Latino Community Benefits From Mt. Kisco’s Pair of Rising Stars
By Janine Bowen
Bridging the gap between the local police department and the community it serves can often be a difficult task, but two members of the Mount Kisco community were honored recently for doing just that.
Mount Kisco Police Officer Edwin Ramirez and Karine Patino, program coordinator for the village’s Police and Community Together (PACT), were honored last month by the Hispanic Coalition of New York as two of the 40 Under 40 Latino Rising Stars.
PACT was developed in 2008 by Ramirez and Carola Bracco, executive director of Neighbors Link, to improve communication and understanding between Mount Kisco police and the village’s Latino population.
“A lot of our Police and Community Together program is focused on the immigrant population in Mount Kisco, to help educate and bring available resources to the community by way of community meetings, focus groups, working with the youth … and the community in general,” explained Ramirez, 34, an eight-year police veteran who has served in Mount Kisco for the past six years. “By doing so we’ve been able to lessen a lot of the crime rate that we had. We’ve built an outstanding rapport with the Latino community and the police department.”
Since its inception, PACT has advocated for the immigrant population through open forums, which allow residents to discuss the challenges they face and provide them with information on programs that could help them.
“I’m very in touch with the community, especially the Latino and immigrant population, so whatever their concerns are I usually listen … and I try to develop programs tailored to our community,” Patino said.
The program provided more than 400 police officers across Westchester with cultural competency training last year at the Westchester County Police Academy.
Patino and Ramirez both noted that since PACT was launched, residents are more willing to reach out to officers for help and appear more comfortable and friendly toward the police who are there to help them.
“The community is really responding well to knowing that they’re being advocated for and they’re being listened to,” Patino said.
Patino, 27, a student at Pace Law School who joined PACT as a volunteer in 2011, said she was humbled to receive the 40 Under 40 recognition for work in Mount Kisco, where she was born and raised. She hopes to use the recognition to help more people.
“You don’t do it for any sort of recognition. Being able to help my community just made me happy, and to be recognized for it is amazing,” she said. “It makes me want to work harder and develop new things and get the whole community involved and broaden our audience. With an honor like this, it means I’m making some sort of good difference and I should be touching on more people.”
PACT will indeed be helping more people. Ramirez said there are plans to introduce PACT in Wappingers Falls and Stamford, Conn. He added that a one-week youth leadership camp is currently being planned. The camp would educate local teens on important issues such as cyberbullying, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and Internet crime.
“Every year we’ve progressed and continued to make successful strides in our community,” he said.
Ramirez, who lives in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, was thrilled to be recognized for his work. Along with receiving the 40 Under 40 award from the Hispanic Coalition of New York, he was voted Rising Star of the Year by New York state residents.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.
