Byline: LARA JAKES Staff writer
MENANDS -- Looking back over his 23-year career with the village police department, Chief Michael McCauley best remembers the children.
As a patrol officer, McCauley spent time at Menands School, teaching students to stay away from drugs while building pride in themselves.
``I just like working with children,'' he recalled Wednesday. ``We let them know police officers are friends, not enemies.''
Now, after surviving a tour in Vietnam and years fighting crime in Menands, McCauley has found himself resigning to another enemy -- cancer. After serving three years as the village police chief, McCauley, 52, will hang up his holster next week for the last time. Officer Kevin Franklin, a 20-year veteran of the force, will take over Aug. 1.
McCauley announced his decision to retire to the village Board of Trustees last week, citing health reasons for leaving the beat he loved for more than two decades. His battle with the disease has kept McCauley in and out of hospitals -- and consequently off the police beat -- over the last two months.
He said little about his medical condition Wednesday, joking instead of his plans to ``be a bum'' and ``clean up the house'' in his newfound spare time.
As the top cop in one of the smallest police departments in the county, McCauley said the nine officers on the Menands force handle the same armed robberies, rapes and other violent crimes seen across the Capital Region. After 30 homicide-free years in the village, McCauley handled two murder investigations as chief -- both in 1995, within a month of each other.
Most of the crime, McCauley said, infiltrates from traffic passing through Menands en route to Albany, Troy and Schenectady. The region is quickly becoming a halfway hub for drug trafficking between New York City and Buffalo, he added.
``It keeps us busier than hell, but we're just as qualified as any other police department to handle it,'' he said, adding: ``And we have very few problems with village residents.''
McCauley moved to Menands in 1962, before he went to Oklahoma for college. He returned after serving a stint in Vietnam as a Green Beret, and joined the police force in 1973.
``I just like Menands,'' he said. ``I like the people here, it's like a laid-back community where everybody helps everybody else. Being a police officer was the best way I could support the community, and the community has given me back that support a million-fold.''
