Letters: Nassau shrinks precincts

When I read about the Nassau County police savings plan, my first reaction was, it's about time. The present plan put forward by Commissioner Thomas Dale is in concept very close to our original.

In 1993, I prepared a 25-page proposal for county executive candidate Ben Zwirn, recommending the modernization of the department. Assisting me were active and retired police and police union officials. I used comparative studies with other departments, as well as research from police journals and criminal justice textbooks. I studied modern trends in policing, including dispatch and crime mapping. People in the NCPD provided data and statistics including personnel costs, building maintenance information and purchasing costs.

The report was updated during the county executive campaigns of 1997 and 2001. Though it received a generally positive reaction, the plan was never implemented.

The essence of the final proposal was to shorten the height of the NCPD (there were 13 steps from cop to commissioner) and redeploy the patrol force using statistical data. The proposal would have reduced the number of high-ranking officers, from captain to commissioner, realigned patrol sectors and moved from eight precinct major commands to four, called divisions. The divisions essentially represented the quadrant system, whereby the county was quartered based on geography and equitable workload distribution.

Though not intuitively obvious, the fact that the First, Third and Fifth precincts were so busy actually distorted the service being delivered. There were some patrol sectors in other, safer precincts that were getting only a few calls each tour, while busy sectors were out of service taking reports. Cars out of service aren't providing the direct patrols needed to keep a community safe. We also proposed big changes at headquarters and in the detectives division, and those savings can be significant.

Reducing overtime and the number of administrative bosses, avoiding redundancy in command and equipment, and eliminating duplicative calls and record keeping -- all could save money today and into the future.

Michael J. Butler, Greenport

Editor's note: The writer is a retired police captain and lawyer.
 

Once again, it is the working people who bear the brunt of County Executive Edward Mangano's efforts to fix our economy. This time, it's 100 police administrative staff.

Yes, eliminating these middle-class working people's jobs will undoubtedly make the county's numbers appear slightly better for a fiscal quarter or two. But this is literally economic cannibalism.

You cannot fix a dismal economy by taking taxpayers and turning them into unemployment recipients. When will this insanity end?

Doug Otto, Massapequa
 

What with almost weekly reports of crimes being committed in or around Elmont, how can the NCPD close that precinct? County Executive Edward Mangano ought to scrap the entire plan for the sake of public safety and security.

Joe Krupinski, Sea Cliff
 

Does anyone have the definition of a policing center and what the benefits are to us taxpayers? Our county executive is floating balloons without clear definition or forethought.

This is exactly how he started his term of office: making changes without taking the time to study the effects of his decisions. I hope the Nassau Legislature is smarter than Mangano, and legislators take the time to evaluate the full impact of this poor decision and stop it before Nassau becomes more crime-ridden than it is now.

Gary Peckett, Baldwin
 

The proposed consolidation and reduction of Nassau County police is counterproductive and foolish. Instead of solving budget problems in this manner, why not look at the millions of dollars owed Nassau in unpaid traffic violations?

I don't believe a concerted effort is being made to collect this money. I have seen efforts being made to strip our police department, and that is false economy.

William Devlin, Rockville Centre