Chief Flatley Reflects on Restructured Police Department and Local Trends

In 1976, when began his career as a part-time police officer for Southold Town, he never thought he would someday be chief of the department.

When , members of the Southold Town Board immediately chose Flatley to fill the position. Over the years, he has been a patrolman, sergeant, detective, detective-sergeant, lieutenant, and most recently captain. Flatley has also worked with the juvenile aid bureau and the East End Drug Task Force.

“I’ve done about everything in the department. It gives you a good appreciation for each job title and what the responsibilities are,” he said.

With his promotion to chief, the department reorganized its command structure with office Frank Kruszewski being moved to captain/executive officer, James Ginas moving to Lieutenant, and William Helinski moving from patrolman to sergeant. Flatley said basic procedures will be revamped and he hopes to do more community-based police work, including reaching out more to the Hispanic community.

Since he took office, Southold has had a and Tropical Storm Irene, but he said Southold does not have a lot of crime. In fact, Flatley, said he believes crime in the town is down, following trends in the state and county.  The department gets mostly service-related calls. He said the department used to be busy from Memorial Day to Labor Day but with the growth in the wine industry, his department is busy through the end of December.

Even with that, there have been some “sprees” of note.

Flatley said there has been a run on Greenport houses that have multiple people living in them. He estimates there have been reports of seven to 10 residences that have been burglarized, but because the victims are Hispanics, he said he is sure others may have been victimized but failed to report the crime. Flatley said his detectives are working on solid leads, have suspects, and are building a case.

Last week, 18 in 20 cars were broken into in Mattituck. Thieves took anything of value in the cars. Flatley said this was a case of residents forgetting that crimes like this can happen and not locking their cars. He recommends that residents lock their cars at night and bring anything of value inside the house.

Flatley added that that is difficult to stop because you have to find someone doing it. The recent rash of graffiti on stop signs in Greenport, he said, cannot definitely be associated with gangs and it could be a couple of kids going around doing it.

Drug use in the town has followed other county and national trends as well, according to Flatley, with the focus changing from and cocaine to prescription drug abuse. He said the department has officers trained to specifically look for drug abuse at traffic stops.

“We have a lot more arrests for DWI drugs than we have in the past,” Flatley said.

While he has only been on the job a short time, Flatley said that because he has held so many positions within the department, he knows how work with the department to insure his department has a professional image.

“My favorite part of the job is the interaction with the public and being able to manage and the get the best potential out of all the officers,” he said.