New cop finds ideal job with the Rye Brook police
June 13, 2024 at 12:26 a.m.
Trevor Byrnes grew up practically surrounded by police officers.
“My dad was a police officer for over 25 years, a lot of his friends are police officers, so I was just always around them,” he said. His father, Brian Byrnes, retired from the Tarrytown Police Department as a detective in 2019.
The New City resident said the exposure to police culture is what drew him to public service.
“I pretty much knew from a young age I would either be a police officer or a firefighter,” he said confidently.
Now a full-fledged lawman, he’s the newest officer at the Rye Brook Police Department, hired with a starting salary of $61,000. The department is budgeted for 27 officers, and Byrnes’s employment puts them at 26.
While the 28-year-old had been working on a police force before coming to Rye Brook, he said his new position is a welcome change from where he used to work.
After graduating from Clarkstown South High School in 2014, he received his associate’s degree in criminal justice from SUNY Plattsburgh. In the meantime, he had been taking the New York civil service exam.
But the first job he was offered wasn’t exactly where he had planned to land.
“For a year after I graduated college, I worked in a sewer plant in Orangeburg (N.Y.),” he recalled. “But even then, I was still taking tests.”
His tenacity paid off and he got a call from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and was hired on Feb. 10, 2020.
“I took their test, passed and went straight to the academy,” Byrnes said.
But his seven-month stint in the DEP academy in Kingston was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We actually ended up going home for a little over four weeks in the middle of academy,” he said. “But we did a lot over Zoom. We were able to knock out all the book stuff and would send in our workouts.”
Upon graduating from the DEP academy, he was tasked with protecting the Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers.
But the position wasn’t exactly the gig he had been hoping for.
“My job wasn’t doing that everyday cop life,” he said. “There were days where I went in to work, checked my sites and that was it. We did do our police work, but it just didn’t happen a lot because there are just so many other departments around us.”
Byrnes said that most of his work involved escorting trespassers off the property, ranging from people who accidentally wandered into the area to people looking to vandalize with graffiti.
“It was a cool job, and I had a great time, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do,” he said.
During his tenure as a DEP officer, Byrnes continued to take civil service exams and sent his resume to police departments in the area, looking for a chance to make an impact on a community—something he still does at home.
An avid sports fan, Byrnes volunteers as a football coach at his old high school.
“I really love being a coach,” the New York Giants fan said. “It’s great because there’s almost like two sides to it. I do my football side, but there’s also a human aspect to it. Sometimes you get the chance to help a kid out with things outside of sports.”
Four years into his time with the DEP, his father pointed him towards the opening at the Rye Brook Police Department, and he was granted an interview.
“I guess I did well because they called me for the job,” he laughed.
Byrnes was hired on May 4 and has been training with Officer Jason Brown, learning the lay of the land.
“There really are lot of ‘Ridges’ here,” Byrnes joked. “But for the most part, I think I’m getting it.” He said other officers have offered advice on remembering the general location of street names.
“They told me that if I hear a flower over the radio, nine times out of 10 it’ll be over by 1100 King St.,” Byrnes said. “And the couple that are near The Arbors are easier to remember.”
As he’s been getting more accustomed to the area, he’s also come to terms with how different it will be from his work as a DEP officer.
“I kind of had a general understanding of what it was going to be like. I knew I would be doing more,” he said. “But it’s nothing like my old job. Here, you’re going to get something every day, whether it’s helping someone down the street or something else.”
He recalled his first day in his Rye Brook uniform as a prime example of what his new work life would entail and the newfound impact he could make.
“I was working the evening shift with Sergeant (Aaron) Weiss and he was showing me the main streets and busy areas,” he recounted. As the more experienced officer pulled into Washington Park Plaza, they spotted a man in a car who looked like he needed assistance.
“At first, we weren’t even sure if he was alive. But we approached him and found out he was a homeless man with nowhere to go,” Byrnes said. “We made calls to shelters and eventually found one in Yonkers that could take him in, but it had to be with a police escort. So, on my first real day on the job, I got the real-life experience of being a police officer who stays late at work.”
Since then, he’s thrown himself into his work, striving to be the best patrolman he can be.
“I’ve been asked a lot about what kind of policing I want to do, but I really just want to be the best police officer I can be,” Byrnes said. “Maybe down the road, I could see myself becoming a supervisor or detective, like my dad, but I’m happy where I am right now.”
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