Riding with Village of Mamaroneck Police: When the Lights Went On

by Marina Kiriakou -

I had been in the passenger seat for a few hours when the radio crackled and the tone of everything changed.

Sergeant Andrew Benkwitt

A moped had been reported stolen.  Sergeant Andrew Benkwitt registered it calmly— a small shift in his attention, a recalibration.  Rye Police radioed that the suspect was on Halstead Avenue, making his way toward Carvel and then south.  Sergeant Benkwitt showed me on Slack where Rye Police was positioned, and then the other Village of Mamaroneck patrol officers — all nearby.  He radioed the plan to his team and proceeded toward Halstead.  The stolen vehicle was spotted.  The lights went on.  We accelerated.

What happened next took perhaps twenty minutes.  It felt longer, and somehow faster than I can accurately describe.

Not a Chase. A Decision

The first thing I learned — in real time — was that catching someone is not simply a matter of going after them.

The moped was a motorcycle.  Under department policy, that meant no pursuit.  A high-speed motorcycle chase through a village of 20,000 people on an ordinary afternoon is a danger to everyone on the road.  The stolen moped was not worth that.  The policy existed precisely so that no officer in a heated moment would have to decide from scratch.

"We can try to make an attempt to stop him," Beckwitt said, "but if he takes off on us, we terminate immediately."  He continued, "We want to make sure everyone’s safe.  It's just too dangerous — especially for a moped."

That restraint, I understood, was training applied.

The System Activates

What happened instead was the system.  Larchmont was notified within moments — the suspect was moving toward their jurisdiction.  Officers repositioned.  The Slack network that Chief Trujillo had shown me on his computer screen earlier that morning was now doing exactly what he'd described: real-time information, moving between agencies, without anyone having to make a phone call or wait for a dispatcher.  Three jurisdictions coordinating on a stolen moped, fluidly, because they had built the infrastructure to do it before they ever needed it.

The suspect crossed into Larchmont.  Then he crashed.

He abandoned the moped near Turtle Park and ran on foot into the park's tree line.  The Sergeant immediately alerted his team, calling in the K9 officer to deploy.

K9 Officer Ike and Officer Brian Colasacco

Officer Ike was Deployed

Ike is a narcotics and tracking dog, one of two K9 units in the department.  She is a female dog, despite her name — a family purchased her, named her, and donated her through a program that places trained dogs with police departments.  She arrived at Mamaroneck already knowing her name, and the department kept it.

Ike was brought in not to chase, but to search — what officers call an article search, a systematic canvas of the area for anything the suspect may have dropped or discarded.  A weapon.  Drugs.  Evidence.

From the sidewalk I watched a trained animal move through the park with focus and purpose while officers held a perimeter, and I thought: this is also what policing looks like.  Not just the acceleration and the lights, but the patience and the method.

The radio, when it finally spoke, was quiet about it: "All units be advised — subject is in custody."

What Twenty Minutes Actually Looked Like

In the minutes after, the Sergeant turned to me with the ease of someone returning from something routine.  "That was quick," he said.  "You got to see all the elements we spoke about in real time."

I had so many follow-up questions.

What I understood, standing there, was that I had just watched a successful outcome produced not by luck or instinct but by preparation.  The pursuit policy, thought through long before today.  The inter-agency communication  was built and practiced before it was needed.  The K9 unit, trained and ready.  The officers, calm in moments that had made my adrenaline surge.

Everything I had learned that morning — the Slack network, the broken windows strategy, the department culture, the training — had just expressed itself in about twenty minutes on a Monday afternoon in a village park.  Chief Trujillo believes that these types of incidents

mentally prepare officers to utilize the resources and systems in place for bigger and more

complex cases as they develop.

Most People Are Just Looking for Help

Sergeant Benkwitt, a ten-year veteran and one of roughly 300 certified Drug Recognition Experts in all of New York State, had said something earlier in the day that I kept returning to.  We talked about use of force, about the instinct to act and the discipline required to choose differently.  He said: "If you could talk to people, nine times out of ten it'll go in your favor. Most people are just looking for help, honestly."

He was describing a professional philosophy developed over a decade of walking toward situations that most of us cross the street to avoid.  He had told me about arresting people for DWI — often first-time offenders, professionals, people who had simply made a terrible decision — and looking them in the eye and saying: "You're not a bad person. You made a bad decision."

Taking The Long View

That's not softness, but a long view.  An officer who treats people with basic dignity is an officer who might get cooperation, information, a de-escalation instead of confrontation.  It is also, he seemed to believe, simply the right way to treat people.  But clear thinking like that must be rehearsed and internalized before it can be exercised in the moment when it counts.

I thought about the same officer who, during a shift not unlike this one, responded to a call from an elderly man who had been scammed out of his savings.  The officer took the report.  He also went to the grocery store, bought the man food with his own money, and dropped it off.  "He remembers it to this day," the officer said, with the tone of someone who found that opportunity to serve more meaningful than any arrest.

This is also the job.  This is, for many of them, why they do it.  The officers I spoke with described something closer to a calling than a career — a feeling, often present since childhood, that this was the work they were meant to do.

The Line, Revisited

I walked back into the precinct as the afternoon was ending.  The hallway was quieter than it had been that morning.  And there it was again — the blue stripe, running along the wall at chair-rail height, the length of the corridor.

Chief Trujillo explained it to me in the morning.  It represents the line between order and chaos.  Between anarchy and a community that holds together.  This is a line that requires constant tending.  It requires the pursuit policy to follow even when every instinct says go.  It requires the Slack channel monitored and the cameras maintained and the K9 units trained and the officer who decides, on an otherwise ordinary afternoon, that what this scam victim needs right now is groceries.

It requires 52 officers, 70 percent of whom go home to the same streets they patrol.

I had arrived that morning thinking I understood something about my local police department because I had lived alongside it for years.  I had the comfortable familiarity of proximity — I knew the cars, I recognized some of the names and faces.

What I didn't have was a deeper understanding of what happens inside that building, and inside those cars, and in the decisions made in fractions of seconds on an otherwise ordinary afternoon.  I have a little more of that now, along with deep respect for the commitment and resources that allow us to live in a peaceful community.

The Village of Mamaroneck Police Department was recognized during National Police Week, May 11–17.  The department encourages community members to connect with and get to know their local officers.