The Village of Flower Hill invited residents to speak about the effectiveness of the private security patrol at its Monday, Oct. 8 meeting, following a discussion about the patrol at the village’s Monday, Sept. 9 meeting.
Several residents addressed the board in support of continuing the security patrol.
The village implemented the patrol at the beginning of 2024 in response to a mini-crime wave during the 2023 holiday season. The single patrol vehicle drives through the village streets from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
At the September meeting, trustees raised concerns about the patrol’s effectiveness metrics and the cost to residents.
Mayor Randall Rosenbaum presented a breakdown of the portion of the village budget allocated for the patrol.
Rosenbaum said the patrol cost is about 5%, or $180,690, of the $3,367,987 million budget.
According to 2020 census data, there are 1,515 households in Flower Hill, which breaks down the costs to an annual cost of $119 per household and a monthly cost of $10 per household.
Trustee Mary Jo Collins stressed the importance of measuring the effectiveness of the patrol.
“How are we measuring this? What is the game plan? What’s the process moving forward?” Collins said. “Because even though it’s only 5% of the Flower Hill budget, everything’s going up, and we have to absorb that. You can’t keep a budget stagnant for years on end; things do go up. But this was an additional item that we felt as a board was important. My question nine months later is, what is the game plan to see if this is effective?”
Trustee AJ Smith AJ Smith was tasked with creating a security control committee comprised of concerned residents. Before the October meeting, Smith met with the committee to get feedback on the patrol, and the committee unanimously agreed that the patrol is “a worthwhile endeavor to maintain,” Smith said.
Residents at the meeting were asked to provide the board with this opinion for future consideration.
Flower Hill residents Steven Fields and Lisa Chieco said they believed the security patrols provided a deterrence.
“In my opinion, deterrence is the most important thing that a security patrol can do. The security patrol signs are posted at all the entry points of the village.” Fields said. “This is a very affluent community with expensive homes and expensive cars. We’re a target in where we are. The security patrol doesn’t catch. It deters, detects and reports. They will call the police before any of us. To me, it’s a small price to pay for a little bit of extra deterrence.”
Chieco pointed out that the holiday season is beginning again, and the patrol makes everyone feel safer during this time when the mini-crime wave had previously begun.
“Crime is cyclical. They know to come back. They know that we go shopping. They know that we leave things in our car,” Flower Hill resident Lisa Chieco said. “But if it deters one bad guy, they see the sign and say, ‘I’m not going to go down this block today because I see the sign.’ Then, I think it’s worth it.”
Flower Hill resident Scott Liebman provided data for the village board based on Nassau County Police Department crime statistics. As a partner in a law firm that reviews data for companies, Liebman said he decided to put time and effort into compiling metrics.
Liebman examined about 20 months of Nassau County Police data, focusing on burglaries, robberies, auto thefts, and criminal mischief.
“The first thing that’s very clear is that auto larceny has been down since the patrol started. I’m not saying auto larceny is down because the patrol started. It is impossible, with the data that we have, to distinguish between causation and cause,” Liebman said. “It’s not such an exorbitant cost. I say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Some residents brought up alternative patrol options, such as license plate readers and cameras. Rosenbaum said he has spoken with Assembly Member Gina Sillitti about obtaining grant money for the technology and is relying on the Nassau County Police Department to install it.
“I am putting my trust in the Nassau County Police Department to provide us with the license plate readers on their dime, which is what they’re kind of committed to doing,” Rosenbaum said. “If that doesn’t meet our needs, then we can start looking at possible grants to support additional hardware.”
