Democratic Nassau County legislators are joining together to sue Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman over his plan to deputize citizens as members of the county sheriff’s department in a controversial move that critics call a private militia.
The plaintiffs — Minority Leader Delia DeRiggi-Whitton (D-Glen Cove) and legislators Debra Mulé, Scott Davis (D-Rockville Centre), Carrié Solages (D-Elmont), Arnold Drucker (D-Plainview), and Seth Koslow (D-Merrick) — announced the lawsuit outside the Nassau County Supreme Court on Feb. 5.
“We have the Nassau County Police Department, which is one of the — if not the — best-trained police departments in the country,” Koslow said. “And yet, Bruce Blakeman thinks we need a militia that answers to him and him only.”
Blakeman’s plan would deputize gun-owning property owners in Nassau to become provisional special deputy sheriffs who would assist police in times of emergency. The armed citizens can be deployed at Blakeman’s discretion. Blakeman has said he would use them to control protests and cited Hurricane Sandy as an emergency situation where they could have been used.
Blakeman was quick to shoot back at the legislators involved in the suit.
“Debra Mulé and Scott Davis are a disgrace for bringing this frivolous action and defaming the volunteers, many of whom are retired military and law enforcement, who have agreed to pitch in in the event of an emergency,” Blakeman said in a statement to the Press. “The antisemitic statements, denigrating these good citizens by labeling them as Nazi brownshirts, disqualify them for public service.”
The statement refers to DeRiggi-Whitton sharing feedback from a constituent who said, “We don’t need armed untrained individuals working in cross purposes with well-organized and trained Nassau County Police,” and that the move “smacks of brown shirts,” reported Forward, a Jewish independent newsroom. Blakeman, who is Jewish, was angered by being compared to Nazis.
During the announcement of the lawsuit, which also names Nassau County Sheriff Anhony LoRocco and the county itself as a defendant, DeRiggi-Whitton maintained that Blakeman’s plan is problematic.
“It’s a formula for disaster,” DeRiggi-Whitton said. “The last thing we need is an armed civilian responding to an emergency when we need police.”
The plaintiffs claim that Blakeman’s plan is unconstitutional.
“The law on this is clear: the county executive does not have the authority to raise a private militia made up of thinly trained private citizens,” said civil rights attorney Josh Kelner. “County law 655 allows the county executive to draw law enforcement resources from surrounding municipalities in times of emergency. It doesn’t allow the government to call on private citizens and hand them badges.”
The plan to arm private citizens is unnecessary for Nassau, which has been named the safest county in the country for seven years in a row, Davis said, who also suggested that the plan is a liability tinderbox. The armed citizens would lack the training, chain of command, and accountability that Nassau police have, he said.
The suit claims Blakeman purposely shrouded the program in secrecy, denying Freedom of Information Law requests from legislators seeking “basic information about the program.” It also claims that in the proposed 2025 county budget, Blakeman’s administration withheld all information about how the program is being paid for.
“There’s no transparency,” Koslow said. “We don’t know what’s happening, who’s involved, what type of training they’re getting.”
Critics say the plan is also redundant since the county already has a volunteer Nassau County Auxiliary Police Department that assist sworn officers and the county’s federally funded Office of Emergency Management has a volunteer Community Emergency Response Team that is activated during emergencies.
Solages cited the case of Trayvon Martin — an unarmed 17-year-old who was shot and killed in 2012 by an armed volunteer of the Neighborhood Watch in Florida — as an example of what happens when private citizens are armed and given authority without proper training.
“We’ve worked very hard to establish the safety that we have as a county of its size between the Nassau County Police Department and its community,” he said. “We cannot afford any untrained actors to disrupt the peace that we have established as a community.”
