Bed-Stuy Police Officers Will Be Handing Out Their Cellphone Numbers to Residents

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BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — Beginning in June, Bed-Stuy residents will be able to add a cop’s number to their contacts list, according to local NYPD officials.

The NYPD’s 79th precinct, which covers the western half of the neighborhood, has about 265 officers, precinct leader John M. Chell said at a meeting with community members last week.

Starting this summer, 32 of those officers will be broken up into four teams of eight, Chell said. Each team, in turn, will spend as much time as possible inside one of four new districts carved from the 79th.

The team's goal, Chell said, will be to serve as the mini districts' “personal cops” and “problem solvers."

“It’s a fancy version of the old beat cop that everyone knew,” he said.

The officers will regularly attend community meetings, such as block association gatherings, and will focus on both crime and quality-of-life issues, he said.

They’ll also distribute their NYPD email addresses and the numbers of their department-issued cell phones.

(However, Chell said residents should only contact the officers directly for non-emergency situations. During emergencies, they should still call 911.)

The leader of the 79th also announced that his district has been selected to host a pilot program focused on church security.

Following last year’s mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the topic has come up repeatedly in conversations with local faith leaders, Chell said.

So officers with the 79th walked the entire district and recorded the contact information for 110 churches located within it, he said. In the coming months, the precinct will send out invitations to the leaders of those churches for an NYPD-hosted breakfast and discussion on church safety.

The NYPD already sends officers to large church events, Chell said. But the conversation at the upcoming breakfast will center on what churches can do to maintain their own security, like watching for suspicious behavior and installing surveillance cameras.

This program was also launched with the goal of building relationships between the NYPD and Bed-Stuy's historic communities of faith, the precinct chief said.