Retiring police means loss of experience

It’s not just the loss of personnel, it’s the loss of experience, said the president of the Police Benevolent Association, James Carver, about the anticipated retirement of 250 Nassau County police officers. Explaining that it takes six to seven months to train a new officer, and years on the job to build up a wealth of experience, the loss to the department will be felt mostly in the specialty departments, like narcotics, detectives, plain clothes and POP (problem oriented police).

Neither Oceanside nor Island Park will lose their patrol officers. Due to minimum manning requirements, the 4th Precinct must have 24 patrol cars in the field during the day and 23 at night, and that won’t change, according to Carver. However, there has been no backup service for Island Park and Oceanside since the merger of precincts four years ago. He said, “We need to backfill, not just replace,” the lost officers, “to move forward, rebuild, hire as many (new officers) as we can to fill the brain drain.”

The county is committed to hiring 500 new police officers in the next few years according to Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter. “This is good news,” Carver added. “We need the youthful injection, it’s great for everybody, they have passion and want to help the public, and the energy does positively infect and influence the police departments.”

Carver said that doing away with the changes brought about by the merger of police precincts three years ago will be another helpful move. If you have one person in charge of one precinct you know the issues of that precinct., he explained. “The problems of the clubs in Island Park are not the same as the problems around Green Acres in Valley Stream,” he said, and the merger spread people too thin.

Not having experienced officers might mean fewer arrests, Carver added. Theoretically, if each officer makes five arrests a month, the loss of 250 officers could mean 1,250 fewer arrests. “It’s a quality of life issue,” he said.