Long Island major crimes increased due to spike in property crimes, top cops say

Major crimes increased 41% in Nassau and 15% in Suffolk counties last year compared to 2021 — spikes top law-enforcement officials said were fueled by a dramatic increase in property crimes, statistics provided to Newsday by Long Island's two largest police departments show.

There were 7,394 crimes recorded in Nassau compared to 5,228 in 2021, and 17,132 crimes in Suffolk in 2022 compared to 15,132 in the county the previous year, statistics show.

Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison and Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told Newsday in separate interviews that a major increase in property crimes — such as grand larceny, vehicle theft and burglaries — was to blame for the increase in the overall crime rate.

But Harrison and Ryder said they also were encouraged to find that their departments made gains against violent crime in 2022 by analyzing intelligence to determine who was committing the crimes and where and when they were likely to hit again. The Nassau data is for the entire year of 2022 and the Suffolk data runs through Dec. 3.

"There is a message out there that crime is on the rise, and that's true," Ryder said, while also pointing to statistics that show violent crimes in the county were down, including murder, which the commissioner said was at its lowest rate in 63 years in 2022.

Ryder's Suffolk counterpart blames spikes in property crime as the culprit. Harrison said the county experienced a big spike in retail thefts.

"I'm not going to make excuses," Harrison said. "We have to do better. We are going to get better."

Nassau Legis. Siela Bynoe (D-Westbury), who serves on the Public Safety Committee, said the drop in violent crime and the rise in property crime reflects what she is hearing from her constituents.

“I think overall people have a sense of personal safety but a high level of concern for their homes and vehicles,” said Bynoe, who added that almost everybody she knows in Nassau has invested in security video systems and other technology to “stave off victimization.”

Harrison and Ryder  vowed to drive property crime rates down and said their officers will push back against those crimes in 2023.

Asked what strategy he would use against the criminals, Ryder said: "Effective and efficient use of your resources driven by the data … When they go into an area, it’s not like the old days. We don’t go in and flood an area, displace crime, we leave, crime comes back. We go in there with intelligence, with focused deterrence, knowing who the players are."

Harrison, a longtime NYPD official who just completed his first year as Suffolk commissioner, said his teams use “precision policing” when fighting violent crime patterns. 

“It goes into making sure that we are holding individuals that commit violent crimes responsible,” he said during a recent interview at his office at Suffolk police headquarters in Yaphank. “Also interdicting policing — which is, ‘Where is the next incident going to occur?’ — to make sure our precinct commanders understand the importance of putting the right people in the right place to stop the next act of violence. That and our gun arrests, which are up as well.” 

The drop in murders in Nassau and Suffolk appears to mirror a nationwide decline. The FBI does not have numbers available for 2022, but AH Datalytics, a research firm that specializes in criminal justice issues, reported there were 8,888 murders nationwide in 2022, a 5% drop from the 9,351 reported in 2021. A midyear survey of 70 agencies by the Major Cities Chiefs Association found that murders fell 2.4% during the first six months of the year, from 4,624 to 4,511.

The commissioners said they were encouraged by other crime indicators, including declines in shootings and fatal and nonfatal drug overdoses. Both fatal and nonfatal overdoses increased in recent years due to stresses caused by the coronavirus pandemic, officials said.

"There are three numbers that drive us: homicides, overdoses and shootings," Ryder said, speaking from the Nassau County Police Academy, which houses his department's intelligence unit. "Those are the ones that really push our numbers, that we are really concerned about. These are about life and death. Our homicides in Nassau County are down about 40%. Our fatal overdoses in Nassau County are down 30%, and our nonfatal are down 21%. Our shootings are down 16%."

Some of Long Island’s crimes, Harrison warned, are committed by defendants coming from New York City and beyond.

“We are working with all our law enforcement partners, our district attorney’s office, our partners bordering us, Nassau County, New York City … this is not just a Suffolk County issue. It is an issue that troubles this whole state.” 

Grand larcenies in Nassau climbed more than 43%, from 3,201 to 4,584. Burglaries surged by 35% in Nassau, from 640 in 2021 to 877 last year, including a nearly 56% spike in residential burglaries. Stolen vehicles rose 72.55%, from 561 in 2021 to 968 last year. 

Ryder and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced in July that the department has teamed up with the Newark Police Department and the U.S. Marshals to crack down on a ring that steals vehicles in Nassau and transports them to New Jersey. 

About 75% of vehicles stolen in the county wind up in Newark, officials said. Five Nassau officers were injured in April when teens hired by the ring to steal vehicles rammed their police cars, officials said.

