NCO Policing Program Failed in Bay Ridge
For Bay Ridge, we need to return to the NYPD 911 response team and patrol model. The Neighborhood Policing Model has not been been beneficial to this community as our community has different needs.
In May, parents in Bay Ridge contacted the police when a man exposed himself to their sons near Vista Place and 68th Street. After three hours of waiting for the police, the parents contacted Councilman Brannan. In a few minutes, the police arrived at the home to speak with the parents due to Councilman Brannan’s prompting. Newspapers here didn’t reveal that last bit of information, but parents here know what happened. See here
Look at how close the family was to the police precinct on 65th Street:
Bay Ridge was lucky there was surveillance cameras to help capture the man. See here
In this community, many people respect the police. But when the police don’t respond to a parent for HOURS, we know we have a serious problem.
Coucilman Brannan saw the NCO for that area didn’t respond within an hour. At that point, Brannan should have met with Chief Harrison or Commissioner James O’Neil because community policing isn’t working here.
Yesterday, Brannan tweeted this:
In the video, Councilman Brannan bantered about the NCO program as if it was a success (click here to see the video above). Isn’t there one person on Brannan’s staff who can be real with him and tell him this video isn’t helpful? The NCO program had a year and it didn’t benefit the community.
In general, residents here don’t call the police. They let things go because this precinct has a history of not responding to calls. Years ago it was because they were understaffed, but now we have a lot more officers. Everyone knows that the precinct closes 311 calls – even when an officer doesn’t come out.
Brannan and Senator Gounardes know patrols aren’t on the streets because people have complained about the continuous drag racing in the community. See here and here.
Last September, Commissioner O’Neill came out to Bay Ridge and said the police will do what is needed to make people feel safer, but there’s been no change here. See here
In Dyker Heights, people complain about strangers walking into their gated yards – yet, nothing is done to help them. Residents repeatedly report incidents like these trucks. If we had patrol cars in the area, officers would have handled this and people wouldn’t be able to use our streets as a rest stop.
People who have tried calling the precinct are met with unanswered calls (the phone continues to ring and no one answers it). Residents don’t want to call 911 because everyone feels that is for emergencies. Burglaries go unreported because people know the police aren’t going to show up for hours, if at all.
Last Summer, when Councilman Brannan explained the area would be getting beat cops, people were hopeful. (See here) Yet, the NCO program is not beat cops. NCO’s are for communities in turmoil, where neighbors need mediator cops. We need patrol cops here as this weeks statistics show home crimes are up:
For our community, the NCO program has become an e-mail program, where the police aren’t making the connections that the program was set up to do. When the program rolled out last year, Chief Harrison said “They are going to be in the same area every single day” (See here) Harrison was right – the new officers are in the same area every day… they are at the police precinct responding to e-mails.
When a situation happened this Spring in our community, my husband reached out to the NCO’s by e-mail. He received a canned e-mail response saying there was an ongoing investigation, so they could not comment. What good is that? When a resident reported an issue about parking, she received this e-mail response from the NCO. While the response may be true (and we sympathize), that probably shouldn’t be in writing because it wasn’t helpful.
Chief Harrison doesn’t communicate with the community well. Situations which should be shared with the community aren’t being shared until weeks later, even though a crime was committed. Parents need to be informed when there is someone dangerous in the community, so they can make decisions for their child’s safety. On a regular basis, the 68th Precinct’s tweets are about incidents from weeks ago – see here. This is usual. Mediation and communication from the community affairs officer isn’t satisfactory either – see here.
For other communities, the NCO program is working because mediators were what those communities needed. Communication through e-mail just put more distance between the police and residents here. Our community needs patrol cars and beat cops. Eventually, we will get a leader who understands this.
Hugs,
marlene
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