In following up to A Little Beacon Blog’s article last week about the intent of the City of Beacon to publish the names and ranks of police officers onto its website, which had not happened after a month since the announcement, Beacon’s City Administrator, Anthony Ruggiero, announced yesterday (Monday) that the names and ranks of police officers have now been published onto the City’s website in the Police Department section. Photos of the officers are to come, he told ALBB. We also suggested this enhancement to Mayor Kyriacou during a “Wait, What Is That?” podcast episode, who thought it a good idea.

With this information at one’s fingertips, it should be easier to get correct name spelling of an officer or detective, send an officer a Thank You note if they were helpful in a situation, and have better familiarity with who works for the City of Beacon.

You can find the list here on this PDF on the City of Beacon’s website. As of now, it is not dated with an “Updated” type note so as to see which officers no longer work for the City of Beacon, or which officer has been newly appointed. For instance, Officer Ryan Murphy was hired by the City of Beacon in early January 2020, and submitted his letter of resignation two months later on March 6, 2020. Ryan was part of a batch of new hires after the Beacon PBA and the City of Beacon agreed on a new contract which gave the officers retroactive raises of 2% for 2020, with an additional 2% raise slated for 2021 according to an article in the Poughkeepsie Journal. The contract also “decreases compensatory time from 48 hours to 40; compensatory time allows the officers to take time off instead of receiving overtime pay,” according to the article.

At that point, the number of police officers was 37, the highest it has been in years, according to then Chief Kevin Junjulas (since retired). A new hire also included Officer Michael J. Connor, a Beacon High School graduate who transferred from the City of Newburgh Police Department, who had been working for the City of Newburgh, who was let go along with 15 fellow officers and 14 firefighters when the City of Newburgh purged its public safety force due to budget constraints. As of today, according to Beacon’s list of police officers, there are 32.