Survey on police coming soon

Keep your eyes peeled for the Village of Port Chester’s community survey to gather input on the public’s perception of its Police Department which could be released as soon as Friday, Nov. 27.

When interviewed Tuesday, Nov. 24, Acting Village Manager Stuart Rabin said the Village was waiting on Pace University for formatting, Spanish language translation and testing.

The survey will be hosted by Pace University which is putting it together and will analyze the results.

“We’ll Nixle it out. It will also be mailed out to addresses the Village has,” said Rabin. “Pace will provide us the link and we will blast it out.”

He said the Village would also send it out through community partners like Carver Center, Don Bosco Community Center and the Port Chester School District.

“We’ve been spending a lot of time trying to get this off the ground,” said Rabin. Some survey questions have come from those used by other municipalities and others from Pace’s team.

The Pace team is doing everything they can to get the survey completed expeditiously and Rabin is hopeful about getting tabulated data by the end of the year.

“The thing I will always be concerned about is making sure the residents of the municipality are filling it out,” he said. “That is what we are trying to ensure. “We believe Pace as a partner is going to try to help us do that.”

Former Village Manager Chris Steers had said a good response would be 300 people. However, the Village of Rye Brook, with less than one-third the population of Port Chester, got about 600 responses to their survey.

“We are going to try and get as many as we can,” said Rabin. “I think Pace thinks we’re on track to get a proper size sample.”

How to proceed further with the survey data once the responses come in and are tabulated is the village board’s decision.

The survey is part of the Police Reform Collaborative required by Governor Andrew Cuomo and will likely be followed by at least one public listening session. A comprehensive report on police reform is due in Albany by Apr. 1.