During the HPD portion of the January 2024 Common Council Informal meeting, Police Chief Mishanda Franklin described an incident involving a female pedestrian and her "two-year-old child" that occurred the previous month during Winter Walk at the intersection of 7th & State. She said, "a mother holding her child crossing the street was bumped by a car and fell to the ground. Baby was fine, child was fine. The mother had some scrapes. Everything was fine." The driver of the vehicle, who apparently had been "driving at a slow rate of speed," blamed the incident on "darkness."
The three-way intersection of State & 7th is a very dangerous one, arguably the most dangerous in the city for pedestrians (including children) and bicyclists, and, to a lesser degree, drivers and passengers of vehicles who are protected by steel and air bags. This is entirely due to the fact that State Street traffic never has to stop, vehicles are often speeding and there are no crosswalks at the intersection. It's a pedestrian death or three, perhaps just a mother and child, waiting to happen. And it is almost as if HPD, the mayor's office and the Common Council wouldn't mind if such a regrettable incident were to occur.
Chief Franklin continued speaking to the council: "I don't believe there was a crosswalk there where she was crossing the street. I think there was discussions to try to put one there. I'm not sure, but I think there was. So, maybe that's something to consider."
(You are forgiven if you feel the need to reread that quote once or twice.)
Can you imagine! Our Police Chief is reporting to the council about a woman and a child being hit by a vehicle while crossing the street and she isn't even sure if there is ("was") a crosswalk at the intersection. She isn't even sure if there have been discussions about installing any crosswalks. "I don't believe"; "I'm not sure"; "I think there was"; "Maybe." Big help, that Chief Franklin! Maybe if the mother and child had been killed instantly instead of just winding up with scrapes, Chief Franklin would have investigated the crosswalk situation at the intersection prior to appearing before the council to report on a fatal incident at a dangerous intersection.
Fast forward 26 months to the March 2026 meeting of the so-called SAFETY Committee, it's second since being formed by Council prez Margaret Morris. During Chief/Acting Commissioner Franklin's HPD report, she notified the four committee members (no longer the full council at an informal meeting, mind you) that she had just received an email from a mother living in the recently opened Depot Lofts apartment building expressing her concerns for her and others' safety crossing the intersection of 7th & State, requesting "a stop sign" for State Street traffic. Without citing any NY State Vehicle and Traffic Laws or Regulation, Franklin dismisses the idea of "a stop sign" for State Street traffic (without stating which direction the sign would face) because the CSX train crossing is too close to the intersection. (Her reasoning was unfounded and preposterous, and only two stop signs would be of help, not one.)
Remember, this is just over two years after Chief Franklin informed the council that there may or may not have been discussions about putting a crosswalk or crosswalks at 7th & State, and that the council should "consider" doing something about crosswalks. (Doing what, I'm still unsure of. Discussing them some more?)
Committee member Claire Cousin, sitting next to Franklin, then asks Franklin, "Would one of the crosswalks with a blinking sign be helpful there?"
Franklin: "Well, I think that would be a good solution. Yeah."
Cousin: "I've seen cars fly between 6th and the light."
Franklin concluded, "I think a crosswalk in that whole intersection would be..." before being rudely interrupted by volunteer fireman and HPD officer Nick Pierro, seated behind her and representing HFD, who had something to say about parking issues at the intersection.
On December 18th of last year, just 5 months ago, a city resident of the 700 block of Warren was struck by a turning vehicle while in the crosswalk at the Warren end of Park Place, suffering a badly broken leg (requiring two surgeries) and psychological trauma. Neither Mishanda Franklin nor Captain Miller has made any mention of that incident during the four SAFETY Committee meetings they have had no shortage of opportunities to. Two days later in the same crosswalk, someone by the name of Jason Foster was grazed on the heel by a turning vehicle, though he was able to walk to the police station to report the matter. There has been nothing but SILENCE AT THE FOUR SAFETY COMMITTEE MEETINGS about this incident as well. Hudson Common Council member Jason Foster is not part of the SAFETY Committee.
