County, Town Officials Cooperate to Enhance Huntington Station Police Presence

Suffolk County and Huntington Town officials announced a multi-pronged approach to further enhance the police presence in Huntington Station on Friday, including increasing the hours of intensive patrols and the stationing of a Suffolk County Police Department officer at a Community Outreach Center the town is opening in the community.

The measures, which also include increased use of surveillance cameras and the establishment of a hotline to accept information about criminal activity and Town of Huntington code violations, were an outgrowth of a meeting held Thursday at County Executive Steve Levy's office and chaired by Levy and Huntington Supervisor Frank Petrone. Attending the meeting were town and county elected officials including Suffolk County Legis. Jon Cooper, Huntington councilmen Mark Cuthbertson and Mark Mayoka, Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, Huntington Public Safety Director Bruce Richard, and and department heads and representatives from the Huntington Housing Authority, at whose headquarters the Community Outreach Center will be located.

"Despite the decision by the school board to move students out of Huntington Station, Suffolk County and our police department will be continuing our commitment to ridding the community of gangs, guns, drugs and random violence," Levy said. "Our police presence at the Outreach Center will serve as another reminder to the good citizens of Huntington Station that the police and the county are on their side."

Central to the meeting's purpose was the desire to develop cooperative approaches that will supplement the continuing, visible law enforcement presence in the community since last year by using a targeted, laser-beam approach to pinpoint crime hotspots and concentrate resources.

"These measures reinforce our commitment to work cooperatively with Suffolk County to combat our common enemy: the criminal elements who have affected the quality of life for Huntington Station's law abiding residents," Petrone said. "By linking our resources, the whole truly will be greater than the sum of the individual parts."  

The multi-pronged plan includes:

• Police presence at the Community Outreach Center: Both Suffolk police and Town code enforcement personnel will be based at the Community Outreach Center, on Lowndes Avenue. The center will serve as a focal point for residents to provide information about quality of life complaints, such as illegal housing and other code violations. The Town will be basing the officers assigned to its Code Enforcement Task Force – 40 percent of the Town's code enforcement personnel – at the Outreach Center.
• Establishment of a hotline to accept information: People will be encouraged to call the hotline, 631-424-3658, with information that might be useful in criminal or code enforcement investigations. The information can be reported anonymously; callers will be given case numbers so they can receive updates on the outcome of the provided information. The hotline should begin operation next week.
• Expanded police patrols in Huntington Station: Specialized police units now patrolling until 2 a.m. only on certain days will extend those patrols past 2 a.m., seven days a week.
• "Park and Walk" patrols at strip shopping centers: Officers will exit their cars at area shopping centers and patrol on foot.
• Increased attention to known hot spots of gang, gun and drug activity.
• Increased use of surveillance cameras: The Huntington Station Business Improvement District has placed 26 surveillance cameras throughout the community and made available to police a laptop to monitor those cameras.
• Coordinated enforcement efforts with federal, state and Suffolk district attorney and sheriff's department officials.