Federal Inaction Means 'Catastrophic' Police Cuts: Bellone

SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY — After months of pleading with the federal government for disaster relief after the coronavirus left Suffolk County's budget with a potentially "cataclysmic" shortfall of $1.5 billion, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said Friday that cuts to police and public safety could be coming soon.

Bellone said Friday that Suffolk County will have no choice but to make "catastrophic" budget cuts to police, public safety services and emergency response personnel without significant federal disaster assistance.

Through "federal inaction," Suffolk County will be forced to eliminate hiring 200 police officers and remove school resource officers, he said.

The cuts will total about $20 million in slashed police budgets, a representative for Bellone said.

During a press briefing Friday, Bellone asked President Donald Trump to call upon U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass a federal disaster assistance bill.

Bellone said during the coronavirus pandemic, the county has been "up and down the mountain, faced death and devastation."

As he prepares to submit the county's budget in two weeks, Bellone said, "The federal government still has not acted."

The Suffolk County Police Academy in Yaphank could "effectively be shuttered" for the next year and a half — with 200 fewer officers on the street, he said.

The school resource officer program would be suspended and the community support unit redeployed, Bellone said; aid to local law enforcement partners would also be cut.

Suffolk County is one of the safest in the nation, with its lowest crime rates in recorded history, Bellone said. "This is not by accident. It's because of the police officers who come out of this academy," he said.

He pointed to efforts made toward community policing and diversity and said those efforts would be undermined by federal inaction.

"They are effectively defunding the police. They are effectively defunding suburbia," Bellone said.

Disaster relief, he said, is not a partisan issue. "This has nothing to do with partisan bickering and it shouldn't," he said. The main concern is that residents receive the funding necessary to recover as a region, Bellone said.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart described incidents during which she said school resource officers saved lives. One teen thanked at SRO for "keeping him away from gangs," she said. Another incident involved a SRO who thwarted a gang kidnapping of a teen in Brentwood, she said. The community support unit also helps every day, Hart said; last month, an officer helped a man who cut his wrist on a broken window; he "likely would have died" without the immediate help, she said.

Bellone had a message for Washington: "Don't defund the police. Don't defund suburbia. Mr. President, we need your help. We are now at the point where rubber meets the road and it's time for action."