To Greg Austin, serving R.B. was a dedication to home
November 27, 2024 at 12:16 a.m.
As a relatively young patrolman just a few years on the job, Greg Austin showed up to a house on the corner of Bowman Avenue and Osborne Place in the ’90s with an immediate feeling of nostalgia.
There to take a standard police report, he walked into a home of memories. It was the house his mother grew up in, where he often visited his grandparents as a child.
The new owners, upon hearing his connection, took him to the basement to see if he could solve a mystery for them. The name Teresa Salerno was written on the wall, and “the people who had painted the basement never painted over it,” he described. “You could see these layers of paint, painted around the writing.”
Teresa is Austin’s mother. “She was probably 8 years old when that was written,” he said. “That’s only something you get to experience when you’re from the community. Things like that were very important to me.”
Austin retired from the Rye Brook Police Department after 36 years of service on Nov. 12. During the last 18 years, he served as chief. At 61 years old, he left his post as the most experienced police chief in Westchester County, he said—though that was a title he only held for a few months; the longtime police chief in Tuckahoe, John Costanzo, beat him to retirement.
Austin is sewn into the fabric of Rye Brook.
He’s one of the few who can say he’s served his municipality for as long as it’s existed, working or volunteering in some capacity under every trustee and mayor elected to office since the Village was incorporated in 1982. Sitting in a Village Hall meeting room on Wednesday, Nov. 20, he pointed to a wall of photographs chronicling every Rye Brook Board to emphasize the statement.
“The Village of Rye Brook has been my only full-time employer,” he said, agreeing that he “very much so” feels sentimental about leaving. “I don’t want to retire, but I want to be retired. I’m ready.”
Born on Tower Hill Drive in Port Chester, Austin moved with his family to Concord Place when he was young so he could enroll in the Blind Brook School District. His locally famed uncle, Bruno Ponterio, was the principal of Ridge Street School—a building that is now named for him—and Austin’s parents wanted him to spend his childhood there.
“(Ponterio) actually taught me a lot about working in this community,” he said. “Who knows better about how to deal with parents than the principal of the elementary school? He taught me a lot about how to manage the community.”
During high school, Austin took part-time gigs as a summer counselor in the Rye Town Day Camp and would continue working with the town’s recreation department throughout the year in the various youth athletic offerings.
After Rye Brook became a village, Austin continued to help out as a local commuter to Pace University—helping former Recreation Superintendent Tom Hroncich put on the first Rye Brook Birthday Party in June 1983 without a budget.
“Then, Tom needed someone to help with other different programs. I was in college, and he said he’d pay me $5 an hour. I said, ‘$5 an hour? That’s great.’ I couldn’t ask for anything more,” he laughed. The work eventually turned full-time when a recreation leader position opened in 1986. Meanwhile, all the hours spent in the Rye Brook municipal offices also got him acquainted with police professionals.
Though he now lives in Brewster, Austin said policing became an attractive career prospect because of his life growing up in Rye Brook.
“Being a kid, hanging out in Pine Ridge Park with my friends or at the hangout we had at the end of Rock Ridge Drive, the cops would come by, and we’d talk to them. I got to know the cops and they got to know me, and that’s how I first got exposed,” he said. “But then, while I was a recreation leader, I was also a member of the Ambulance Corps. And that’s when I really started to develop an interest in police work because it wasn’t just hanging out with the cops, but I was going on calls to car accidents and fires and seeing them do their job.”
On a whim, a group from the ambulance corps signed up to take the police test. Austin didn’t think much of it—he barely studied, and ultimately put it out of mind when it was over. That was until the then-Police Chief Frank Gendalia visited him for a chat in the Recreation Office.
Austin was immediately offered a job as a police officer. He didn’t even have a job interview—his life up to that point had been the interview.
“They knew me. It almost makes me feel guilty about what I put the candidates through now compared to what I did,” he laughed. He was appointed in January 1988.
From there, he grew through the ranks. He was appointed youth officer in December 1996 after co-teaching DARE at Ridge Street School for a few years. He became patrol sergeant in October 1998 and then moved up to detective sergeant in 2005.
Finally, in September 2006, he was promoted to chief.
Austin proudly asserted that he, miraculously, never had a bad day as chief, which most holding his position can’t claim.
“I loved being here, I have no bad memories. There was never a difficult period I had to weather,” he said. “They say you need the support of your board, you need the support of your cops, and you need the support of your community. And if you have two of the three, you’re in good shape. I always had all three.”
“The community always supported us, and the cops always supported me. And the board, never a question,” he continued. “Every mayor and trustee have always supported me. When it comes to the budget, proposing programs, they never said no to me. I would present them what I needed and why I needed it, and they always supported it, and I’m very grateful for that because I’ve seen other police chiefs have difficult times with their boards.”
The cohesive, enjoyable environment made it hard to leave. But with an 18-year tenure, his impact will live on.
Austin prides himself on bringing a level of professionalism to the Rye Brook police. He often speaks of his biggest accomplishment—getting the force accredited and maintaining that status with the state—but last Wednesday he also referred to a change in culture he watched evolve, largely by his empowering self-sufficiency.
“When I got hired, another goal I had was to give the sergeants more authority; to not be a micromanager,” Austin said. He recalled his days in the recreation department, crediting the management philosophy to Hroncich. If the leader of the department has to figure out everything, why have staff? And what will folks learn if they’re not practicing innovation on the job?
“It was interesting because the sergeants at the time were resistant. They didn’t want to make decisions, they wanted to bounce it upstairs, but I’d just bounce it back to them,” he said. “When things bubbled up to me too much, they got bottlenecked, and then people would get frustrated because things aren’t getting done. If you give them the responsibility, they’ll perform. They always do. And some people really took that and ran with it, becoming great, reliable cops.”
Austin expressed pride over several initiatives he worked on over the years—from successfully implementing an SRO (school resource officer) program in the Port Chester Schools to collaborating with forces across the region to update and enhance their radio communication systems.
The highlights of his chiefship, however, revolve around the plethora of knowledge he acquired through storied experiences and networking.
He served as president of the Westchester County Chiefs of Police Association in 2014, and in 2015 was asked to be on the board of governors for the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police (which he served on until a few months ago).
For several years, he had the fascinating experience of chairing New York Counter Terrorism Zone 3, a post-Sept. 11 initiative that was crucially active in the areas outside of New York City, he said.
“The highlight of my career was probably attending the FBI National Academy in 2013,” he said, describing a 10-week college-style leadership program. “Less than 2% of officers attend the academy; there were 248 people in my session, and I still use the skills and network with the people I met there.”
Austin sat down for an interview about his retirement a week after it became official. “It still just feels like vacation,” he chuckled at the time. It hadn’t set in that his time off wasn’t temporary.
For the next few months, however, he’ll still be around. He’s still on the payroll, considered an “assistant village administrator,” there to help with the transition as new Chief Eric Dengler takes over. Also, he said, the department is up for review to maintain its accreditation, and he wants to ensure the process goes smoothly.
“I’m excited for retirement, it’s an exciting time,” he said. “Yesterday it hit me, I’m not on vacation, and I’m not taking time off to do something. It’s just time off. I had a dentist appointment on Monday and then I played golf. I did stuff around the house yesterday. Today and tomorrow I’m here, and then on Friday we’re going up to Syracuse to visit family. I have actual time to do stuff now, and I’m very excited about it.”
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