrol areas throughout the Town where nuisance complaints have been reported and perform duties as needed.