More Police, Less Trouble At Celebrate East Lyme

A number of people noticed a few changes in the police presence during Celebrate East Lyme on Saturday, most significantly, the addition of two camera trucks and presence of bomb-sniffing dogs. 

"Unfortunately, the way things are today we have to take certain precautions," said East Lyme Police Sgt. Joe San Juan. No one anticipated the Boston Marathon bombing, he noted, but now "if you don't have these things in place, people are going to say why didn't you?" 
 
A number of people also noticed police officers from other towns on the beat. This, however, is not usual. With every large event such as Celebrate East Lyme and the Light Parade, the East Lyme Police Department requests mutual aid from other towns. This is a reciprocal arrangement between neighboring police forces. Last week, for instance, East Lyme Police were on patrol in New London for SailFest and in Groton for the fireworks. 

"We don't have the police force to have 30,000 plus people in town in addition to our regular course of business," said East Lyme Police Sgt. Joe San Juan. "It's done on a mutual aid basis so it's free of charge." 

This year there were 16 mutual aid officers in town for Celebrate East Lyme but, San Juan said, last year there were even more because larger crowds were expected when the tall ships were in town for OpSail. The bomb-sniffing dogs were provided by Amtrak police, which have jurisdiction over the railroad property.  

"Amtrak always supplies officers, because some of the issues do occur on their jurisdiction and the police dogs they have are bomb sniffing dogs," said San Juan. "Society changes sometimes and we have to adapt and we try to do it as discretely as possible. The two camera trucks, that was the only obvious addition, and again that was strictly precautionary." 

It's always hard to measure prevention but the additional police and the camera trucks may have been contributing factors as to how well everyone behaved on Saturday.  

"We average on East Lyme Day probably 10 disturbances—fights, intoxicated people," said San Juan. "Saturday, we had three."