News

‘I Was Meant To Be Here For a Reason’: New Canaan Police Capt. Vincent DeMaio To Retire At Month’s End, Begin as Clinton PD Chief

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Growing up in Stamford, Vincent DeMaio’s dream had always been to work for the Connecticut State Police with the agency’s Troop F in Westbrook. A 1985 Westhill High School graduate (he had spent three years at Wright Tech) who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Connecticut, DeMaio only took the New Canaan Police Department test 27 years ago because he had a buddy who didn’t want to sit the test alone. “He prodded and prodded, and finally I gave in and did it,” DeMaio recalled Wednesday afternoon. In the end, though his pal didn’t end up getting hired, DeMaio landed a job as a New Canaan police officer. That was in 1989, and he’s been serving the department ever since.

News

Neighbors: Vehicle Parked on Harrison Avenue Creates Safety Hazard

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A handful of Harrison Avenue residents are calling for police to intervene with a neighbor whose habit of parking a motor vehicle in the street overnight is creating a safety hazard, they say, as well as violating a local ordinance. Already a heavily used cut-through for motorists between South Avenue and Main Street, Harrison Avenue is reduced to a single lane in the area of the vehicle when it’s parked in the street, and it “completely blocks your line of sight day and night, so you have to come to a stop to go around it constantly,” Susan Lynch told members of the Police Commission Wednesday night. “We all have driveways to park in and we don’t use the street as a parking lot,” Lynch, joined by about five other neighbors, told the commission at its regular monthly meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “I think everybody consciously does not park on the street day and night so it is a safe street. Because it is a cut-through street.

News

NCPD Command Staff: Thanking Those Who ‘Protect and Serve’

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Dear Editor:

Written on each New Canaan Police vehicle is the motto “protect and serve.” These simple words are what the men and women of our Department do exceptionally well. Moreover, our new Department mission statement is: “To Protect and Serve our community with courage, professionalism and integrity.” Our officers fulfill this mission each and every day. New Canaan is Exceptionally Safe

Although New Canaan is an exceptionally safe Town for our residents, due in large part to the work of our officers, it is not so safe for our officers. We have no doubt that our Town enjoys a very low crime rate due to the tireless work of our officers.

Business

‘We Need To Find a Compromise’: ‘No Parking’ Signs To Go Up on East Avenue

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Officials say they’re going to post “No Parking” signs outside of an East Avenue business that’s been plagued by truck drivers idling outside the door to make deliveries around New Canaan. Though the truckers cannot park their vehicles outside day spa Ciel Eau at 1 East Ave.—because it’s illegal, bad for business owner Alicia Brandfellner and unsafe for motorists and pedestrians—still, those delivery drivers must be accommodated somewhere so that New Canaan restaurants get deliveries, Police Commission Chairman Stuart Sawabini said. “We clearly need to protect her [Brandfellner’s] business but we also cannot damage their [restaurants’] business,” Sawabini said during the commission’s regular monthly meeting, held Nov. 18 in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “We need to find a compromise as we go through all this.”

Though there’s a designated 7 to 10 a.m. loading zone in front of Sleepy’s across East Avenue at the start of Forest Street, it’s rarely used because Forest is still in disarray with the mixed-use project going up by Locust Avenue, commissioners said.

News

‘It’s Beyond Our Control’: No Ready Solution To Morning Traffic Back-Up from NCHS Parking Lot

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Town officials, after receiving a resident’s complaint about traffic backed up on Old Stamford Road at Farm Road in the mornings, reached this conclusion: There’s no feasible solution to the problem, short of an expensive New Canaan High School parking lot redesign for which no one has an appetite. Police sent a shift out to investigate the complaint and what the officers discovered is that “it’s not a timing of the light issue,” Capt. John DiFederico said during the Police Commission’s Nov. 18 meeting. “What the issue is, is that there is a very short period of time—maybe 15 minutes—when there is so much volume going into the high school that it backs up all the way down Farm Road so there are cars that cannot turn from Old Stamford Road onto Farm,” DiFederico said at the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “It has nothing really to do with the light and it has nothing to do with us—it’s just a poorly designed high school parking lot which makes ingress of vehicles so difficult for those 15 minutes.”

A big part of the problem, Police Capt. Vincent DeMaio said, is that the lot is designed so that kids park at the far side—to the right of the access road as you come in—so that they then must cross the road in order to get to the building, which holds up traffic.