Village ‘under siege’ as vagrancy surges

By MARTIN WILBUR

Residents and regular visitors to Mount Kisco demanded this week that the Village Board address the exploding number of incidents of public drunkenness, vagrancy and other quality-of-life issues that have plagued the community.

About a dozen speakers pleaded with officials at Monday evening’s board meeting to take action because the situation has gotten out of hand, making women and children feel unsafe and hurting the village’s reputation and potentially its businesses.

“I think Mount Kisco is under siege. I think we have a serious problem. I think it’s becoming more and more unsafe,” said Sandra Nohavicka, a Chappaqua resident and social worker who regularly visits numerous seniors in the village. “Women are afraid to walk out in the community. There are blotter reports daily and even multiple times of dysregulated, inebriated, intoxicated people who are defecating and urinating in public. They are harassing other people. They’re very unhinged. They’re using a lot of resources and I think we have to come up with a humanitarian solution for this issue, but it’s serious.”

Former Mount Kisco resident Lauren Torre, who still operates her public relations agency in the village, said the condition has deteriorated to the point that she instructs her all-woman staff who commute by train to no longer stop in Mount Kisco. They are now driven to and from the Katonah or Bedford Hills train stations to avoid Kirby Plaza.

Torre also questioned whether she will renew the lease where her business is located on Dakin Avenue. Both she and her staff feel unsafe leaving after dark, something impossible to avoid in winter.

“I certainly don’t want to be responsible for the people that I work with who feel unsafe, or God forbid something happens, and I just think when my lease is up, I’m going to be looking at other places,” said Torre, who now lives in South Salem. “I’m not the only business in town that feels this way. There are other female-founded businesses that are in the town. We are all feeling unsafe.”

Bob Scopelitti, who lives in the village, said a major problem is the no-bail reforms, which handcuffs law enforcement and the courts by releasing offenders for what are considered minor offenses, even many repeat offenders. Without consequences, there will be no respite, he said.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but I’ve sat here long enough and witnessed it over and over and over again, and it’s not right and it’s not new,” Scopelliti said.

Former Deputy Mayor Theresa Flora, who said she has been accosted repeatedly by one individual with six warrants out for him, read a letter from an unidentified parent of a Mount Kisco Elementary School fifth grader. The woman’s son feels threatened by a group of men congregating at Lexington Avenue and West Hyatt Avenue on his way home from school.

“Waiting until a child is physically harmed is not an acceptable course of action,” the letter read. “Our town has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for families. Residents of this community and I expect a prompt response outlining what specific steps will be taken to address the situation and prevent it from continuing. The safety of our children must be a top priority.”

Statistics released by the Westchester County Department of Public Safety, which the village has contracted with to provide police coverage since 2015, appear to confirm the fears. There were 163 summonses issued in 2025 for five types of violations that deal with quality-of-life issues — consumption and possession of alcohol, disorderly conduct, second-degree harassment, trespassing and urinating or defecating in public. Through Feb. 28, there were 58 summonses handed out, including 35 for trespass and 20 for public consumption and possession. There were eight trespassing summonses written for all of 2025.

Department spokesman Kieran O’Leary said that there have been numerous businesses, including the laundromat on Lexington Avenue and the library, that have complained about people who are drunk or who are behaving badly. They are first issued a trespass warning if the business requests one, but are arrested if they defy an officer’s request to leave. Should the individual that has been given a warning reappear at that location in the future, they will be given a summons, he said.

“We do have an increase in the first two months of this year in summonses for trespass, which is a violation,” O’Leary said. “The cold weather has resulted in a spike in complaints from businesses and other locations, such as the library, regarding persons on the premises who are intoxicated, sleeping or causing a problem of some kind. We respond to these calls and escort these individuals from the premises.”

After Monday’s nearly hour-and-a-half discussion, Mayor J. Michael Cindrich instructed Village Manager Ed Brancati to provide Department of Public Safety brass with a verbatim transcript of that portion of the meeting. Along with other board members, he hopes to organize a meeting involving police, the county’s Mobile Crisis Response Team and the two village justices to address the dilemma and whether treatment can be part of sentencing. 

The team was created a few years ago by the county to have trained personnel respond to individuals with mental health issues rather than solely involving police.

An email detailing a Feb. 5 meeting with police representatives and David Warnock of the Mobile Crisis Response Team hoped to get the village justices involved to discuss sentencing options. Summonses typically offer no deterrent to people who need help, it stated.

Cindrich said there have been numerous incidents, including several that have ended in death, that were “heartbreaking.” 

“There are certain things that the police department can do better,” Cindrich said. “We think they can always do better, and when this verbatim record of what was said here goes, they’ll be another assembly where we can have people answer questions, including myself, of what’s going on here.” 

He also warned that when the warmer weather arrives, the homeless population will likely be shifting to parks and greenspaces.

However, a small percentage of people account for a disproportionately large number of the calls. Trustee Tom Luzio said that if a person has had multiple warrants against them for an arrest, they should be dealt with differently than someone with a persistent alcohol or drug problem. The quarterly meetings with Westchester County Police that seemed to lapse previously should help now that there is a desire to hold them consistently.

“We have to have compassion for these folks, but we have to prosecute the ones that are prosecutable,” Luzio said. “For someone who has prosecuted 40,000 people in his career, there are definitely people that are worth prosecuting and there are definitely people worth saving, but whatever side you come down on, whatever that percentage is, they’re both going to cost tax dollars.”