SCPD commissioner Waring addresses community

On Sunday, July 21, Suffolk County Police acting commissioner Robert Waring paid a visit to the home of longtime activist Mary Reid for a meet and greet with members from the local community. Attendees were able to listen to his goals for the future and voice their concerns to help move the police force forward in a positive direction.

Mary Reid is a Third Precinct Community Ambassador who has spent decades volunteering in the area. The spacious backyard of her home, located on East Third Avenue Bay Shore, was the perfect location for Suffolk County residents to gather and get to know the commissioner in a casual setting.

Commissioner Waring has served as commissioner since January of this year. Throughout his 39 years of policing, he has had the opportunity to work in almost every precinct in the county, and previously served as Inspector in the Third Precinct.

“We are here today because I can come up with the best policies and procedures and get it out to my people. But if it is not what the community wants, then it is not all that effective,” explained Waring. “So, we are here today to hear what you want from us. What I want is [the SCPD] to be a trusted, respected agency by the folks who we serve.”

Joining the commissioner was deputy commissioner Belinda Groneman, who grew up in Mary Reid’s neighborhood—Reid was once her cheerleading coach!—and has spent decades in the SCPD. A variety of other police officers were in attendance to answer questions, including Capt. Michael Teplansky, Officer John Wright, Latino liaison Officer Yasmin Gallant, Third Precinct community liaison Eiffel Ramirez, and Suffolk County Guardian Officers Junior Francis and Officer Quinonez.

Commissioner Waring shared ways in which he has personally seen the police department make progress since he began his career.

He notes the department has increased oversight with the addition of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission, which takes all civilian complaints and observes footage from officers’ body-worn cameras.

“It is good to have another set of eyes to tell us yes or no about how we are doing our job,” noted Waring.

The SCPD also utilizes the Suffolk Crime Analysis Center, the largest one in New York State, in which state and county analysts work together to maximize the police’s ability to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to crime.

“I started 1986 and have seen a tremendous evolution. You are not just a good cop if you make a certain number of arrests and summonses, more importantly, you are a good cop if you engage with people and treat them right,” said Waring. “We are evolving, we will do better, and continue to evolve.”

Waring and third precinct officers went on to answer questions and concerns from local residents.

Q: My question is about hate crimes. Have we made any headway in the hate crime unit? Do we have enough people to investigate? Do we have enough people to follow through? In my community at Masjid Darul Quran, there is definitely under reporting. What can we do to improve that?

Waring:

We do have enough people in the hate crime section; we actually just added a detective, so we have more now than we have had in the recent past. We have detectives in our criminal intelligence bureau who are assigned to the mosques, if you remember John O’Grady. John just retired, but Mike Williams took over for John. My suggestion would be, we could do presentations there to make sure they are aware of who Mike is, so they feel comfortable to approach him. It has to be comfortable for them, so they will feel it will really be investigated.

Q: I live near the Bay Shore train station. Over the past nine years I have seen waves of it being really bad and quieting down. But we still have so much drug activity over there. I have a house full of kids. I do not want them to bike or walk around because it does not seem safe. Is there anything specifically you are doing with that area?

Teplansky:

Any type of activity that involves illegal activity, we are going to want to know about. By Mechanicsville there has been an issue. We have worked with MTA to remove a lot of the bus shelters, which were causing some of the issues, which disperses a bit of the problem. We cannot exclusively “enforce our way out of the problem,” but when there is criminal activity, we can devote the necessary resources. What we are also developing is working in coordination with other agencies. We will have social services go out and talk to the people actually in the streets and offer them services. It used to be that we could put them in the system and hope they stay there, but that is not the case anymore.

Q: What are you doing to put systems in place to recruit more minorities on the police force?

Waring:

We did a robust improvement effort, led by Apryl Hargrove, for the last test. Before that test gets approved, it goes to the Justice Department. It actually got delayed a bit this time because we are waiting for their review.We are hoping now to get 65 people ready for Aug.19, we are close to that. It does get approved by the justice department, and they see the demographics that we do not see beforehand, obviously. They were satisfied with what they saw. The last group that we hired, from the last test, had the greatest percentage of African Americans in that last graduating class, so we hope to continue that. We also have to hire 10 percent off the Spanish-speaking list. Personally, I think the most important thing we can do is heavy recruitment in black areas to get more people on the job.