Both public safety and Manhasset’s 6th Police Precinct itself have fallen in bad shape since its merger with the 3rd Precinct, local officials and civic leaders said Monday.
Nearly four dozen officials and residents — including Democratic Nassau County legislators, North Hempstead town lawmakers and police union leaders — renewed calls for the Nassau County Police Department and County Executive Edward Mangano to reopen a fully staffed 6th Precinct and repair the police building they say has fallen into disrepair.
“This building that was designed to promote law and order and public safety is threatening to become a blight on the community, and it is a hazard to public health,” Nassau County Legislator Ellen Birnbaum (D-Great Neck) said.
Civic leaders and officials have decried the 2012 merger since December, saying police service in the former precinct covering Manhasset, Roslyn, Great Neck and Port Washington has suffered while the promised $5 million cost savings has not been realized.
The 6th Precinct building has remained open on Community Drive in Manhasset as a “community policing center” where residents can come to report crimes. It is also the headquarters for the police department’s Highway Patrol unit.
But the building suffers from broken sidewalks, missing floor tiles, damaged ceilings and other physical problems that have gone unaddressed for months, said James Carver, president of the Nassau County Patrolman’s Benevolent Association police union.
“That’s not a community center that I’d like to go into,” said North Hempstead Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth, who opposed the merger as a county legislator. “It’s run down, it appears unsafe. We deserve better.”
The Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations first called for the reopening in a December letter. Civic leaders joined lawmakers in March to call for the precinct’s reopening following a countywide spike in residential burglaries.
Civic group Secretary Sue Auriemma presented the county Legislature with 1,500 signatures on online petition her group started two weeks ago, along with more than 500 signatures town officials collected.
The merged 3rd Precinct stretches from Manorhaven to Hempstead Turnpike and includes Roosevelt Field Mall, county government buildings and Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. It is divided into the 3rd North Subdivision — the former 6th precinct — and the 3rd South Subdivision.
The merger has left the more affluent North Subdivision without enough detectives and plainclothes officers and stretched patrol officers too thin, causing quality-of-life issues such as traffic violations to fall through the cracks, Auriemma said.
“The 3rd Precinct is like a black hole — it sucks most of their resources into that precinct and the (commanding officers) cannot spend the amount of time they can to service the North Shore communities,” said Brian Hoesl, president of Nassau’s Superior Officers Association.
Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter and Mangano spokesman Brian Nevin said funds for 6th precinct building repairs would come from the county’s capital plan, which Democratic legislators are blocking until the county appoints an inspector general.
Birnbaum said she has never seen a line for repairs in the capital plan, and the police department’s operating budget should cover them. Nevin called her claim “political cover” and said the capital plan is “specifically for projects of their nature.”
Krumpter has repeatedly said the merger has not hurt public safety. Crime is down 22 percent countywide since 2011 and down 4 percent in the former 6th precinct so far this year compared to the same period in 2015 in the former 6th precinct, Nevin said.
Crime has also risen 10 percent in the 5th Precinct since its merger with the 4th Precinct was undone last year, Krumpter said.
“It really is irresponsible to further this belief that the public isn’t safe,” Krumpter told the county Legislature on Monday. “They are safer today than they were five years ago, they are safer here than in any other suburban community in the area, and Nassau County maintains the proud distinction of being one of the safest large suburban communities in America.”
Reopening the precinct would cost $5 million the county does not have or otherwise mean reassigning patrol officers to administrative roles, potentially compromising public safety, Krumpter has said.
Krumpter said the mergers have saved more than $50 million. The 3rd Precinct merger only affected administrative jobs and eliminated 500 salaries for “duplicative back office positions,” Nevin said.
Crime statistics do not make North Hempstead residents feel safer, Bosworth said, and they often do not reflect quality of life problems.
“It doesn’t matter how many times people are telling us this isn’t the case,” she told the Legislature. “We’re living it. It is the case.”
The department will have a new pool of officers to staff a full 6th Precinct when 183 recruits graduate from the police academy at the end of May, its largest class in 20 years, Carver said.
The police department plans to use those officers to add eight officers to two community policing programs, Krumpter said: Problem-Oriented Police, which it reinstated in November, and the recently established Community-Oriented Police Enforcement programs.
The 3rd Precinct currently has four Problem-Oriented Police officers, two for each subdivision. The 3rd and 6th precincts had four officers each before the program was disbanded due to budget constraints.
