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Ticket master is back for more

 

REPORTER FILE PHOTO Michael Anarone will be back for a second tour of duty on the streets of Shelter Island.
REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Michael Arnone will be back for a second tour of duty on the streets of Shelter Island.

Once again Michael Arnone will be on the streets of Shelter Island.

Mr. Arnone, 21, who was a traffic control officer for the police department last summer, will have the same duties this year.

A TCO’s work is mainly about ticketing cars on the streets and in beach parking lots. They are also on hand for traffic directing when the need arises, such as at the 10K in late June.

When asked how his patrols went last summer, the Southold resident said he enjoyed the job. “It’s not mindless,” he added, but he noted that at times it was stressful.

Most of the people Mr. Arnone encountered, he said, were pleasant, however he had times when he was not taken very seriously.

“The locals,” he said, “they know what I do and they tend to take me seriously, in a joking manner, but those who think I’m an enforcing officer can get pretty intimidated.”

Remembering his first day of training Mr. Arnone said he was excited, thrown into a ride-along with an officer on a medical emergency call. It was a rush and a good start to the summer.

But it’s no longer his ambition to pursue a career in law enforcement. “I have respect for every one of the officers that I have gotten to work with, but I just do not have the makeup for it.”

After his Island duties last summer, Mr. Arnone was more than a little busy. A political science major at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, he spent the fall semester abroad in China. In the spring he was back, closer to home, at the college’s Washington, D.C. campus. There, he campaigned for Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire).

This summer, Mr. Arnone will be mixing policing and politics working as a TCO and in the office of Congressman Tim Bishop (D-Southampton).

A second TCO will not be chosen until next week, according to Police Chief Jim Read.