Nassau County's armed citizen 'militia' plan spurs uproar

Amid a swell of fear about a supplemental police force being convened by the Nassau County executive, experts say the confluence of armed members without intensive training is particularly concerning.

Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman last month posted a public notice announcing that he will deputize a group of pistol license holders to protect “human life and property” during unspecified emergencies. The announcement sparked public outcry, with protesters saying it increases the chances of an accidental shooting, and risks the over-policing of minority communities. At a meeting of the Nassau County Legislature this week, residents demanded a public hearing on the matter. Newsday has reported that Blakeman expects training for the new recruits will begin this week.

Reserve police forces are common across the country — such as the volunteer auxiliary program that’s part of the NYPD. But what experts say is most problematic about Blakeman’s plan is a dangerous combination of factors: members who are armed and paid, but not trained the same way as county police officers.

Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor who wrote “Tangled Up In Blue: Policing the American City,” questioned the recruitment of only those with gun licenses.

“I worry about what message it sends if you’re saying you want people who have already decided it’s a good idea to have a weapon around you at all times,” said Brooks, a gun owner and former reserve police officer in Washington, DC.

Brooks said auxiliary police programs operate in many rural counties in New York and beyond and are generally positive. She said they bring a civilian perspective to typically closed law enforcement organizations.

They are often deployed to supplement regular police departments for specific tasks or at special events, such as parades. Their training varies, as does payment and whether they are armed. Participants of the NYPD’s volunteer auxiliary program are not armed. Reserve police officers in Washington D.C. do carry guns, but they also go through the same training as other officers.

Blakeman is offering $150 for each day the emergency officers are active, and requiring training only on state penal law and use of force. He said he will give priority to former law enforcement officers and military veterans.

Brooks said having armed officers who are not subject to intensive training is unusual.

If you buy a gun for personal protection, “you’re probably somebody who has a set of assumptions about the nature of the dangers that exist in the world and use of lethal force in responding to those dangers,” Brooks said.

A spokesman for Blakeman did not make him available for an interview. Blakeman has said the provisional emergency special deputy sheriffs are being established in accordance with a state statute, county law 655 .

The first deputies will be ready to be deployed by the end of May, according to Newsday , which first broke the story.

“They would not be going out on patrol,” Blakeman said. “Primarily, their task would be to guard and protect government buildings, hospitals, utility plants, sewage treatment plants, churches, mosques and synagogues, and things of that nature so that we could free up our police officers to do other work. This is a database, and it’s nothing more than that.”

In addition to the possession of a pistol license, the requirements for the new deputies are that they must live or own property in Nassau, have college experience, be aged 21 to 72 with “no alcohol or drug issues” in the prior five years.

“Deputizing gun-owning private citizens for undefined situations Blakeman deems as emergencies can result in vigilantism, friendly fire, police deaths … from untrained, uncoordinated squads, and pits neighbor against neighbor,” said Sabine Margolis, a resident who presented county legislators with a petition against the move from about 2,000 people.

Not a single resident or elected official at Monday’s regular meeting of the Nassau County Legislature spoke in favor of the new force. Legislators did not respond to demands for an additional, special hearing on the matter.

Marvin “Ben” Haiman, a member of the board of advisors for the Volunteer Law Enforcement Officer Alliance, said volunteer forces can supplement departments struggling with recruitment. He said rural counties with tiny police departments often pay part-time officers to police special events.

But Nassau County already has a 2,500-member police department in addition to the sheriff’s department that’s overseeing this new force, and it is far from rural. And “anytime you’re talking about having volunteers performing law enforcement functions without a full scope of training, I think that’s concerning and problematic,” he said.

It is also not standard recruiting criteria, Haiman said, to only recruit gun license holders as either career or volunteer officers.

Deputizing armed civilians has been known to go wrong. In 2016 a 74-year-old reserve deputy in Oklahoma with political ties to the sheriff was charged with manslaughter after he mistook his gun for a Taser and shot and killed a suspect during a police raid.

Haiman said it doesn't strike him as “out of left field” that Nassau would deputize additional officers. He said “it should be done not for political motivation, but … to bring people who live and work in the community into law enforcement,” he said. “It’s a force multiplier.”

Blakeman’s spokesperson did not answer questions about why the auxiliary force is needed when Nassau already has such a large police force. He also did not say whether the provisional sheriff deputies would use their own firearms, what guidelines they will operate under, and how much vetting they will get. The spokesperson did not say what kinds of specific emergencies the force would be called in for, or how much the program will cost.

Frederick Brewington, a civil rights attorney on Long Island, said he has grave concerns about the plan.

“This is an attempt to put marauding armed vigilantes on the street who don’t have psychological evaluations, who don’t have training, who have one thing required of them — and that’s having guns,” he said.

Brewington is Black, and he said no one in the Black or Hispanic community — which has historically faced over-policing — was consulted before the plan was announced.

“This is essentially how despots operate,” he said. “They get their own private force that has the ability to use threats and threats of force so that they can remain in control.”

Brewington said the idea reminded him of the night posses in the South that would take the law into their own hands. “

"Are they going to be allowed to wear their guns up and down their street in African American and Hispanic communities? Who gives them their assignments? Who calls it an emergency and not an emergency?” he asked. “ That’s why we have a National Guard. We don’t need a militia.”

Barbara Powell, president of the Hempstead NAACP, asked what would happen if Black people were protesting and the new force was deployed.

“This is like giving people a license to kill,” she said. “It’s never good to have civilians running around with freaking guns. That’s crazy … I can’t even believe that we’re even discussing this in this day and age.”

Blakeman, who is Jewish, has rejected a suggestion by a Democratic county legislator that his force is akin to the Brownshirts — the paramilitary wing of the the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s.

“Her words are not only a personal insult to me as a Jew, but a personal insult to humanity,” he wrote on social media, referring to the new force as “men and women who are willing to devote their time to protect our families and community.”