page_title: Nassau County Police Department
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Nassau County Police Department / History
caption_attribution_description: The Sixth Precinct of the Nassau County Police Department on Community Drive in Manhasset.
context_page_description: The Nassau County Police Department is the law enforcement agency of Nassau County, New York.
context_section_description: In 1925, concerned about rising crime rates, the County Board of Supervisors voted to create the Nassau County Police Department, replacing a scattered system of constables and town and village police departments. (Some jurisdictions declined to join the police district, however, and maintain their own independent police forces to this day.) Consisting initially of Chief of Police (later Commissioner) Abram Skidmore, 55 officers and a fingerprint expert, the force grew to 450 officers by 1932 and reached 650 officers by the time Skidmore retired in 1945.
  The expansion accelerated dramatically following World War II with the rapid suburbanization of the county. It reached 1,000 officers in six precincts by 1950. A seventh precinct was opened in 1955 and an eighth followed five years later. In the early 1970s, with crime and civil disorder in neighboring New York City and other cities a major concern, the force was boosted to its greatest strength, nearly 4,200 officers. Since then, it has declined to around 2,600, making it still one of the largest county police agencies in the United States.
  In 1989 officers were equipped with 9mm Sig Sauer P226 semi-automatic pistols to replace older .38 Special revolvers.
  Nevertheless, the department's reduced size has been a source of controversy, with the village of Mineola exploring the idea of seceding from the police district and establishing its own police force. On Dec. 5th, 2006, however, the village's voters decisively rejected the proposal, 2936 to 1288.
  In October 2011, the Nassau County Legislature voted on a budget that had the effect of closing three of the eight precincts. In March 2012 the Levittown station was chosen to be the first to be reduced to a "Community Policing Center" followed by the 5th Precinct in Elmont, and 6th Precinct in Manhasset.  The 5th Precinct has since reopened.
  In April 2019 the county announced an agreement had been reached between the Democrat County executive and Republican-controlled County legislature, and on April 10, 2019 the 6th Precinct in Manhasset and the 8th Precinct in Levittown were reopened, restoring the department to its original 8 precinct Size.
  The NCPD's guiding philosophy is that it is a "service-oriented" police department, promoting the concept of the community as client, and the police as provider. (For example, officers will come to a citizen's home to take a crime report or complaint, rather than ask the citizen to come to the precinct.) Sociologist James Q. Wilson used the Nassau department as the exemplar of this approach in his classic 1968 study, Varieties of Police Behavior.
caption: The Sixth Precinct of the NCPD in Manhasset.
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