Janison: News highlights politics of policing

Suddenly, a stream of news items pushes the politics of policing front and center.

NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna's use of a chemical irritant spray on already-corraled Wall Street demonstrators (and incidentally, an officer or two) made for some very viral video.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told an interviewer that his department has the capacity to shoot down certain planes in certain extreme emergencies.

And, after a wave of public complaints, Kelly's office clarified policy on marijuana busts. Top brass directed police not to arrest people who produce small amounts of the decriminalized weed when searched by cops. The move was applauded by some community leaders and civil-liberties advocates.

Debate and discussion of these matters typically goes to the City Hall doorstep, to the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "In the city, the police commissioner is like a deputy mayor," says a veteran of the uniformed services with involvements both on Long Island and in the five boroughs. "That's less the case in Nassau and Suffolk."

Long Island hosts an archipelago of local police agencies. In this mix, the county executives hold direct responsibility for the leadership of a single -- though important -- layer of law-enforcement within their domains.

But police politics has heated up here, too. Just last week, Suffolk Executive Steve Levy's once-controversial 2008 move to switch highway patrol duties from county police to lesser-paid deputy sheriffs was extended by an agreement to 2017.

By contrast, the bigger, consolidated NYPD occupies in some ways a different world, patrolling teeming urban precincts, monitored by an all-civilian review board, with a current uniformed strength of 34,500 -- versus about 5,000 county police officers combined in Nassau and Suffolk.

One thing is mutual, though: Elected bosses will bask in the glow when crime rates fall and officers perform good work -- and may feel the heat when new lapses and abuses surface. Even in suburban climes, police issues can be as charged as school issues.

GENDER GAP: Citing a Citizens Union report, the NYC-based New Roosevelt Initiative reform group found that in special state legislative elections -- in which party leaders control nominations without primaries -- men won seats vacated by men 87 percent of the time, but women were elected to replace other women only 33 percent of the time.