Suffolk County Police Department

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The shoulder patch of the Suffolk County Police Department

Suffolk County Police Department provides county police services to Suffolk County, New York.

1 History
2 Size and organization
3 Specialized units
4 Famous cases
5 Personnel issues
6 References
7 External link

[edit] History

Prior to 1960, law enforcement in Suffolk County was the responsibility of local towns and villages as well as the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office. From the 17th century until well into the 20th century, many of these jurisdictions employed only part-time constables, who were usually appointed by local communities and paid to enforce court orders. Additional fees were paid for making arrests, serving warrants and transporting prisoners. Few of these constables had any formal law enforcement training, hours were often long and pay was low.

The New York State Police arrived on Long Island in 1917, and many towns and villages began forming their own small police forces soon thereafter. Training remained inadequate, however, and none of these forces were equipped to handle serious incidents or major crimes. Communication and cooperation between forces remained spotty.

The demographic transformation of the county following World War II, however, forced a change. The rapid suburbanization of those years brought with it a dramatic rise in traffic and crime that threatened to overwhelm the 33 separate law enforcement agencies then operating within Suffolk County. Voices demanding a unified county police force, similar to the one already operating in neighboring Nassau County, grew louder.

Following the passage in 1958 of state legislation creating the county executive form of government, a referendum was held on the creation of a county police force. The five western towns — Babylon, Huntington, Islip, Smithtown and Brookhaven — voted in favor. The five eastern towns — Riverhead, Southold, Shelter Island, East Hampton, and Southampton — opted to retain their own police forces and do so to this day. (The SCPD, however, backs up these forces with such services as homicide investigation and police academy training for their recruits.)

The towns that voted in favor thus agreed to turn over all their police functions to the new agency. In addition to normal uniformed patrol services, the new agency agreed to provide: a Detective Bureau, a Communications Bureau, an Identification Bureau, a Central Records Bureau, a police laboratory, and a police academy for training new officers.

All incumbent town and village police officers serving in those areas that voted to join the police district became members of the new department without further examination or qualification. In addition, state troopers serving on Long Island who so desired could request appointment to the new force. Criminal investigators in the district attorney's office were appointed the new detectives. The serving town and village police chiefs were typically appointed inspectors, deputy chiefs or assistant chiefs in the new department. The remaining positions were filled by competitive civil service examinations. The Suffolk County Police Department officially came into being on January 1, 1960 with 619 sworn members.

[edit] Size and organization

Today, the department has a strength of around 2,500 sworn officers, making it one of the largest county police agencies in the country. In addition to officers, the department also employs 500 civilians, ranging from clerks to lab technicians, as well as nearly 400 school crossing guards. In 2006, the department announced it would be staffing its public information unit entirely with civilians, thus freeing more officers to return to patrol duty.

The department is headed by a civilian commissioner, appointed by the county executive, and police headquarters are located in Yaphank. The department has a total of seven precincts. Four of the five towns are served by their own precinct, with odd-numbered precincts covering the south shore towns and even-numbered ones covering the north shore. The exception is the town of Brookhaven, whose sheer size (sprawling from Long Island Sound to the Atlantic Ocean) necessitated the establishment of two precincts, the 5th in Patchogue and the 6th in Selden. Recently, because of population growth in the eastern part of Brookhaven and deployment problems from the existing station houses caused by Long Island's perpetually traffic-choked roads and highways, a third precinct was established in Shirley in the late 1990's.

[edit] Specialized units

Along with the services it provided at the beginning, the county police now also provides an aviation unit equipped with helicopters, a marine unit that patrols Long Island Sound as well as the Great South Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, a scuba team that searches waterways for bodies and evidence of criminal activity, an arson/bomb squad, a highway unit that patrols the Long Island Expressway, a mountain bike unit, and an Emergency Service Unit (ESU) that provides confined space and high-level rescue capability, hazardous materials response, and heavy weapons back-up to patrol officers. Most of these are usually found only in the police departments of large cities.

[edit] Famous cases

The Suffolk County Police have investigated several well-known and notorious crimes and incidents, including the Amityville Horror murder case; the 1987 case of Richard Angelo, the so-called "Angel of Death;" the 1993 Katie Beers kidnapping; and the crash and recovery of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Suffolk ESU officers also participated in the recovery effort at the World Trade Center site in September 2001.

[edit] Personnel issues

In recent years, Suffolk officers (along with the Nassau County Police Department as well) have become well-known in the New York area for their exceptionally high rate of pay, especially as compared with the nearby New York City Police Department. (In 2006, top pay for a Suffolk patrol officer is $97,958 annually, not including overtime, night differential and benefits, compared with $59,588 in New York City.)^[1] As a result, numerous NYPD officers have left the city force and joined the Suffolk department.^[2]

Hiring issues have been contentious in recent decades, with the county coming under fire from African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities claiming the hiring process discriminates against them. The U.S. Justice Department sued Suffolk for discriminating against women and minorities in police hiring in 1983. While denying any intentional discrmination, the county signed a consent decree three years later committing itself to increased minority hiring.^[3] The number of minority officers, however, has remained small. A cadet program aimed at smoothing the way onto the force for black and Hispanic young people, was struck down in 1997 as unconstitutional reverse discrimination. On top of that, a well-publicized cheating scandal on the 1996 police exam further undermined confidence in the fairness of the hiring process.^[4] In 2006, controversy surrounding these issues has abated somewhat, but has not gone away entirely.^[5]A police exam has been scheduled for June 9, 2007.^[6]

Six female officers sued the department for sex discrimination over its pregnancy policy and won a judgement from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2003.^[7] On June 14, 2006, a federal jury found that the police department discriminates against female officers by denying them access to limited duty positions, like working the precinct desk, during their pregnancies.^[8]