Nuclear Power, Killer Cops, Driveway Protestors, Lost Llamas, and a Mysterious Monolith: The Year in Hamlet Headlines
Volume 1, Issue 16
We stayed in the newsroom till the stroke of midnight this morning, leaving the year every chance to outdo itself, but the blotters are now dry, and we can safely proclaim northern Westchester’s greatest small-town headlines of 2020.
Peekskill and Ossining—veritable cities with populations in excess of twenty thousand souls—are not included since they have dynamics all their own, but here, proceeding from west to east, are summaries of the ledes that most absorbed our attention in what is hands-down the greatest New York county this side of the Hudson between the fifth and twentieth minutes of the 41st parallel[1]—
BUCHANAN
As Indian Point 2 Shuts Down, Local Officials Take Stock
In April, Indian Point 2, a reactor that has been generating electricity since 1974, shut down for good. Indian Point 3 will be taken permanently offline in April of 2021 and that will be that—the plant will be permanently (pending a distant technological advance that can make use of the abundant on-site nuclear waste) offline.
Locals within the Village of Buchanan, located within the Town of Cortlandt alongside the Hamlets of Verplanck and Montrose, are not necessarily happy about the plant’s closure. Jobs will be lost and local budgets will be slashed. The Verplanck fire department is losing 64% of its funding and the Hendrick Hudson school district—also subsidized by the plant’s owner, Entergy—is losing a third of its.
Says Mayor Knickerbocker of Buchanan regarding the ebullient sentiments of local environmental groups, “Sometimes things need to be said. I just find it disturbing that the anti-nuclear people are celebrating the misery of this community."
Meantime locals have pushed back against a proposal to use the riverfront land south of the plant to manufacture offshore wind turbines and, in October, the developer backed out.
Some say the Hudson side of the county differs from the Connecticut side. We’ll see what happens when there is no longer a nuclear power plant operating in the former.
BRIARCLIFF MANOR
Ex-Briarcliff Cop Facing Death Penalty Asks Again to Be Moved
Jeffrey Epstein’s former cell-mate is still out there dominating the B.M.’s above-the-fold attention this year. Nick Tartaglione, the bodybuilding former village police officer is still in jail awaiting trial for a quadruple homicide up in Orange County. He is complaining about the conditions at the Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center and wants to be transferred to yet another county, Nassau. Tartaglione, who also nearly beat an eccentric Briarcliff public access TV personality (and former BHS basketball star) to death, resulting in a $1.1 million settlement, was fired by the Briarcliff P.D. more than a decade ago but successfully sued for backpay and achieved a $65,000 tax-free annual disability pension. No doubt partly due to Covid’s effects on the justice system, his trial—which will be held in Westchester’s White Plains Federal Court, and prosecuted by James B. Comey’s daughter Maurene—has not yet had its date set.
PLEASANTVILLE
Remembering College Student Shot by Police in Westchester
October contained the ten-year anniversary of the shooting of Danroy “DJ” Henry, a student athlete at Pleasantville’s Pace University. Henry was shot by an off-duty, out-of-his-jurisdiction Pleasantville police officer in front of Finnegan’s Grill just over the border in Thornwood. Danroy was black and the officer, Aaron Hess by name, is white. Hess was found not guilty although the circumstances of the shooting are still being debated, with law enforcement sticking to one story and Henry’s friends to another. And with there being no question that somehow the young man was handcuffed after getting fatally shot, and then left on the pavement where he continued to bleed to death while the officer’s leg injury was first treated by emergency responders.
After Henry’s death, Officer Hess sued a Briarcliff liquor store that had purportedly sold the under-age Henry some liquor earlier that evening. The liquor store denied the charge and there were suspicions that Hess (or his legal representation) was going after the wrong store and, perhaps cynically, was pursuing the suit as part of a public sentiment operation—casting shade on Hess for being drunk, a charge his family has denied.
Hess apparently had a tough time in the wake of the shooting and, in recognition of this, the Pleasantville PBA (Police Benevolent Association) named him Policeman [sic] of the Year. The award was not supposed to be made public, but word leaked out.
At any rate, Henry’s family subsequently won a $6 million judgment against the Village of Pleasantville and Officer Hess has apparently disappeared from public view in recent years.
CHAPPAQUA
Trump Supporters Gather Outside Clintons' Northern Westchester Home
After the big election in November, hundreds of people gathered in front of the Hillary and Bill Clinton’s home in the Hamlet of Chappaqua. This appears to have happened more than once. You can discern what they are saying in this video taken by a neighbor of the Clintons in early December although the source is unclear. One should recall that houses tend to be on multi-acre lots in that area of Chappaqua and sightlines to the street in front of your neighbors’ properties are not always easy to establish. Still, it is an interesting choice to focus the camera upon a white backyard fence.
Perhaps the video journalist was not dressed for direct MAGA interaction.
BEDFORD CORNERS (and environs)
Gizmo, Llama That Went Missing in Westchester County, Found Safe, Returned Home
On December 30, after sixteen days on the lamb, a Bedford Corners llama is back on the farm. Shortly after arriving at his new home, a 90-acre estate near Guard Hill Road, the creature, a rescue[2], leapt a five-foot fence and made some good tracks.
His accomplice, whose name was not given to the press, was found the same day, lassoed, and returned to the to an enclosure that we surmise had higher walls or a ceiling of some sort.
Gizmo proved more elusive. For more than two weeks the owner—with the assistance of “local animal rescue groups”—searched north-central Westchester for the missing camelid. Drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras were deployed, although it is not clear by whom, nor how they use them otherwise.
It was a scary time for animal welfare enthusiasts across the Internet although experts did reassure that llamas are cold-tolerant and considered to be highly adaptable foragers.
In the end, it was an old-fashioned technology—a Have-you-seen? poster—that led to the animal’s apprehension. Workers at a nearby farm saw one of the signs, realized the llama they had recently observed on their employer’s property was not an intended piece of livestock, and called the owner. Hours later, Gizmo, too, had been lassoed and re-rescued.
You might not think there are people with animal-roping skills in the 914, but you would be wrong.
WACCABUC
Mysterious monoliths in Utah, California, Romania, UK…
The sale of the Fran and Barry Weissler’s 18-plus acre estate in Waccabuc is perhaps newsworthy in itself. The Broadway producers’ lavish $13.2 million estate has an amphitheater, weird statues, tennis courts, swimming pool, water features, multiple patios, and elaborate topiary. It has also hosted private performances by Christopher Plummer, Tommy Tune, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The reason it has made our best-of-2020 feature, however, is that it also sports a monolith highly similar to the one that recently made a splash in the Utah desert and that has since either reappeared or been imitated in several other locations around the globe.
The metallic, rectilinear object can be seen from 1:51 through 2:05 in the realtor’s video.
We will see what 2021 brings, but we hope the next annual round-up is more redolent of sanity.