Detective Sal Ardisi to retire from Chester police

Chester — One of Chester’s finest sleuths will be retiring from the town police force next month. Instead of running after murderers, rapists, and thieves, town detective Sal Ardisi will be pursuing a much different kind of life. “I want to get excited about something else,” he said. “I want a personal life free of responsibility. No other job ties into your personal life like this profession.” For one thing, being in law enforcement is just plain frightening. The physical threats and other highly charged aspects of the job are hard to shake off, he said, even when an officer is safely home at the end of a shift. His last day, on Aug. 20, will end his 10 years with the town police along with his 21-year career in law enforcement. He said his replacement has not yet been selected. Ardisi served with the Mount Vernon Police department back in the 1990s, where his section saw more than 21 homicides a year. The department also provided him with the training he needed to become an investigator. When he got to Chester, Ardisi’s experience made him the natural choice to become the town’s first detective. The Pius XII youth group home and Camp LaGuardia homeless shelter were still operating and brought in a lot of cases that needed investigation, Ardisi said. But with a part-time force that included only patrol officers and the chief, the department had to call in the state police or FBI to work on those cases, he said. “Don’t make mountains of out molehills. Keep communication open. A lot of technological advances out there both hurt and help our profession.” Sal Ardisi The town has come a long way since then. Ardisi has been successful in tracking down perpetrators through DNA testing and other up-to-the-minute forensics technology. In one of his most important cases, he nabbed a child molester on the lam. After a two-year hunt in which Ardisi’s investigatory work was crucial, the FBI tracked down fugitive Gregory Miller in Ecuador two years after he fled his Chester residence. The case made the “America’s Most Wanted” TV show. In another case, he found a local house serving as the base for a drug-dealing operation. Although the investigation took a lot of time and work, the discovery led to the resolution of 21 cases, many of them involving stolen property. The human touch Ardisi said he had always wanted to be an investigator. “I liked doing fieldwork more than administrative work,” he said — although a healthy dose of administrative work is still part of a detective’s job. He said his greatest talent, and his greatest love, is talking to people and gaining their trust. The information an officer gets through this simple method is usually more valuable than the fanciest forensics, he believes. Ardisi’s old-fashioned approach to policing seems revolutionary in these zero-tolerance times. “Don’t make mountains of out molehills,” he said. “Keep communication open. A lot of technological advances out there both hurt and help our profession.” He said police now have devices that will provide you with volumes of information about everybody. But that information far from tells the whole story, he said, and can lead officers down the wrong path. “I’m not a tremendous fan of Big Brother,” he said. “You don’t use your intuition anymore. You can let your guard down. You need to use your own instincts, and technology takes some of that away.” Years of accomplishment Sal Ardisi has been decorated 42 times, including two lifesaving medals and the Town of Chester Officer of the Year Award for 2001 and 2004. In 1991 he won the prestigious Westchester Rockland Newspaper Award for bravery, for disarming, along with other officer, three people who were committing armed robberies on the Bronx,-Mount Vernon border. He received a commendation for his investigatory work from the Police Officer Hall of Fame in Florida.