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O’Neill: Cops will help in more ways
If the city’s top cop has his way, at some point in the near future, police officers will not only fight crime, but will help needy New Yorkers cut through bureaucratic red tape to get services they need.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill’s latest neighborhood policing initiative would have cops armed with access to a powerful, up-tothe-minute database that would lay out all points of contact for city services in a given precinct.
“We want to make sure that we leave people who need help with someone in this city whether government or a (nonprofit) who will follow up and help make people’s lives a little better,” he told the Daily News on the fourth anniversary of the murders of Officers Wenjian Lu and Rafael Ramos — a tragedy that in part spurred the creation of neighborhood policing. “I’m not looking for the Neighborhood Coordination Officers and steady sector cops to go to a job and just kind of think this isn’t part of my responsibility and just leave people with nowhere to go.”
Right now, cops refer people who are sick, depressed, mentally ill, hungry or losing their apartments to city agencies for help.
But that’s not enough, O’Neill believes. The city’s red tape is daunting and even impassable, and people need a kind of champion to guide them to the right people. “It is frustrating for police officers. I think it would be frustrating to anyone in city government that the help sometimes doesn’t come to people in need,” O’Neill said.
With the new database, available first as a website and eventually as an app to their department-issued iPhones, officers can reach out to the agencies for help — and those agencies would have to respond. Their response would be mandated by mayoral decree and tracked.
O’Neill credited Chief of Department Terence Monahan, Chief of Patrol Rodney Harrison and community officers for help in coming up with the idea.
“I have a lot of interaction with sector cops and NCOs, and they want to be able to help people beyond just responding to crime and quality of life conditions,” he said.
For now, the NYPD, the mayor’s office of operations and City University of New York’s Institute for State and Local Governance have embarked on an initial planning stage with $175,000 in city money.
“This goes well beyond ‘Am I arresting this guy or not,’” said Michael Jacobson, a former city correction commissioner. “It sort of maximizes the resources that people can get. But you don’t just send out a memo and say ‘Do this.’ In order for it to work, the city agencies and (community organizations) have to want to do it and see the value in it and cooperate.”
Told of the plan, one officer grumbled, “Sounds like they want to make us social workers.”
Jacobson, who is now at CUNY, disagreed. “We don’t see this as turning police into social workers,” he said. “For the day-to-day lives of the folks in New York City, this will be a well-received policy.”