Long Beach Police Commissioner Candidates Share Ideas In Forum

LONG BEACH, NY — Acting Police Commissioner Philip Ragona and Chief Ronald Walsh, the two candidates to be the new commissioner of the Long Beach Police Department, shared their thoughts on police and the future of the department at a town hall meeting held Tuesday night.

Ragona was a member of the Long Beach Police Department for 34 years. He worked his way through the ranks and retired as an inspector and the executive officer of the department. After his retirement, he was asked by the city to become the director of the Ocean Beach Park, which he did until June, when he became acting commissioner following the retirement of Michael Tangney.

Walsh is the current chief of support for the Nassau County Police Department. He started after high school as a volunteer auxiliary police officer in Long Beach, and worked in the surrounding areas for 11 years with the NCPD.

During the forum, both candidates answered questions about how they view policing and what they see as the future of the Long Beach department. Questions were submitted by the public ahead of the forum, which was held online due to the coronavirus.

Ragona made the case that he had been doing the job for months and had already made improvements. When he first came on in June, he said that he saw the department was understaffed, especially when it came to sergeants, which supervise patrol officers. Ragona promoted officers to sergeant, giving the department is first female, first female Latina and second Black sergeants.

"When I took over in June, the police department was decimated. We were short supervisors, we were short police officers, we had no command staff. I rectified all of that," he said. "Everything is moving in the right direction, and it’s certainly no time to take our foot off the gas. We’re heading up, and lets not stop now."

Walsh's focus was more on transforming the department into an example of community policing that would be a model around the world. Walsh wants to build and nurture better relationships with the community and engendering trust.

"Trust isn’t something that you give, it’s something that you earn," Walsh said. "And I will dedicate this pd to earning your trust every single day. By being accountable for our actions, by being inclusive to everything that we do. Your voice matters."

Community policing and police reforms were big issues at the forum. Both candidates said they supported Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan on police reform, which ordered every police department in the state to come up with a plan by April with changes to use of force, police practices and more.

Ragona said he has already started to implement changes. He said he has made concerted efforts to reach out to communities in Long Beach that feel marginalized by the police department. The new sergeants will help process and investigate any complaints made against officers, he said. And he's working to roll out a program called Adopt-A-Cop, which would have officers go to local schools to introduce themselves to kids and build relationships. He also said he banned choke-holds in the department's use of force policy.

"Racism will never be tolerated. So our officers are trained consistently and regularly, and our supervisors are out there supervising," Ragona said. "I truly, from the bottom of my heart, believe we don’t have a racist on this police department."

Walsh had a more transformative idea for the department. He said that, to him, community policing is a philosophy and not a program. He wants the police department to work with the community to become more inclusive and woven into the fabric of the city. He said that the sign that community policing has been effectively woven into the department is when the officers will police themselves for bad conduct, creating a culture of accountability.

"You know what should have happened in Minneapolis with George Floyd? Those cops should have pulled [the other officer] off," Walsh said. "There should have been a culture where they grabbed that guy, took him off of [Floyd] and said, ‘What are you doing? You’re choking him.’ And they should have saved his life. That’s a culture of accountability. That’s how you know. That’s where we need to be."

Residents can watch the entire 90-minute forum above. Afterword, they can click here to fill out a surveyabout who they think the better candidate was.