Village of Saugerties: Apparently crime-ridden enough for spy cameras, but not crime-ridden enough to need its own police department. Just five months after residents voted to abolish the village P.D., the board is now contemplating installing surveillance cameras, ostensibly to track gang activity in town.
“The initial system that we looked at would install two cameras,” [Mayor William] Murphy said. “One would be located somewhere in the vicinity of the corner of Main and Market (streets). The other would be located somewhere on Partition Street somewhere around the Russell Street area so that would shoot up Partition Street and down to the turn.”
The Freeman reports that gangs aren't a big problem in Saugerties yet, but Murphy says it's "only a matter of time." Your News Now, which has a video segment up on their website, says the board is looking at other nearby cities and towns (cough, cough, *Newburgh*) and getting nervous:
"There is gang activity in general that's kind of spread from New York City and Newburgh and Kingston area and the discussion was not that Saugerties has gangs today, no big danger, but that if we don't do some proactive things that we might find ourselves being the place that some of this gang activity migrates to as it's being pushed out of other areas, it's that simple," said Mike Campbell.
