'Cut It In Half' Suggests Pol of Precinct

With independence comes choices.

Fed up with being too far from their designated police hub, a group of Bay Terrace citizens declared geographic independence from Flushing last winter.

A symbolic , and signed. It bore the main complaint that police presence and response times are critical to safety, but Bayside’s 111th Precinct, which covers Douglaston, Little Neck and Bayside, was half the distance from their assigned station, Flushing’s 109th.

The 111th Precinct’s Community Council hinted at that time that they were open to incorporating the neighborhood under their protection and were tepidly contemplating the logistics and extra manpower needed.

The office of Sen. Tony Avella, D-Bayside, said they were offering up an even better solution: cut the other precinct in half.

Avella and Assemblyman Ed Braunstein, D-Bayside proposed legislation to divide Flushing’s 109th Precinct into North and South.

Bay Terrace, Whitestone, College Point and Clearview would inhabit the north. The proposal would also divide the neighboring 105th Precinct the same way.

Those two, he said, have been tasked with overseeing the safety of twice as many people as some other Queens precinct.

“The 109th Precinct station house in the downtown Flushing area is nestled in the heart of the area with their greatest population density,” Avella said, adding, “This places a disproportionate demand on precinct resources and increases the likelihood that other neighborhoods will be left without sufficient services.”

A satellite precinct office in the southern portion of the 105th yielded an eight percent drop in crime in just the year after it was created—2007— alone, says the Senator’s office.

But despite the , Avella believes population has increased since 2007, again stretching NYPD coverage. 

Not everybody thinks Avella’s solution is the solution.

“I don't think this resolves the Bay Terrace community's determined effort to be ,” said Phil Konigsberg, a member of the Bay Terrace Community Alliance.

BTCA Warren Schreiber raised one possible sticking point: Community Board 7, which Bay Terrace is currently part of. It’s a civic body that has borne some nasty in-fighting between members and leaders—.

“It is not just the police response/services that I believe are warranted reasons that the community should be in their original district of Bayside,” he added with the caveat that the new proposal was worth exploring, and “could be beneficial.”