“We are going after them,” Ryder said of the ring. “We have an ongoing investigation after this Newark crew. We are going to go after them federally.”  

The vast majority of vehicle thefts were preventable. 

“Ninety-two percent of our stolen cars,” Ryder said, “are people that leave the keys in the car.”

Total property crimes increased in Suffolk County by more than 18% from 2021 to 2022, according to Suffolk police. Burglaries rose 11.6%, from 744 in 2021 to 831 last year. Vehicle thefts climbed nearly 15%, from 1,103 in 2021 to 1,265. Larcenies jumped nearly 18%, from 12,003 in '21 to 14,163 in the first 11 months of 2022. 

“We saw a big spike in retail thefts,” Harrison said. “People just going in these establishments and ripping things off the counter and just walking out.” 

Harrison said Suffolk police brass are meeting weekly with precinct commanders to identify those behind crimes in their communities, and to develop strategies to stop them. 

“We are holding our commanding officers accountable to know what is going on and what analytical, intelligent work are you going to do to stop these crimes from occurring,” Harrison said.

Harrison also last year created a warrant enforcement unit consisting of a captain, two sergeants and 10 police officers. That unit pursues defendants who are wanted on outstanding warrants or who failed to appear in court. The new property crime unit looks at crime patterns in specific areas and identifies who is responsible. 

Suffolk’s new crime strategy bureau, Harrison said, takes a broader view, identifying patterns in criminal activity — like gang activity — throughout the county. 

“Their job is to do an overlook of the whole county, to see if any patterns, something that might have happened in the Seventh, to see if it is similar to a crime that happened in the First, and to see if there is a connection between the two,” he said. 

The specter of bail reform

Property crimes increased across New York State as well as Long Island, which Ryder and Harrison also attribute in part to bail reform and other changes in the criminal justice system.

“Last weekend alone, there were 12 arrests one day at the mall,” Ryder said a few weeks ago. “Twelve arrests. All of them got appearance tickets and walked away. Many of them come back the next day. Many of them are repeat offenders.” 

Harrison said those changes have created a “rotating door” for those who commit property crimes.  

“Crime fighting is difficult right now when it comes to property crimes, because nobody is being held accountable,” the Suffolk commissioner said.

“Too often we will make a quality arrest of someone who committed a property crime and he’s out within hours, committing another crime again,” Harrison added.

Bail reform, which eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, has been a lightning rod for criticism by law enforcement since it was approved by former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2019. Supporters say it prevents defendants who don’t have the resources for bail from losing jobs and allows them to continue supporting their families. 

The state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services reported in September that defendants are rearrested at the same rate as they were before the law was enacted.

Assemb. Phil Ramos (D-Brentwood) said the ability to make bail is a reflection of a defendant’s access to money, not an indicator of the person's danger to the community. He said police and prosecutors inflate the threat of bail reform because that means more money for their agencies. “It is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said. 

The data has not swayed critics such as Richard Nicolello, the presiding officer of the Nassau County Legislature. He said bail reform is relatively new and studies eventually will show that bail reform and other criminal justice changes “incentivize crime.”  

“With bail reform, a lot of the tools of the Suffolk County Police Department have been taken away,” agreed Suffolk Legis. Steven J. Flotteron (R-Brightwaters), the chairman of the legislature’s Public Safety Committee. “We need to reform New York State bail reform so we have the proper tools to stop perpetrators.” 

In her State of the State address earlier this month, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed to improve New York's bail reform law by giving judges more discretion to set bail. 

The debate over bail reform overshadows complex, broader issues surrounding policing, said Tracey Edwards, the NAACP’s Long Island regional director. "How do we guarantee all residents are treated fairly and equitably despite income, race and ethnicity while supporting police and getting illegal guns off the streets?" she said.

“Our goal should be to ensure that all our communities are safe and that we are preventing crime whenever we can,” Edwards said. 

Catalytic converters headaches

Harrison and Ryder said their departments are continuing investigations into thefts of catalytic converters, which have soared because the war in Ukraine has made the minerals in the air-quality devices more valuable. 

“In 2019, we had one catalytic converter stolen,” Ryder said. “But in 2022, we had 2,021 stolen.” 

That is responsible, in part, for Nassau’s rising property crimes, according to Ryder. In December, Nassau police seized thousands of stolen catalytic converters and more than $7 million in cash after executing search warrants at the homes and business of two scrapyard operators. 