About 6 years ago, Police Chief Ed Moore, in response to a question from me at a council meeting, said that HPD was not able to use its speed radar gun downtown due to the narrowness of city streets. I knew -- like most people paying attention -- that HPD wasn't enforcing the speed limit downtown, but I just wanted someone at HPD to admit it and explain why it wasn't happening. I can't recall if Margaret Morris was in the room at the time or if she was even a council member.
During the January 2025 informal council meeting, then1st ward member Margaret Morris asked Police Chief Franklin if HPD officers were enforcing the new 25 mph speed limit. Franklin's oh-so-helpful response was short and to the point (and short on details): "They're trying." Morris was satisfied with the answer, likely assuming that HPD officers were using a radar gun downtown to issue speeding tickets to keep our streets safe and sane. That was Franklin's implication, anyway, wasn't it? How do cops "try" to enforce the speed limit without a speed radar gun?
Fast forward 16 months to the SAFETY Committee meeting held earlier this month, where the pieces all start to fall in place and the puzzle's true picture starts to come into clearer focus thanks to Captain David Miller of HPD. The result is a Hudson Police Department with a 6-million-dollar budget (or more?) that clearly wants nothing to do with making life better or safer for Hudson residents on, in and crossing our streets. It's not that they can't help; it's that they simply choose not to. You can argue against that statement all you want, but before you do, just consider what Police Captain David Miller did and said at the meeting. If he isn't deaf, he is either incompetent or a liar (or both).
During the public comment portion following the HPD report made by Captain Miller, a Warren Street resident in the room brought up the issue of speeding vehicles and speeding tickets. I could hardly believe my ears, the issue being such a rarity, particularly coming from city residents. The resident never once uttered the words "traffic ticket" or even just "traffic." He used the word speeding once and speeding tickets three times, also referring to the city's speed limit more than once. He began by asking Captain Miller the following question: "How many speeding tickets do you clock?"
Miller: "I don't have the quarterly report with me right now."
Resident: "What's the general number?"
Miller: (long pause) "I want to say, let's say 250 for a quarter. 200, 250."
Resident: "Where are the majority of those roughly?"
Miller: I just don't know that off the top of my head.
Resident: (obviously frustrated with the lack of answers) "You don't know what ward or area?
Miller: I don't. No, because it's all over. Well, it's a two-mile, you know, radius city.
Resident: So, how many speeding tickets potentially do you think you've actually assigned to people on the entire length of Warren Street? Do you know?
No. I don't have that.
Then, the cherry on top.
Claire Cousin (to the resident): Is that a concern of yours?
At one point in the minutes-long discussion and back and forth about speeding vehicles on Warren and speeding tickets in general, Captain Miller was among the few people in the room who corrected Cousin's misunderstanding of the new speed limit. She thought it was 20 mph. "It's 25," Miller said, as did the others.
Dewan Sarowar -- likely Town of Greenport resident, actual Town of Greenport homeowner (co-owned with and lived in by his wife), supposed 2nd ward Hudson resident, common council member and SAFETY committee member -- who was filling in for the absent committee chair, Henry Haddad, then asked Miller about HPD officers' use of a radar gun. Dewan mispronounced the word radar, using a soft first a to make it sound like RAH-DAR. "Are you using rahdar?" he asked.
Miller: Radar?
Sarowar: Yeah.
Miller: "Our cars are equipped with radar, and our officers are trained in it."
