Editorial
Suffolk police divide gang unit to conquer voilence
Photo credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams, Jr. | Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, with police and local officials, announces a new plan to combat gang violence by decentralizing the police department's gang unit. The announcement was made in Huntington Station, a site of gang violence (Jan 24, 2012).
In government, as in life, if something isn't working, it's a good idea to try something else, monitor the new approach, and if it falls short, move on to another tactic. That seems to be what Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone has in mind for dealing with the persistent problem of gangs.
We support Bellone's decision to move anti-gang police officers back to precincts, because the community clearly does not believe that the current plan is working. But beyond the question of where the officers work, there are other crucial elements in what has to be a broader strategy.
Just this past week, details of a federal indictment of five alleged members of the MS-13 gang emerged. The charges included the shooting death of a 15-year-old boy outside a party in Brentwood. That indictment is symbolic of the gang violence and a reminder that, whatever the configuration of its anti-gang officers, the Suffolk County Police Department must continue to cooperate with federal authorities in Long Island's gang task force.
The problem exists in Nassau County, too. The county's new police commissioner, Thomas Dale, has appointed a top gang expert, Robert Hart, as assistant commissioner. Hart ran the FBI's Long Island office in Melville and launched the gang task force. So his experience can be a major strength in this fight. Both Dale and Suffolk's new police leadership should regularly tap his expertise.
Another must: continuing and expanding cooperation among the two police forces, county district attorneys, federal investigators and prosecutors. Gangs are mobile and flexible. So their law enforcement opponents must be able to leap over bureaucratic barriers and to work as a unified, nimble team.
Bellone is making a sharp departure from current practice. His predecessor, Steve Levy, agreed with then-Police Commissioner Richard Dormer in 2009 that the best plan was to move the handful of anti-gang officers in the precincts into a centralized unit. Centralization was later supported in a 2010 U.S. Justice Department report. Gang arrests after centralization rose sharply, Levy and Dormer said.
But Bellone and Acting Police Commissioner Edward Webber cite a 2011 Justice Department report on Suffolk that recommended decentralizing, to enhance police-community relationships. In addition, a bipartisan consensus has grown among county legislators to put anti-gang officers back in Suffolk's seven police precincts.
Working in precincts, anti-gang officers get to know the community, develop informants, and have a chance to act before a gang does, instead of cleaning up the mess after a major crime. Their intelligence can help the gang unit in the district attorney's office prosecute big cases. But sharing that intelligence is crucial.
In street warfare between rival groups, deaths and injuries are not limited to members. Victims have also included innocent people in communities such as Brentwood, Huntington Station, Wyandanch and Hempstead. Even when gangs don't kill, they create a sense of danger and insecurity.
Earlier this month, for example, State Police and investigators from the Nassau County district attorney's office arrested four alleged members of the Crips at a home in Hempstead where they're accused of dealing drugs. Nobody got hurt, but a gang drug business in their midst is alarming for residents.
Bellone is also wise to rethink a Levy plan to keep gang members from associating with one another in a several-block stretch of Wyandanch. He should scrap this constitutionally untenable "safety zone" idea.
In announcing his gang plan, Bellone said flatly: "We will win this fight." What's a win? Gangs won't disappear, but reclaiming even one frightened community from them would feel like a victory. Meanwhile, if this plan doesn't work, Bellone must be ready to move on to the next one. It's a long fight.
