Major crimes down on LI with steep drop in burglaries

Major crimes in Nassau County dropped by about a third from 2009 to 2019, County Executive Laura Curran and Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder announced Thursday, a decline authorities attribute to technology that enables them to target criminal activity. 

Suffolk also experienced a significant downward trend in major crime during a similar period, and both counties reported steep reductions in burglaries, officials said,

In a Mineola news conference, Ryder said 5,366 major crimes were reported in Nassau in 2019, a 31% drop from the 7,830 major crimes reported in 2009. Violent crime declined 22% between 2010 and 2019, the commissioner added.

“We are absolutely going in the right direction in Nassau County,” Curran said at police headquarters, explaining that police are using state-of-the-art techniques to drive crime to historically low levels. “Data-driven, problem-solving law enforcement is happening in all of our communities every day.”  

Officials did not provide statistics for 2009 for violent crime or break down that category into homicides, rapes and aggravated assaults. Both counties provided numbers in most categories but there were differences in some categories and time periods.

Sixteen homicides were reported in Nassau last year, Ryder said, compared with 17 in 2018 and 15 in 2017. There were 25 homicides reported in Suffolk in 2019, compared with 21 in 2018, and 22 for 2017, declining from 33 for 2016.

Suffolk police said major crimes dropped nearly 42% in the county between 2009 and 2019. Officials said 16,071 major crimes were reported in Suffolk in 2019, compared with 27,649 in 2009, a 41.9% drop. 

Overall violent crime in Suffolk — homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — declined 46.4% during that period, according to officials. Robberies dropped more than 71% during that time period. Aggravated assaults fell more than 40%, from 1,228 in 2009 to 734 last year.

Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said Suffolk, like Nassau, is enjoying historically low crime rates thanks to technology and data that target crime patterns. She also said police have worked to build and improve relationships with the communities they serve. 

“The relationship we have with our communities is more robust,” she said. “We are trying to build trust.” 

Ryder outlined steps Nassau police will take in 2020 to combat crime and keep residents safe, including the creation of a 16-officer tactical vigilance team that will provide security for houses of worship, shopping centers and other soft targets for terrorists and gunmen. 

Nassau will also spend $3.5 million in 2020 for additional license-plate readers, Ryder said. Those have been used by police agencies to locate stolen cars, missing people and criminal suspects.

The department will also create a squad, Ryder said, that will aggressively pursue criminal defendants with outstanding arrest warrants. “If you have a warrant — and you know you do — before we go out and knock on your  door at six o’clock in the morning, before we show up at your place of work and take you out in handcuffs, the time is now to turn yourself in,’’ the commissioner said. 

There were 377 aggravated assaults committed in Nassau in 2018, compared with 426 in 2017.  

Commercial robberies  in Nassau County dropped 44%, Ryder added, from 234 reported in 2009 to 132 in 2019. Street robberies declined from 516 in 2009 to 186 in 2019, a 64% decline. 

Residential burglaries dropped 79% in from the 1,476 reported in 2009 to the 307 reported last year, according to the Nassau commissioner. Commercial burglaries dropped almost 44%, from 512 in 2009 to 288 in 2019. 

In Suffolk, burglaries, overall, declined more than 76% between 2009 and 2019, officials said. 

The only crime statistic that has remained static in Nassau County, Ryder said, was grand larceny. The county continues to average about 3,500 grand larcenies a year. 

“That is the one crime that has not gone down,” Ryder said, “and it hasn’t gone down because we relate it directly to our opiate crisis and the drug users that are out there at night are going through the vehicles. 

“What we ask everybody to do, and one of the things that we need to change for 2020, is lock your car and do not leave your fob in the car,” Ryder added. “Ninety-five percent of the cars that are stolen are stolen because there is a fob left in the car. Ninety percent of the cars broken into is because the car is left unlocked.”