POP Officer Reports Low Crime Rate Around New Hyde Park Area

POP (Problem Oriented Policing) Officer Nick Mosesso paid a visit to the New Hyde Park Village Board on February 5, giving an update on various criminal activity within the area of the Third Precinct.

“Right now there’s been not a lot of major crime in the area,” Mosesso said, mentioning only a couple of residential burglaries which occurred over the last few months. “There isn’t any real rash of burglaries.”

He noted that there has been a small rise of burglaries outside of the village “but within the village it’s been pretty calm, pretty quiet.”

One noticeable area of crime county-wide is that cars are bring broken or “walken-into” as people still leave their cars unlocked.

“I see people leaving all sorts of valuables and even if you have your car locked, these valuables are there, that’s going to entice somebody to maybe break in,” Mosesso said. “Sometimes if your car is broken into or just entered and the loss is minimal, people don’t call the police. I’m encouraging you to please let us know because this could happen five times tonight; if no one reports it, we don’t know what’s going on. Unless we catch them in the act or you call us, we don’t know that this is happening.”

Mayor Daniel Petruccio stated that “I think right now the hottest area for us is Memorial Park.”

At the January 6 board meeting an Albert Street resident complained about youth at Memorial Park and the behavior of individuals littering while eating lunch as they park their cars on the street.

“I think the issue with it is and it’s troubling is generally those kind of areas are for us, the warm weather problems,” mayor Daniel Petruccio said. “The minute it gets cold enough, that usually goes away and then it comes back in the warm weather. The fact that they’re still congregating at the part, either in cars, out of cars, in cold weather is – he’s getting no relief then.”

Mosesso said he would give a note to the patrol car to intensify the patrol in the location as well as to plain clothes officers.

“We give them the location, hours, what the concern is, what is going on and that’s something that I will convey to them,” he said. “I have told them to check on the park area in the past, so they are aware. They’ve been doing this long enough, they know at parks there’s people that hang out, sometimes where people hang out there could be some drug activity, so I will reinforce that.”

Mosesso added that he had written a ticket on Albert Street that afternoon to a vehicle that was parked on the wrong side of the street.

“It was kinda my way of just sending a message that we’re around,” Mosesso said, advising residents that if they see a car putting trash out to get the plate number.

“Not that we’re going to go after them for the littering per se, but it’s a plate that we now know frequents the area, we can pay attention to it, maybe we see him again,” Mosesso said. “Like maybe today, I had already seen that plate given to me – so when they’re doing something that we have a little leeway on, we can kinda send a message and that either makes them go away or act properly when they do stay in the area.”

Deputy mayor Robert Lofaro asked Mosesso about interactions the Third Precinct has with New Hyde Park Auxiliary Officer John Concannon and the village’s auxiliary police force as “that type of interaction with the auxiliary, it’s an active unit and they could be helpful.”

Mosesso said that “they do assist us in a lot of ways and they are eyes and ears that assist us and you the community because they do just go out on patrol and drive around and just like we ask you, if you see something to let us know, they do the same,” adding of Concanno that “he does either call the precinct or he’ll come in some times and he will give me information and then I’ll try to disburse it or I’ll try to act on it myself.”

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