Nassau County police have taken “precautionary measures” at Jewish-owned businesses and houses of worship in wake of terrorist attacks in Paris last week despite no apparent threat being made against the county, officials said Tuesday.
The remarks came shortly after police and Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano announced that crime had decreased 25 percent overall since 2009 and that major crimes dropped 9.5 percent from 2013 to 2014.
Acting Nassau County Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter said patrols have increased near Jewish institutions since a gunman stormed a kosher delicatessen in east Paris on Friday morning two days after an apparent jihadist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which has a history of publishing political cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
On Monday, a swastika was discovered engraved onto a glass panel at the Long Island Railroad station in Cedarhurst, which according to a Newsday report has a large orthodox Jewish population.
Long Island Railroad stations are out of the jurisdiction of Nassau County police. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the maintenance of the train stations, has its own law enforcement agency that monitors them.
“This kind of behavior will not be tolerated in Nassau County,” Krumpter said, adding that he would be in favor of the increased use of security cameras throughout Nassau if county officials and analysis deemed them necessary.
Mangano, a Republican who was elected in 2009, said the county crime rate is at its lowest point since Nassau began recording crime statistics in the 1960s.
“This really is a great testament to the work our officers do day in and day out,” he said.
The announcement comes more than a week after the New York City Police Department released data that said major crime in the city was down 4.6 percent in 2014 and had the lowest number of homicides since the department began tracking crime statistics using the database CompStat in 1993.
Krumpter said crime in nearly every major category in Nassau decreased from year to year except for sexual crimes, of which he said five were recorded in 2014.
Police said that 2014 saw a 53 percent decrease in murders, a 36 percent reduction in robberies and a 32 percent decrease in burglaries.
Crime within the Third Precinct, which operates within the Town of North Hempstead, also declined 4.9 percent in 2014, police said.
Police officials said major crime within the precinct decreased 8.97 percent in the first six months of 2014, with sharp decreases in robberies and stolen vehicles and a slight rise in grand larceny.
Krumpter declined to comment on the status of a homicide investigation into the shooting death of Mineola resident Oscar Granados on Sunday. During a press conference on Monday, police officials said gambling may have played a role in his death.
When asked about whether police presence would increase if a plan to build a casino at the former Fortunoff site in Westbury were to come to fruition, Krumpter said the department would “police the county as a whole.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately said Edward Mangano took office as Nassau County Executive in 2009. Mangano was elected in 2009 but did not take office until 2010. We regret the error.
