Burglary rate up in 2012

Nassau County police have arrested 70 suspects on burglary charges in the first seven weeks of 2012, a marked increase over recent years, County Executive Ed Mangano said at a press conference on Feb. 23.

The increase comes at a time when the issue of community safety is a major concern, and the County Legislature will decide whether to approve a bill that would convert four of the county’s eight police precincts into “community policing centers.”

Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Dale said that the upswing in burglary arrests is due in large part to a shift in priorities after intelligence-based policing models discovered an upward trend in burglaries near the end of 2011. “In anticipation of this increase in burglaries, our first step was to develop accurate and reliable intelligence,” Dale said. “As we notice changes in burglary trends in different locations throughout the county, we have been immediately redeploying our personnel to follow the bad guys.”

In a presentation detailing the crime statistics in recent years, the NCPD’s chief of department, Steven Skrynecki, noted that while major crimes, such as homicide, are down nearly 10 percent since Mangano took office in 2010, residential burglaries are up — by less than 1 percent — though there was a significant spike between last year and this year.

Skrynecki said that while the number of burglaries in the sam period in 2012 is up significantly from the first seven weeks of 2011, the numbers are skewed by the extreme difference in weather. According to Skrynecki, there were 209 residential burglaries in the first seven weeks of 2009, 216 in 2010 and only 100 in 2011. “This year … there are 218,” he said. “The anomaly here is last year. Clearly, we’d like to take total credit for that, but we think that nature had a little play in that with the blizzards of last winter.”

Local discussion

Crime was a main topic at a Council of East Meadow Community Organizations meeting on Feb. 22. Local leaders acknowledged that residential burglaries are on the rise, with 49 incidents in the 1st Precinct so far this year compared with 20 last year.

It was also noted, however, that police work is showing results. “In the past three weeks they have been very successful at making arrests, and they feel they’ve really made a dent in the burglaries,” said Legislator Norma Gonsalves, who had spoken with Dale earlier that week.

She added that another area of concern in East Meadow is vehicle larceny. “Even though [your cars] are in your driveway, trust me when I say, if the doors are open, they’re going in,” Gonsalves said. “And if there is anything visible for them to be attracted to, they are going to try to get it.”

“We have noticed a lot of cars unlocked, whether they be in the driveway or right in front of people’s houses,” said Bill Alderman, a member of the East Meadow Citizens Patrol Task Force. “I would love permission to go and put notes on their cars that say, ‘Please lock your door.’”

“We also have the car larcenies every night — we’ve had that for years,” task force member Helen Meittinis said of the Salisbury area. “But the arrests, especially drug arrests, are every night … This is why there are so many burglaries and car larcenies.”

The task force is a group of volunteers who patrol the East Meadow Unified School District and report suspicious activity to police, but community leaders said the interest has dwindled. “There are not enough volunteers,” Gonsalves said.

“During the winter, we do not have enough in Salisbury as we did years ago,” added Meittinis, “so if you see something, say something.”

Connecting drug abuse with burglaries

Despite the significant increase in burglaries this year, Skrynecki said, the NCPD is making more burglary arrests than in recent years.

Many of the incidents, Mangano said, are associated with prescription drug abuse. “Clearly, many of these crimes are related to those abusers seeking to obtain money to buy illicit drugs,” he said. “That is the core problem. We are attacking it through education, awareness and enforcement.”

Mangano said that in an effort to strike at the drug-abuse problem, he has met with pharmacists and the state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, and discussed creating a database that would allow pharmacists to see whether a customer’s prescription has already been filled at other locations.

Drop-boxes will be set up at each of the county’s eight police precincts for patients to safely dispose of unwanted prescription drugs.

According to Dale, the newly proposed Community Policing Plan will help the NCPD focus on reducing burglaries. “Nassau’s new Community Policing Plan will reassign 48 police officers from their desks and place them in the community to help address crimes such as this,” he said.

The Legislature’s vote on the precinct-realignment plan was scheduled to take place on Feb. 27, but was postponed until March 5, to allow time for further negotiations with the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association and the Superior Officers Association. Both organizations oppose the plan.

PBA President James Carver spoke to reporters after the press conference, and contradicted Dale’s assertion that reconfiguring precincts would reduce burglaries in the county. “You need to have more police officers on the street,” Carver said. “There’s 100 less police officers that are going to be on the Police Department if they close four precincts. Tell me where they’re going to find these 48 police officers. It’s just not the truth.”

Dale and representatives from the 1st, 3rd and 8th precincts will be on hand at a community meeting hosted by Gonsalves at the East Meadow Fire Headquarters, 197 East Meadow Ave., on March 15 at 7 p.m. Residents are welcome to attend.