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People: Officer Lou Retires from the Police Force
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| Officer Lou DiMiceli |
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| Officer Lou leads a DARE class |
February 08, 2007
People from around the area are getting ready to honor a local police officer who became a symbol of community policing throughout the village and town.
Officer Lou DiMiceli, who retired from the village police department at the end of 2006, was the D.A.R.E. officer for nearly a decade at Cornwall-on-Hudson Elementary School and St. Thomas of Canterbury School. Just about everyone seems to know him and while sitting down recently for a cup of coffee in the village, people constantly greeted him like an old friend.
DiMiceli says that he entered police work with just that goal in mind – to be a police officer to whom kids really want to talk, to be a positive influence in their lives.
Back when DiMiceli was in high school, delivering sodas with his father after school, one day he almost pushed his dolly full of soda into a police officer on patrol on Cornwall’s Main Street. The officer grunted and called DiMiceli a “rotten little kid,” and the future officer was crushed. “I knew right then what kind of officer I did not want be,” he says, as he talks about how he got into police work.
Once again he was delivering sodas, this time to the Cornwall police department, when he asked them if they needed a dispatcher. Next thing he knew, he was training on the day shift, with a cocky attitude. The first day, a high-speed car chase headed south from Newburgh and the radios were crackling with calls. “I couldn’t believe it,” DiMiceli says today, remembering the chaos that day. “I thought it was going to be a piece of cake.”
In 1983, DiMiceli was sent to the police academy and, after he graduated, came to work part-time on the town of Cornwall force. “I had just turned 21 and was the youngest on the force,” DiMiceli says, recalling how he “had some bumps early on.” He talks about how two accidents in a police vehicle just six days apart left him with a 90-day suspension and fears that his career was permanently derailed.
DiMiceli, who comes from a family that remains very close-knit to this day, listened to his father, who told him that he should fix his problems by staying and proving that he could do the job. “It made me a stronger person,” DiMiceli says. “Life is a work in progress, even for me today.”
DiMiceli eventually won the support of his supervisors in the Cornwall police department, becoming a full-time officer in 1986 and making sergeant in 1988. Throughout, that time, however, he never stopped trying to prove he could do the job. “Those hardships were there for a reason,” he reflects, “they made me who I am.”
In 1994, he moved over to the village police department and the next year became the D.A.R.E. officer, a position he found to be the most rewarding of his career.
“As a police officer, I have chosen to be in the public eye and I want to be seen as an outstanding citizen,” DiMiceli says. “It is not always easy to be in the public eye, and as a DARE officer you have a lot more eyes on you – little eyes.”
As he approached his twenty years of police work, DiMiceli began to plan for the next phase of his life. He earned a license as a massage therapist and began a small practice on the side. He thought one day he would retire, but made no definite plans until he suffered chest pains last summer and discovered that his arteries were 70 percent blocked. After having a stent put in, he never returned to work.
“I decided that I didn’t need to drop dead running after some bad guy,” DiMiceli says, “I didn’t want to hesitate in my response.” He had good reason to fear this, he says, recalling his good friend, village police officer Bobby D’Egidio, who died from a heart attack while on the job in 1991.
“I know I’m not done serving,” DiMiceli says. “I’m sure that people will still hear from me from time-to-time.”
Anyone interested in attending Officer Lou’s retirement party on February 23rd, can contact police officer Jill Nye at 534-4200, ext. 358 for tickets.
Comments:
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MY DEAREST LOUIE I WISH YOU ONLY THE BEST OF EVERYTHING AND AM SO GLAD YOU RETIRED AND HAVE FOUND AND A NEW BEGINNING IN LIFE ALL THE HAPPINESS FOREVER DEBBIE F.
posted by [email protected] on 02/08/07 at 12:00 AM
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