“The number of catalytic converters have driven up our crime numbers, but we made a big dent in it in a week with the search warrants that we did and the potential arrests that are going to occur,” Ryder said. 

The use of police body cameras

Ryder said the body cameras his department provided its officers with in 2021 — part of the police reform plan ordered by Cuomo after the death of George Floyd while in custody of Minneapolis police — has resulted in a drop in complaints, and unfounded complaints, against Nassau cops. He said police officials constantly review video, including 20 analysts who go over video every day and four sergeants who do spot checks.  

"We have big-time oversight. We find cops who are rude, disrespectful, and we bring them in and we discipline them," Ryder said.

Suffolk began issuing its officers body cameras in July, a process that will continue into this year, according to Harrison, who said the devices will promote transparency and officer safety.

“Body-worn cameras are going to be very big,” Harrison said. “We are still rolling it out. We have it in the Seventh [Precinct], we have it in the Fifth, we have it in the First, and now we are training our officers in the Fourth. I want to say by February or March, this whole department will be wearing body-worn cameras. That body-worn camera footage tells the whole story … that type of technology is going to be beneficial to the department.” 

Big drop in violent crimes

There were seven homicides recorded in the Nassau police jurisdiction last year and five in county communities served by other agencies, Ryder said. That is a nearly 37% decline from 2021, when 19 homicides — 10 in the Nassau police jurisdiction and nine in the rest of the county — were reported. 

The 2022 numbers reflect the lowest homicide rate in county history, tying the 12 recorded in 1959, when Nassau’s population was about 700,000 — about half its current population of 1.39 million, Ryder said.

Nassau’s highest murder rate came in 1983, during the early years of the crack epidemic and its related gang violence, when 58 murders were recorded. 

“Five of the 12 homicides were domestic violence incidents, which are very difficult to stop,” Ryder said. “Only three homicides are gang-related. We handle gangs in Nassau County very well.” 

Rapes dropped more than 42% in Nassau County, from 19 in 2021 to 11 last year. But total robberies surged by more than a third, from 335 in 2021 to 461 last year, and assaults increased 7.48%, from 441 in 2021 to 474 in 2022. 

Those increases, Ryder said, partially represent the past success of Nassau police. He called 2022 a period of “adjustment” after several years of low crime rates. 

In Suffolk, the murder rate declined from 32 in 2021 to 27 in 2022, a nearly 16% decline. Robberies decreased more than 11%, from 258 to 229 in 2022. 

Assaults dropped 3.6%, from 805 in 2021 to 776 last year. Rapes fell 22%, from 187 in 2021 to 146.

“It was really a great 2022 in terms of fighting crime and investigations,” Harrison said. “We solved a lot of homicides [last] year.”

Harrison said the takedown of “No Fake Love” — a gang in the Mastic and Shirley area linked to a Farmingville murder, violent carjackings and the shooting of two teens outside former Rep. Lee Zeldin’s home — illustrates how the department uses intelligence to target criminals.

Eighteen alleged gang members were charged in a 148-count indictment announced by Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney in early December, the result of an investigation that also included Nassau cops, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Marshals Service.

“Targeting the individuals, that precision policing, the individuals who are causing the violence, and finding ways to get them off the streets is going to be the way to go with this police department,” Harrison said. 

Involving the community

Statistics do not tell the whole story about crime and public safety, said David Kilmnick, the president of the LGBT Network of Hauppauge. Hate crimes committed against the LGBTQ community are often underreported, he said, because victims fear they will not be taken seriously, or because they are not out to family, friends and professional colleagues. 

Ryder and Harrison, he said, have been very open and accommodating in their tenures as commissioners, Kilmnick said. But he remains frustrated that a Bayport man who sent dozens of hate-filled and threatening letters to LGBTQ organizations and Long Island business leaders for nearly a decade was not arrested until the FBI stepped in. Robert Fehring, a former Bellport teacher, was sentenced to 30 months in prison in August. 

“That case should not have gone on for 10 years,” said Kilmnick, who was the target of Fehring’s menacing letters for years. “They need to learn from their mistakes and make sure nobody has to go through that again.” 

Harrison said he created an “ambassador” program he hopes will make the department more responsive to residents in the future. Police officials meet regularly with clergy, business leaders, educators, activists and others to swap information about what is happening in their communities. 

William Massian, a trustee with the Longwood Central School District, said participation in the program has helped reduce crime along Route 25 and mitigated false information spread on social media. He praised Harrison for being responsive to the community. 

“He’s turned things around,” Massian said. “People are feeling safer, not on edge.”