Notice how Miller didn't bother to answer Sarowar's question, deftly tiptoeing right around it, just as Chief Franklin had done with Margaret Morris's similar question 16 months prior. And Sarowar, too, was satisfied with another wily non-answer from HPD, if only because he doesn't understand the English language very well and he is as about as useless a common council member as the city has ever had. All Sarowar (or Claire Cousin or the blind Dominic Mernate) had to say to Miller was, "But are officers using the radar guns to issue speeding tickets? Please answer the question, Captain Miller, we're not her to dick around with your obfuscation and non-answers. We have a city resident here who took his time to show up tonight with his legitimate concerns about speeding vehicles in his neighborhood. This is not to be ignored. We are here to get something accomplished and make life better in Hudson, but you are not helping at all. Please recuse yourself from our meetings if you are not here to help us. Answer the question, please, Captain Miller. Do HPD officers use radar guns or not? And if they do, where are they using the radar guns? When and where is HPD enforcing the speed limit downtown by issuing speeding tickets with the use of a radar gun?"
Directing his next comment to the Warren Street resident, seemingly out of the blue, Miller said, "I just don't have the number off the top of my head for that. Like if you were here last month, I had the sheets in front of me, that's all. Sorry."
Such a consummate professional our police captain is!
The Warren Street resident then followed up with something that astounded me. "I've talked to several people within the past two weeks who've all said they've almost been clipped, especially at 7th & Park," referring to being hit by vehicles at the two adjacent intersections along upper Warren Street. I'm thinking he was completely unaware that two pedestrians (at least one being a city resident) were hit by turning vehicles in the same crosswalk at Park & Warren within two days this past December.
A few minutes later, with my turn to speak, I asked Captain Miller to confirm what he had told the Warren Street resident about his estimate of the number of "speeding tickets" HPD had issued in the first quarter of this year. Twice I used the two words SPEEDING and TICKETS together, both times slowly and with emphasis to make sure we were all on the same page. Miller confirmed to me and the committee that "200 - 250 or more tickets" had been issued in the first three months of this year, the actual data, of course, not being directly in front of him. During the entire discussion, Miller never uttered the words speeding, traffic tickets or speeding tickets once. He kept things as imprecise as possible by uttering "tickets" several times.
Soon after the meeting, I reached out to Miller via an email to confirm that he had been referring to "speeding tickets" specifically when he repeatedly claimed "200-250 tickets" had been issued by HPD in the first quarter of the year. He responded with one lengthy explanation and a much shorter one, portions of which follow here. Plenty of council members and the mayor were included in the emails.
(The bolds are Miller's!)
HPD Captain David Miller wrote: "At the meeting, I answered based on my understanding that the discussion involved overall traffic enforcement activity and total traffic tickets issued by HPD during the first quarter of 2026. I stated that HPD issued over 250 traffic tickets, which was accurate, although the finalized quarterly report later confirmed the actual number was 376 traffic tickets along with over 597 traffic stops conducted.
It should have been obvious that "250+ tickets" issued over an entire quarter referred to overall traffic enforcement activity and not solely speeding tickets. Instead of acknowledging what was clearly a misunderstanding during a live discussion, you continue attempting to portray it as an intentional deception, which is simply false. I also obviously stated during the meeting that I was not sure of the exact ticket total at the moment because I did not bring the quarterly traffic report with me, let alone have every individual traffic memorized from hundreds of tickets issued over a three month period. Common sense alone should have made that clear.
You can review the Q1 2026 HPD Vehicle and Traffic Report issued in April 2026, which literally lists every traffic ticket issued during that reporting period. If speeding tickets are reflected in the report, they are reflected in the report. If they are not, then they are not."
Capt. Miller #30
In a separate email to me and others, Miller wrote:
"Reference: HPD traffic tickets......
To clarify, HPD did not issue "250+ speeding tickets." During the meeting, the discussion was regarding the total number of traffic tickets issued by HPD for the first quarter, not solely speeding tickets (in reference to the Q1 Traffic Report)."
Folks, I'm not making any of this up! I don't think it would be possible to.
"If you were here last month I had the sheets in front of me, that's all. Sorry."
"It should have been obvious..."
"If they are not, then they are not."
"Common sense alone should have made that clear."
Whose "common sense," Captain Miller? The Warren Street resident who showed up to the meeting asking you about speeding vehicles, speeding tickets and speeding enforcement at HPD?
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