Community Safety

Res­i­dents of New Cas­tle cher­ish the Town’s rep­u­ta­tion as one of the safest com­mu­ni­ties in New York State. In Decem­ber of 2015, Safe​wise​.com, a home and com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty rat­ing web­site, ranked New Cas­tle as the sec­ond safest ​“city” in New York. Nonethe­less, rare events here and in sim­i­lar­ly peace­ful and safe towns over the past few years indi­cate that New Cas­tle must be pre­pared for inci­dences of vio­lence or crime regard­less of their fre­quen­cy. New Cas­tle will con­tin­ue to plan for gen­er­al pub­lic safe­ty and ensure that all pub­lic employ­ees and first respon­ders are pre­pared to han­dle vio­lent or crim­i­nal incidents.

Gen­er­al pub­lic safe­ty includes safe­ty on the roads. The TDP reviewed traf­fic data for a two year peri­od (1985−1987) and found reports for 180 acci­dents per year. More recent­ly, the Westch­ester Coun­ty Base Stud­ies report­ed a total of 536 acci­dents between Jan­u­ary 2011 and June 2013, which aver­ages out to 214 acci­dents per year. State Roads in gen­er­al, and Route 120 specif­i­cal­ly, were found to have the high­est num­ber of acci­dents dur­ing this time peri­od. Roar­ing Brook Road had the high­est acci­dent count among the Town’s local roads and more recent­ly there have been inci­dents involv­ing the rail­road cross­ing along this Town road­way. Dri­ver error in judge­ment was record­ed as the cause of a major­i­ty (4,400 of the acci­dents dur­ing this time peri­od), while ten acci­dents were record­ed as involv­ing pedes­tri­ans or bicyclists.This Plan sets forth a goal to improve road safe­ty where topog­ra­phy or oth­er con­di­tions cre­ate con­straints for dri­vers and/​or pedes­tri­ans and bicy­clists. Addi­tion­al­ly, as dis­cussed in Chap­ter 1: Liv­able Built Envi­ron­ment, this Plan sug­gests devel­op­ing bike paths and side­walks on main roads through­out the Town where pos­si­ble, as this could improve the safe­ty of those who walk and bike along these roads.