Police procedure under fire

Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi is demanding an end to restrictions on police patrol deployment that he says impede efficiency and create excessive overtime costs, apparently laying the groundwork for upcoming negotiations with the county's biggest police union.

Arbitrators have ruled that "if a Nassau County Police Department patrol car is reassigned from its post to assist in crime prevention any place outside that post, another must replace it - even if there is no criminal activity or public safety threat at the first post," Suozzi said.

Current contract provisions force the county to fill the vacated post on overtime, he said.

Gary Dela Raba, president of the Nassau Police Benevolent Association, called Suozzi's announcement "misleading." Last week he criticized department brass for removing 24 officers from special assignments - including patrols at three major shopping malls - and putting them in sector patrol cars to save on overtime.

"It was politically expedient for the county executive to sign off on this [contract provision] in 2002. Now, for some reason, it no longer is," Dela Raba said. "Look - you can't move the people who do the basic patrol functions to something else without replacing them."

Suozzi said the current rules - which no other major police department in the nation has - make deployments too inflexible. "The police department should have the freedom to deploy officers and cars where there is criminal activity or a public safety threat," he said.

Suozzi cited two examples of officers being reassigned without replacements, and the PBA winning grievance cases. One, decided in 2004, involved a terrorism drill and the other, decided in February, involved moving officers to a drunken-driving checkpoint on New Year's Eve.

"How do you test for readiness if you can't drill for a spontaneous response without bringing in others on overtime?" asked Police Commissioner James Lawrence. "That's an injustice to the people we serve."

Lawrence said the department's "post" system was established 50 years ago, and that, despite changes in demographics, "we are still manning the same posts the same way."

Dela Raba said Nassau's unique contract was upheld by the arbitrator. Officers had been placed at risk by previous departmental management teams, "but now they and the public are both better protected. That was recognized," he said.

He added that the terrorist drill was a training session, "and no training exercise should leave the public at risk." He said the checkpoint grievance would never have been filed had the reassignments been carried out intelligently. "But rather than move officers near the checkpoint to it, they took them from as far away as possible in the precinct. It was stupid," he said.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

By SID CASSESE (Newsday)
Posted Wednesday, August 2, 2006

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