Statement in Support of the Westchester County Police and the PBA
Mount Pleasant Republican Town Committee
The Mount Pleasant Republican Town Committee has a longstanding record of backing the men and women who serve and protect our communities, and we stand with the Westchester County Police PBA and the Department of Public Safety today. This hits close to home: the department’s headquarters sits in Mount Pleasant, and many active and retired officers live in our town. Their well-being matters to us, especially heading into Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest travel and gathering periods of the year, when full supervisory coverage is especially important.
Westchester County’s Department of Public Safety has gone three years without a contract, and delayed promotions have left it short-staffed enough that supervisors have had to be pulled from the Airport Precinct just to maintain minimum patrol coverage. The PBA has spoken up about this, and the County hasn’t disputed the numbers. Congressman Mike Lawler has backed the PBA and called for a fair contract and timely promotions, and we agree that our officers deserve that.
This isn’t new. The contract lapsed roughly three years ago, in 2023, under George Latimer, and should have been addressed then. It wasn’t, and remained unsettled when he left for Congress in January 2025. Around the same time, his administration gave the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association a shorter, more modest contract than the DA Investigators PBA, leaving corrections officers waiting longer for similar gains. We recognize the current administration inherited this situation and hope it can be resolved quickly and fairly.
We were also disappointed to see the County use its official website and social media page for a political attack rather than address the issue itself — including putting “Congressman” in quotation marks, which showed a lack of respect for the office Mike Lawler was elected to hold. That energy belongs at the negotiating table. We hope Westchester County leadership will settle a fair contract, move forward with the needed promotions, and keep official communications focused on public safety rather than political attacks.
As we have consistently done, the Mount Pleasant Republican Town Committee will continue to stand behind the officers who keep our county and communities safe.