Milestones for Nassau Police, 85 years on

It was a time when criminals had a new weapon in their arsenal - the automobile - so they could slip over one town line into another and disappear into the muddling maze of jurisdictions that was 1920s Nassau.

To address that problem, the county's governing body, the Board of Supervisors, formed a committee, and on April 16, 1925, formally established the Nassau County Police Department.

Eighty-five years later, the department has grown from an all-Caucasian male force of 55 reassigned town and village sheriffs into an ethnically, racially and gender diverse force of 2,568 sworn officers and a civilian force of 1,214.

It has weathered growing pains, turmoil and corruption - the sudden resignation of its first commissioner amid an "explosive" gambling scandal (1945), the apparent suicide of its second commissioner (1961), and allegations of bias in its hiring practices of the 1970s and '80s.

It also has brought policing into the 21st century with new technology such as license-plate readers.

"We've been community-

focused since Day One," said Lawrence W. Mulvey, who became the 12th police commissioner on July 1, 2007.

Mulvey, who started out as a foot patrolman in 1973, said the old department philosophy was "more is better" - and that meant manpower.

The 21st-century department strives to find the best marriage between manpower and technology, Mulvey said, and the department's real-time information system is so state-of-the-art it's being considered for use by other forces around the nation and even the FBI.

Patrol cars are now computer-equipped, so officers can examine information available on crime patterns and potential suspects, including criminal histories and photographs. The patrol units carry DNA kits.

"What we're doing in our 85th year," Mulvey said, "is putting every tool possible in the toolbox of the cop on the street."

When the Nassau County Police Department was born, it served a burgeoning suburban landscape, replacing the loose network of state police, town constables, village police and deputy sheriffs. Crime was on the rise and a population explosion on the horizon.

"Criminals, particularly burglars and car thieves, were having a holiday," the 50th anniversary commemorative history of the department noted. "Aided by the mobility given them by the automobile, they crossed jurisdictional boundary lines, enjoying the insulation from capture afforded by irregular patrol, communications gaps and the lack of a coordinated investigative follow-up."

Or, as police department historian Douglas Stiegelmaier said: "The criminals would literally run to the town line. . . . The place next to the town where the crime took place wouldn't know anything about it."

But when the Board of Supervisors handed down the order on April 16, 1925, the county, almost overnight, had a unified police force. The order appointed Abram W. Skidmore, then chief of the Lawrence Police Department, as the chief of police at $8,000 a year. Sheriffs and constables from towns across Nassau were then sworn in as county police officers.

The actual policing was rudimentary.

Patrol officers were assigned Ford runabouts - and were forbidden to put up the convertible top unless there was a rainstorm or snowstorm. The precinct houses were literally that - local homes that had been converted to police stations.

Except in cases of "extreme emergency," officers were forbidden to drive faster than 20 mph.

Records were handwritten.

Communication was through call boxes placed on the street.

Patrolmen walked beats.

And, it turned out, some officers took bribes.

The first major department scandal hit in 1945, when investigators learned some officers were taking payments from local bookies and gamblers to tip them off before raids.

Twenty-two officers were demoted or transferred or resigned. Commissioner Skidmore resigned and was replaced by John M. Beckman.

Sixteen years later Beckman, who was said to be terminally ill, apparently jumped from a bridge off the Meadowbrook Parkway. His body washed up near Gilgo Island in March 1961.

The department officials listed his death as being under "mysterious circumstances."

Throughout its history the department also has handled notable cases - and even set some national trends. Much of that history is chronicled at the department museum at police headquarters in Mineola. The historical collection will eventually move to Museum Row at Mitchel Field.

Among the historic highlights:

Lt. Adam Yulch devised a system for identifying laundry and dry-cleaning marks in the late 1930s that led to the capture of four wartime saboteurs on Long Island in 1943.

Fingerprinting technique advances led Nassau detectives to nab a thief dubbed "The Phantom Burglar" as he boarded an ocean liner for Poland after committing 3,000 burglaries in the metro area in the 1930s.

And diversity on the force grew after the Justice Department sued Nassau in 1977, alleging the police exam discriminated against minorities. Subsequent exams, including one administered in 1987, failed to satisfy federal courts. That changed in the 1990s.

"We've come a long way, and I believe our policing has become very professional," Mulvey said. "When I look at the department now, I'm very proud."