Roger that! NFL & NYPD team up
THE NYPD IS helping the National Football League with its future community outreach playbook.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said members of the NYPD’s top brass met with team owners on Wednesday. They discussed at the league’s fall meetings how teams can build better relationships with their communities.
“We had a special visitor today,” Goodell said of Police Commissioner James O’Neill’s visit. “I specifically have had conversations with him for several months, so this has been quite a while in the making to try to understand how we can continue to expand the relationships between our clubs, our players, our communities and the NFL.”
Goodell said O’Neill (photo) was “very helpful in giving us insight into what their initiatives are.”
Since taking over as the city’s top cop just over a year ago, O’Neill has championed the department’s Neighborhood Policing
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Initiative. Under the program, police created neighborhood coordination officers who spend a chunk of their days developing relationships with residents, tenant leaders and merchants — instead of responding to 911 calls.
Goodell said the NFL’s also looking at how cops in other cities, including Miami and Philadelphia, work with communities.
“The relationship between the players and our communities and our law enforcement is very important to us,” Goodell said. “So that was very helpful.”
NYPD Chief of Patrol Terrence Monahan was also an invited guest of the NFL. Monahan and O’Neill praised the Neighborhood Policing Initiative to team owners.
“(O’Neill) talked about how important that is,” NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis said about the Neighborhood Policing Initiative. “He talked about community relations and working closely with the community.”
The community engagement discussions on Wednesday were largely overshadowed this week by the controversy over players taking a knee during the national anthem.
During a meeting on Tuesday, team owners agreed not to change the league’s national anthem policy — meaning players still aren’t required to stand.