Steven Sheades Promoted to Village Police Sergeant

Steven Sheades, a detective in the East Hampton Village Police Department, was promoted to sergeant on Friday, the village board marking the promotion in a brief ceremony at its regular meeting.

Sergeant Sheades started with the village as a traffic control officer in 1996, at age 15. He became a police officer in 2004. “From day one, he was one of those guys that you knew was going to be into the job,” Chief Michael Tracey said. “He stuck to it with the same attitude, the same perseverance and dedication all these years.” 

In 2006, when the department was working toward state accreditation, a program comprising administrative, training, and operations standards that helps police departments evaluate and improve their performance, “Steve was tasked with doing the day-to-day work in order to comply with all the state guidelines that go along with that accreditation process,” said Richard Lawler, a member of the board and the police commissioner. The department “passed with flying colors” in 2009, largely due to Sergeant Sheades’s hard work, Mr. Lawler said. 

“But it didn’t end there, because we get re-audited every five years as part of the process to maintain our accreditation,” Mr. Lawler said. As accreditation officer for the department, “it was his task on a daily basis to make sure that everything the department did complied with New York State guidelines.” 

Many departments do not pass their second audit on the first try, he said, but the village’s Police Department did. “I’m very proud of Steve for the work that he’s done,” he said.