8 OCTOBER 25, 2018 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
O’Neill visits Ridgewood in lead-up to NCO rollout
BY MARK HALLUM
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@MARKUUSAN
Police Commissioner James
O’Neill was at the Ridgewood Y
with Queens Borough President
Melinda Katz and NYPD brass Monday
to boast of the successes of neighborhood
policing.
The discussion touched on the rollout
of the Neighborhood Coordination
Offi cers program in the 104th Precinct
and the arrest of a Jackson Heights
man associated with the Proud Boys
incident on the Upper East Side on
Oct. 12.
The event was part of “City Hall
in Your Borough” week, an annual
event in which Mayor Bill de Blasio
visits each of the fi ve boroughs and
conducts city business within communities
across the city. De Blasio did
not attend the Monday aft ernoon press
conference.
Katz mentioned that when the NCO
was piloted, two precincts in Queens
were chosen for the trial run including
the 100th and 101st precincts, both
based on the Rockaway peninsula.
“As neighborhood policing has been
gradually diffused across the city,
we’re seeing that this model is helping
to fuel the continued reduction of
crime citywide,” Katz said. “Neighborhood
policing makes it so that cops can
become part of the community.”
Queens may have been the first
borough to get the NCO program, but
it is also among the last to see a complete
rollout with the 104th Precinct
based in Ridgewood fi nally adding the
program this week.
The NCO initiative divides the command
into four sectors and assigns
four cops to each. The program does
not take offi cers off patrol, but actually
adds personnel to the precincts with
new offi cers coming onboard.
Offi cers chosen as NCOs are oft en
already serving in the precinct and
residents within their sector will be
able to reach them directly via cellphone,
email or offi cial Facebook and
Twitter accounts.
A community meeting at Christ the
King High School in Middle Village
was the venue for the 104th’s rollout
of the program later Monday night
where residents met the men and women
who would be in direct contact with
them regarding various issues.
C-Pop, Impact, Sector Assignments
and 911 calls for service are all models
of engagement used by NYPD from
the 1990s onward, according to Chief
of Patrol Rodney Harrison, but these
strategies did not put the same offi cers
in the same parts of the command every
day, he said.
“We never get to know the people.
We only know the people dialing
911,” Harrison said to about 60 people
in attendance at the Community
introductions.
One attendee asked if the sector lines
are drawn based on race, but NYPD said
this was not a factor, although bilingual
officers may be assigned to certain
sectors in order to communicate with
the people in those neighborhoods.
NYPD Queens Borough Commander
Juanita Holmes talked about her
time as an African-American woman
serving in the most diverse county in
United States and assured audience
members the NCOs are “culturally
competent,” as one resident asked.
“Every single cop gets a host of
training,” Holmes said. “Cultural competency
has to be one of our skill-sets.”
Robert Monahan, president of the
Greater Ridgewood Youth Council,
also touted the benefi ts of the NCO
program.
“The NCO is a response to people
feeling like something was done to
them. Instead the NCO will make them
feel as though things are done with
them,” Monahan said. “As president of
the Greater Ridgewood Youth Council,
I have spent nearly three decades
trying to develop and build those alternatives
and solutions. The mission
of the GRYC is to improve the quality
of life for kids throughout Queens, and
that mission mirrors that of the NYPD.”
Photos by Bruce Adler and Mark Hallum
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