As Gillen Takes Ride Along, Lynbrook PD Tries To Balance The Books

LYNBROOK, NY. — U.S. Representative Laura Gillen got some firsthand exposure to police work Friday, taking part in a “ride along” with Lynbrook Police Department officer Nick Gizzi.

For the department, it was an opportunity to give one of the elected officials who represents Lynbrook a look at what their job entails at a time when it's getting more expensive to do business. As for Gillen, the representative took Friday morning’s ride along as an opportunity to speak on her commitment to keeping justice department grants for police funding active.

In remarks delivered after the ride along, Gillen — decked out in a department bulletproof vest — said she would be pushing for the U.S. Department of Justice to continue funding police departments through its Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant program.

“I saw a lot, today, of the challenges that even traffic stops can present to officers,” Gillen said. “I’m pushing for the DOJ to make sure they maintain and expand their lines of COPS grants, that supplies the funding for the resources that departments — especially smaller police departments, like the village department here in Lynbrook — need.”

For Lynbrook PD Chief Brian Paladino, the possibility of federal funding is a welcome one for a department where every one of those “resources” has gotten more expensive in recent years. New police cruisers, Paladino said, run at a cost of about $85,000, while new portable radios cost about $18,000 apiece. Paladino said the department plans to apply for some federal funding to cover the cost of between 15 and 18 portable radios, which cost about 7,000 apiece last time they were replaced, and put three new patrol cars in its budget. Tasers are another piece of equipment that has cost a pretty penny in recent years, the chief said, with a recent replacement of 38 tasers running at $100,000. Two cars in the current fleet, Paladino said, are out of commission after accidents totaled them, which he said made the request for two new cars necessary.

"$85,000 is a lot, and we put 50,000 miles on a car a year," Paladino said. "We get the use out of it, we usually get 200,000 miles out of a car, but the thing is worn out...It's all around-the-town miles, so it's horrible miles on the car. So, police cars are always a good thing. The technology in the car, getting more updated laptops and screens they could see [is another]."

Those applications cover two of the biggest areas in which the department could use some federal help, technology and vehicles. The third would require a bit more financing: A new station house.

The current Lynbrook police facility was last renovated in 1998, Paladino said. In the time since the department took over the space in 1970, its personnel headcount has stayed about the same. The equipment and operations housed in the space, however, have expanded dramatically. Paladino said computer equipment alone has come to take up much more space than it did in 1970, the furniture in the current station has seen better days, and flooding has become an issue in some instances in the current below-street-level facility.

His ideal scenario, the chief said, would include a more secure area to bring in people the department has arrested and a more streamlined dispatch area, which would allow for complaints, impounds and arrests to be processed more efficiently. The current setup brings arrestees in through a public parking lot, which the chief said has given some arrestees the idea to start running when they get out of the car at the station.

The problem, Paladino said, is that any new station space will be expensive to secure. Even a gut renovation of the current facility would leave the department operating out of trailers in the parking lot for 18 months, and the cost of renovating certain buildings without doing any new construction is in the seven-figure range. While the chief has his eye on a couple of buildings around the village, Paladino said there’s a thorny political side to getting new station space as well: Taking a building off the tax roll is a nonstarter, leaving the department with limited options outside its current space. The amount of open land, he said, is also limited.

"They're not making any more of it," the chief joked.

While the department isn't flush with facility options, Paladino said the current outfit has achieved positive results.

"Our crime is down, because our service is unbelievable. We're at the house in less than a minute, people expect that and like that," Paladino said. "We want to keep this going, but when you make more and more mandates and there's more equipment you have to buy...we're up against it."