Lynbrook mayor defends police hiring

The Village of Lynbrook has been ordered to pay the City of New York $25,000 compensation for hiring a city-trained police officer after just two weeks on the job there — to work at the Lynbrook Police Department.

“It’s a recent law,” said Inspector Ronald Fleury of the Lynbrook Police Department. “It states that the city is entitled to present a bill to recover [an] officers salary if he does not stay with the city.”

Fleury said that the city is billing not only for the officer’s training, but for the salary that he was paid while training. “It’s pro-rated to the date of hire,” he added. “And this applies to all of New York State.”

Fleury explained that the LPD doesn’t pay Nassau County for training its officers, but that the officer would be making a salary during the almost seven months of training. The policeman in this case, Patrick Kelly, was still on the eligibility list for hire, and he could take a job anywhere he chose. Kelly left the New York City Police Department at the beginning of 2012, just two weeks after graduating from the police academy there. He shortly joined the Lynbrook Police Department.

In January 2013, the city filed a court action, citing the state general municipal law. According to Lynbrook Mayor Bill Hendrick, New York City first asked for $56,031.06, plus interest, for the village’s failure to reimburse the costs of Kelly’s training.

The Nassau State Supreme Court ruled in the village’s favor, but the Appellate Division reversed that ruling in June.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with what we did,” said Hendrick. “These officers are at the top of a civil service list … just because they were hired by New York City, doesn’t mean they’re off the list. They can still be hired by Nassau and Suffolk counties.”

Hendrick explained that the civil suit is just to be compensated for training a particular officer. “This is not the first time we’ve done this,” he explained. “The first time we weren’t sued because [the city] missed the 90-day notice of claim.”

Hendrick said he didn’t see taking it any further than the Appellate court, because the cost would’ve been too much to the Village. “They wanted to settle [for the $25,000] and that was worthwhile to us.”

“This is not illegal,” he said, and referred to news outlets who called him defiant. “We take the [officers] with the highest marks on the civil service list … he was right there on the list when we hired him.”

Hendrick said that Nassau County has many more officers than Lynbrook who were trained by New York City. “They just want to be reimbursed,” he said of the suit. “The County will have to fight it, because they have a longer list.”

Hendrick said he is not sure, but believes that an officer can be hired without penalty after about two or three years with the NYPD.