By Shawn Pasternak

Gov. David Paterson announced on Monday his expansion of funding for Operation IMPACT on Long Island and statewide, amounting to a total of $15.1 million in new grants—$2.7 million of which will come to Nassau and Suffolk. In addition to funding police initiatives, the grants aid variety of trained personnel including assistant district attorneys and probation officers. 

“Despite our fiscal crisis, we will not jeopardize the safety of our communities or permit the state to back-track from the tremendous progress we have made in fighting crime the last 20 years,” Paterson said. “New York is the safest large state in the country as the overall crime rate has fallen for more than 15 consecutive years. These IMPACT grants are a big part of that success.”

The program was first started in 2003 as a venue to support strategic crime-fighting and violence reduction initiatives through information sharing, intelligence-based policing and improved organization of accurate crime data. The grants issued are used to help fund advanced technology, such as surveillance cameras and digital fingerprinting and personnel.

“Since last year, this funding has been used to suppress gang violence and get hundreds of illegal guns off the street,” Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi said. “In addition, this year we will be enhancing our domestic violence initiatives.” Those initiatives include the deployment of around 50 monitoring bracelets, as well as increased involvement with the courts and the District Attorney—an example of the new tactics that Operation IMPACT is promoting.

Hempstead Police Chief Joseph B. Wing also praised this move, saying: “Operation IMPACT funds a crime analyst, allows us to purchase surveillance cameras which we use to monitor crime hot spots and, most importantly, allows us to establish partnerships with other agencies in our joint effort to reduce crime.”