Is Mangano jeopardizing public safety? Don't believe the hype

Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano is embroiled in yet another bitter battle with one of the county’s most powerful unions, the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association. The PBA has launched an all-out offensive to block Mangano’s Community Policing Plan from passing in the County Legislature.

By now, I’m sure you’ve all seen a commercial, listened to a robo call or received a flier telling you that Mangano is jeopardizing our public safety. Friends, don’t let the PBA outsmart you. This battle is not about public safety. It’s politics as usual.

E.J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in an op-ed for Newsday, “The current Police Benevolent Association campaign against County Executive Edward Mangano’s precinct consolidation plan marks the escalation of a conflict whose outcome could determine the county’s financial viability for many years to come.”

The median salary for a Nassau County police officer is $150,000 per year, thanks to the lucrative contracts and sweetheart deals the PBA made with the previous administration. This doesn’t even take into account their extraordinarily generous pension plans. According to McMahon, “Of the 1,652 New York State and Local Retirement System members entitled to pensions of more than $100,000 as of fiscal 2011, fully 22 percent (371) were former Nassau police officers.”

Mangano is trying to trim the county’s deficit and cut the waste. Clearly, the place to start is the police, and the way to do it is by getting rid of obvious inefficiencies.

With the help of county Democrats, the PBA is distorting the facts and claiming that Mangano is closing precincts and taking cops off the street. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The plan he has proposed seeks to convert four of the county’s eight police precincts into new “community policing centers.” If you take a careful look at the plan, you’ll see that all 177 patrol cars will remain in their current neighborhoods. More important, 48 officers now behind desks will be reassigned to high-crime areas.