Residents protest plan to close precinct

Concerned about safety, around 30 people braved the cold to hold a "Save the 5th Precinct" rally Saturday, part of ongoing opposition to Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano's plan to halve the number of police precincts countywide.

Residents from the Elmont-Valley Stream area gathered outside the Fifth Precinct on Dutch Broadway to voice concerns about the plan, which would reduce precincts to four from eight and cut 95 full-time uniformed officers. The police department has 2,380 sworn officers.

"Our biggest concern is response times -- and perception," said Milagros Vicente, a North Valley Stream mother of three and rally organizer. "A precinct is a symbol of safety. Anyone with bad intentions will see us as vulnerable if this precinct closes and we don't want our safety compromised."

Mangano's administration has said the cuts will not impact public safety; all of the 95 uniformed positions to be cut are administrative, and the 177 patrol sectors now in place will not change, officials say.

Valley Stream resident Bernadette Smith, who attended the rally with her granddaughter and two sisters, said she was alarmed by the plan to close the Fifth Precinct -- one of the county's busiest. "I'm here 24 years, we moved from Queens for a better quality of life and we pay for it with high taxes," she said.

The community had been rattled, she said, by last month's botched North Valley Stream home invasion in which family members were bound by intruders before a police officer rescued them and a suspect fatally shot himself in a gun battle with police.

Smith said her husband travels a lot and she was impressed by how quickly police arrived at her home on a recent night when she was alone and worried by a stranger in her backyard. "They were there in three minutes," she said, adding that she doubts response times would remain the same with 95 fewer officers.

This story was changed to reflect that all of the 95 uniformed positions to be cut are administrative.