Some Beacon residents have consistently demanded more traffic and parking enforcement. About 14 years ago, one could not park on the yellow lines outside of a boutique or coffee shop to run inside to get a birthday present or cup of coffee without getting a parking ticket. These days, however, this parking infraction can happen, and does happen regularly on the yellow lines outside of Bank Square Coffee, for instance. Between the hours of 2-3pm, Carman the Crossing Guard is the main enforcer of shooing cars along who do attempt to pull over into the yellow lines.

This lax parking will not last for long, implied Chief Figlia during his presentation of the Police Department Annual Report to the City Council during the 3/31/2025 Workshop Meeting, where he presented multiple data sets to illustrate what the department has been working on and achieving.

Parking Tickets

Thanks to a new contract with a new parking ticket vendor, the City of Beacon Police are using a new ticketing system for parking violations. The vendor they had been using was satisfactory, Chief Figlia said, until the company got absorbed by another company, and provided new equipment. “The new equipment they provided was poorly designed and rarely worked. This led to a sharp decline in our parking enforcement as officers struggled with increasingly frequent equipment failures.”

“The new vendor also provides much-improved handheld, electronic ticket-writer units, which have proven much more dependable,” he explained. This has resulted in a spike in parking tickets. Where there were 20 parking tickets issued in December 2023, there were 187 parking tickets issued in December 2024, according to the report.

Traffic Violations

One resident saw an officer issuing a ticket to a Tesla. Other residents have noticed the Beacon Police on Wilkes Avenue during school drop off rush-hour, consistently nabbing people. The police have been in other areas of town as well.

Traffic Stops made by Beacon Police from 2022-2024.
Photo Credit: City of Beacon Police

According to the monthly and yearly data Chief Figlia presented, traffic stops were at their highest during 2023 (of the 2022-2024 period), and remained the low in 2024. The Beacon Police Department has been understaffed for quite some time, resulting in their trying new initiatives to recruit.

In October 2024, when traffic stops hit their second lowest moment in the three year period, traffic stops started to spike, and continued to increase into 2025. “In January of 2024, 62 stops were performed, whereas in January of 2025, there were 97 stops. Similarly, in February 2024, there were 75 stops made and in February 2025 there were 94 made,” Chief Figlia stated.

After his presentation, Chief Figlia asked the Council if they liked the monthly data set, or if they wanted it yearly only. Mayor Kyriacou said he preferred it lumped into yearly. Reducing the months into an annual snapshot reduces the amount of detail the public can see, in order to notice any seasonal, regional or global trends.

ALBB votes for the monthly data presentation.