Nassau police increasing Island Park club patrols

Last November, Thomas Krumpter, who was then the acting commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department, spoke to residents at a meeting of the Island Park Civic Association.

The main things most Island Parkers were concerned about were the noise generated by the clubs on Barnum Island and the drunk drivers leaving them late at night. Krumpter promised residents at the meeting that NCPD enforcement would be stepped up this summer. “I believe that within four weeks of Memorial Day, the problem will be dealt with,” he said.

Krumpter went on to say that enforcement of the Town of Hempstead noise ordinance — which says that speakers cannot be so loud that they carry sound beyond a club’s property after 11 p.m. — would be more strictly enforced. “If I have to start writing the summonses myself,” he said, “they will be written.”

To many, Krumpter’s pledges may have seemed like empty promises. It would not have been the first time that someone in a position of authority pledged to reduce noise in the clubs only to have nothing happen.

But even though Krumpter is no longer acting commissioner — and even after County Executive Ed Mangano’s police reorganization — the NCPD has followed through on Krumpter’s promises. “We have already started increasing DWI patrols,” said Inspector Kenneth Lack, commanding officer of the department’s Public Information Office. “We started at the beginning of the season.”

Since Memorial Day, Lack said, police have been stepping up their enforcement both on Austin Boulevard and at the Barnum Island clubs, which include Paddy McGee’s, Warehouse Five and Pop’s Seafood Shack and Grill.

“The club detail is running with the [Bureau of Special Operations] in conjunction with the 4th Precinct,” Lack said. Krumpter said last year that the club detail, which has been policing the area for years, would be reorganized under the BSO.

“The Bureau of Special Operations are probably one of the most elite units in the department,” Krumpter told the Civic Association. “People who go to the Bureau of Special Operations are among the most active and aggressive police officers in the department, and the supervisors are the same.”