Big test for Suffolk top cop

It’s go time for Rodney Harrison. After 30 years with the NYPD, rising from cadet to become the department's top uniformed officer, Harrison is on track to become the first person of color to lead the Suffolk County Police Department. He comes east with a career’s worth of experience, having policed in every New York City borough and served as chief of detectives.

Once hesitant as a young man to join the force, with a memory of negative law enforcement interactions, Harrison years later became part of the implementation of the NYPD’s neighborhood-policing attempt to get officers closer to communities. While serving as chief of department, he launched a city listening tour to hear from a wider range of voices. A longtime Baldwin resident, Harrison should have some insights into suburban policing while still being a much-needed outsider to the Suffolk policing club.

All this will be put to the test with the serious challenges that await him in Yaphank.

Those challenges have bedeviled commissioners before him — and Harrison succeeds another history-making leader, Geraldine Hart, the first woman in the role who left to be head of security at Hofstra University.

The department is still under a federal consent decree for personnel practices. It has long-standing issues with diversity in the ranks. The police union holds significant sway and can be a roadblock to change or even the smooth functioning of operations, and the department is still dealing with the legacy and fallout of former chief of police James Burke, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to a civil rights violation and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

This culture of covering up misdeeds and political power plays does a disservice to good officers who just want to serve Suffolk.

Harrison, who has a background in internal affairs, will also have to restore faith that there can be accountability for officers who commit wrongdoing, like the behavior outlined in a Newsday investigation last week. The story detailed one officer’s 2017 sexual assault of a young mother in custody and the lack of real consequences for that officer’s partner who failed to "accurately observe and log the woman’s well-being, as required."

Dealing with this insular culture should be high among Harrison's priorities, along with the operational challenges of maintaining public safety and addressing a stubborn opioid epidemic and gang violence, not to mention solving the Gilgo Beach murders, now more than a decade old. Harrison also must fully enact the county's police reform plan, including more body cameras and new ways to deal with mental health crises, crafted after the wave of police reform activism sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And he needs to address long-standing problems in recruiting minority members to the department.

Doing all that will help achieve the overall goal of restoring confidence in the troubled department. Harrison has his work cut out for him.