4
Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Police Chief Clancy to retire
Continued from page 1
ed up at the high school,” he said. “It lasted four days.
Businesses were looted. The East End of the city was
shut down.”
Clancy said the trouble started with a battle-of-thebands concert at Newburgh Free Academy. “Some young
people were not happy with how the final winners were
announced and all hell broke loose,” he said.
Clancy remembered responding to a calamitous scene
at South Street and Fullerton Avenue. “We get over there
and it was bedlam,” he said. “There were fights in the
streets and looting. We were overwhelmed.”
The police chief described the experience as “a rude
awakening for a 20-year-old, a year and a half out of high
school.”
Three years later, Clancy became a detective. Then,
among layoffs and job cuts, he left the city to go to work
as a patrol officer for the Town of Newburgh Police
Department in 1979.
His first night on the job was quite different than his
first as a city policeman. “About a half a mile away from
the police department, we had to stop and get a bunch
of horses out of the road,” he explained. “The town was
more rural then.”
Clancy was promoted to sergeant in 1986, detect