53.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Mike Sapraicone announces candidacy for New York's 3rd Congressional District
George Santos seems to be entrenching himself in his congressional seat representing the North Shore and parts of Queens. But one Glen Head resident believes he has what it takes to not only kick the embattled congressman out of office, but also keep the seat in Republican hands.
Mike Sapraicone, a retired New York Police Department detective and the owner of a private security company, declared his candidacy for the seat least week, becoming the sixth challenger to officially announce against Santos.
Sapraicone served in the NYPD between 1980 and 2000, reaching the rank of first-grade detective — the highest rank obtainable in the NYPD. He worked as part of the Rudy Giuliani administration, and says he helped turn New York City from the country’s murder capital into one with the lowest murder rate in the country.
“I was there in the mid-‘90s when crime was running rampant, and I was all part of that turnaround in crime,” Sapraicone said. “I worked very closely with the (police) commissioner’s office, the deputy commissioner’s office, when murder was rampant in the subways and on the streets.”
In 1993, Sapraicone found a new way to keep people safe with a startup, Squad Security. He describes it as an international business specializing in “high-end corporate, technology, entertainment and complex logistical security services.”
Over the years, Squad Services has worked with everything from local businesses to Fortune 500 companies, Sapraicone said. An important aspect of those efforts was to continue working with law enforcement officers, employing as many as 600 active or retired officers in the United States and Canada.
“It was kind of a natural move from being a police detective to kind of doing security,” Sapraicone said. “I found my little niche in the world was always to only use active or retired law enforcement.”
Sapraicone — originally from Queens, lived in Seaford, and currently residing in Glen Head —decided to run due to two pressing concerns. One was the news about Santos, who, following the reveal that he had largely fabricated his background when he won the 2022 election, has “been missing in action since he was elected.”
The other is a concern that too many career politicians are distracted by bashing the opposition and ignoring the needs of their districts back home. Sapraicone said that his experience as a detective and a business owner has given him the ability to “de-escalate situations” and work with people who may have diametrically opposed views.
“I look at a good portion of our politicians in Washington, and they’re mainly concerned with scoring partisan political points and advancing themselves,” Sapraicone said. “We’re lacking people reaching across the aisle and not worried about what their own personal agenda is or what their party’s agenda is.”
Public security has remained a priority for Sapraicone over the years, and he hopes to bring his decades of experience in the field to Congress. He said that his time in the NYPD have given him the perspective that the focus on policing in this country should be “continuing to train them and continuing to fund them, not defund.”
Another major concern for him is the economy, and the impact inflation is having on the voters he wants to represent. Sapraicone emphasized the increasing cost of living, and lambasted the concept of “congestion pricing,” finding ways to shift some cars off the highways during rush hour to reduce traffic, which New York City politicians have been considering in recent months.
“I think public safety is a local issue, and it’s certainly a nationwide issue,” Sapraicone said. “We’ve talked to people who go into the local stores in my area, and they all say they’re concerned about the cost of things.”
While the Republican Party has yet to endorse any candidates in the race, Sapraicone said that he has been talking with local leaders and is hopeful that he will “at some point be the Republican-endorsed candidate.”
He added that the party is taking its time to make sure their prospective candidate is fully vetted this time around, and in the meantime, he is also hopeful that the House Ethics Committee — and the courts — will get Santos out of office.
“I think it’s time we” remove Santos from Congress, Sapraicone conclu. “I think he’s just a stain on this country and our community, and we need to move on from that.”
