In a further effort to consolidate services, Westchester County will soon  begin offering a Unified In-Service Training Program for police officers from all departments in the County through ithe Westchester County Department of Public Safety. The new program is being offered at no cost as a shared service to help police departments in Westchester lower their training costs.

Currentlly, each department in Westchester must pay for a minimum of 21 hours of refresher training to all of its members. The requirement is mandated by New York State.

At this point, six municipal police departments have signed up to attend the sessions this Fall, including Yonkers, Hastings-On-Hudson, Bronxville, Pleasantville, Tuckahoe and the Town of Mamaroneck. Additional departments are expected to participate.

County Executive Rob Astorino weighed in on the joint in-service training saying "The program is a way to achieve real savings for local taxpayers and is something the County can do to reduce costs for local governments."

Unified In-Service training covers such required topics as Legal Updates, Use of Force and Firearms among others.

Public Safety Commissioner George N.Longworth says, "It's often necessary for police departments to pay overtime to police officers to conduct and or attend in-service training." This program he says will amount to significant savings for individual municipalites, particularly ones with larger police departments.