NYPD's New 'Neighborhood Policing' Model Coming to Brooklyn Heights This Fall

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The NYPD will bring its community policing model to Brooklyn Heights this October, the department announced Tuesday.

Under community policing, teams of Neighborhood Commanding Officers, or NCOs, are assigned to specific quadrants of a police precinct. They spend the majority of their time in their assigned region, with the goal of knowing it intimately and being known personally by residents.

All NYPD officers now have department-issued cell phones and email addresses. The NCOs distribute this contact information to the residents in their area, the NYPD says, making them better able to address a variety of neighborhood concerns, from crimes to quality of life issues.

Some NCOs have also been holding community meetings with residents, discussing local crime trends and strategizing about policing tactics.

Outgoing NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton has held up neighborhood policing as a critical way to lower crime while simultaneously improving police-community relations. James O'Neill, who will take over the NYPD from Bratton in September, reiterated that position on Tuesday, stressing his commitment to further expanding the program.

As of this fall, more than half of the NYPD's precincts will have adopted community policing, O'Neill said, including all of the precincts which patrol public housing developments.

Brooklyn Heights is patrolled by the NYPD's 84th Precinct. According to official police statistics, through July 24, major crimes in the 84th were collectively down about 13.5 percent compared to the same time period last year.

However, the precinct had recorded 19 more robberies through July 24 than during that period in 2015.

Top image courtesy of Giacomo Barbaro/Flickr