County Executive proposes changes to police precincts

Four Nassau County police precincts, including the First Precinct in Baldwin and the Fifth Precinct in Elmont will be transformed into Community Policing Centers in an effort to save Nassau County $20 million annually, County Executive Ed Mangano announced at a press conference Monday.

Under the COmmunity Policing plan (COP), the new centers will not handle administrative paperwork or criminal processing, but will still have officers on duty at all times.

There are currently a total of eight police precincts in Nassau County. The other two precincts that will become Community Policing Centers are the Sixth Precinct in Manhasset and the Eighth Precinct in Levittown.

The Second Precinct in Woodbury, the Third Precinct in Williston Park, the Fourth Precinct in Hewlett and the Seventh Precinct in Seaford will remain as normal precincts.

“Keeping residents safe is my number one priority,” Mangano said. “This plan keeps all 177 patrol cars in their current neighborhoods, assigns more cops to POP and opens four new Community Policing Centers throughout the county while increasing efficiencies.”

Problem Oriented Police (POP) are community police officers and each precinct used to have 4-5 “POP Cops” at one time, though staffing changes and layoffs reduced their number. Mangano’s plan would reassign 48 officers from desk jobs to POP units and special patrols.

By eliminating more than 100 civilian desk jobs and cutting built-in overtime benefits, Mangano said the County would save up to $20 million annually.

According to a press release from Mangano’s office, COP corrects an imbalanced workload, as currently three police precincts perform twice the workload of the other five.

The NCPD analyzed the distribution of workload over the past six months and found that the most common reason for visiting a precinct building is to obtain a traffic accident report and that residents not subject to arrest do not normally visit the buildings.

Mangano announced that the department will make traffic accident reports available on the Internet as well as at precincts and community policing centers.

“This plan saves taxpayers significant dollars while streamlining duplicative work, redistributing workload and assigning more officers to POP and special patrol,” Dale said. “Nassau County police officers change shift at their post and not at the station house like you see in the movies. Residents should know that response time will not be impacted as police officers will remain in their current neighborhoods and additional officers will be assigned to our neighborhoods.”

According to the press release, high tech police vehicles are capable of many of the functions of a precinct house. Patrol cars are equipped with computers, Shotspotter, which is a gunshot detection system, and the REAL Time Intel System.

This proposal is a change from Mangano’s announcement in October of a plan to close two precincts and realign the boundaries of the remaining six.

According to the press release, Nassau County has used an eight precinct-building plan since 1970. The current proposal must be approved by the county legislature before any changes can be made.