City To Fund Long-Awaited NYPD Precinct In Queens: Mayor

QUEENS — The long-awaited 116th police precinct in southeast Queens will now be fully funded, said Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday, as a part of his push to reduce citywide violence and shootings this summer.

The NYPD’s new station, which community members have been advocating for since 1977, was initially approved in 2017, but Mayor de Blasio transferred the project’s funding to social service programs last summer amid community demands to slash the NYPD’s massive budget following the murder of George Floyd, reported the Queens Chronicle.

Now, the Mayor, alongside other Queens elected officials, announced that the precinct will be fully funded, and include a community center, public plaza, and food pantry “that the community has said will improve their quality of life, and allow the community to get what they need,” he said.

The Mayor’s announcement came during a daily press briefing when he also announced his Safe Summer NYC plan to address the uptick in violence across New York City, specifically including gun violence, throughout the pandemic.

The new 116 Precinct will take over four neighborhoods — Laurelton, Rosedale, Cambria Heights and Springfield Gardens — in the southern half of the 105 Precinct, which currently covers about 13 miles of southeastern Queens and is located in the northern part of the territory that it patrols.

City Councilperson Selvena Brooks-Powers, who was recently elected to serve District 31, which will include the new precinct, calls the announcement a “major victory for our district” adding that she hopes it will reduce “longstanding disparities in response times and safety for the families in the district” who are currently located farthest away from the 105 Precinct station.

She added that for her the precinct “represents more than merely a station house, it represents equity” and a “more inclusive approach to community policing” citing the community space that will be built within the precinct, and the Mayor’s commitment to expand the treatment-focused Cure Violence program to her district.

Brooks-Powers spoke alongside other Queens elected officials who have long advocated for the precinct, including Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Congressman Gregory Meeks, who represents New York’s 5th congressional district including neighborhoods in southeastern Queens and the Rockaways, and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards — who previously represented District 31 in New York’s City Council.

“There is no contradiction in asking for safe streets and fair policing in our city,” said the Borough President, who added that the precinct’s inclusion of community spaces and a food pantry is the kind of “holistic approach” that we need “when we talk about policing in the 21st century.”

When asked towards the end of his briefing why the precinct is now being built, after the money was cut last year in order to fund communities and social services instead of the police, the Mayor said that this precinct “could not happen in that environment” of last summer but is something “that the community has been asking for for a long time.”

“One or the other [police or investments in young people] was the choice in 2020, now we have the resources to address both of those issues,” he said, noting that the city now has more money than it did last summer amid the economic fallout of the pandemic, thanks to stimulus from the federal government.