Talking with the new CO of the 109th Precinct

The prospect of running a large, diverse police precinct might seem daunting to most of us but the new Commanding Officer (CO) of the 109th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Matthew A. Whelan seems to be taking it all in stride. &#8220I'm happy to be here,” he said.
Whelan became CO on last year on November 3, after serving as CO at the rank of captain at the 108th Precinct which covers Long Island City, Woodside, and Sunnyside for two-and-a-half years.
&#8220The main difference is the sheer size of the precinct. The 109th is almost double in size,” he said. It stretches from Bay Terrace in the north, west to College Point, east to Utopia Parkway and south to the Long Island Expressway. It deploys a force which includes 184 police officers, 25 sergeants, six lieutenants and one captain.
As well as being geographically large, the 109th Precinct has pockets of dense residency with an overall population of 242,000 as of the 2000 Census. The Flushing area has the largest Chinese population in the city outside of Manhattan's Chinatown. &#8220It's challenging here because of the large Asian population. It's hard on everyone, on the civilian population because of the language barriers, and hard on the police. We try to get as many Chinese and Korean officers as possible,” he said. According to Whelan, it can be hard to find translators at times and the bustling precinct sometimes has to rely on the station's Language Line phones and the city's telephone translators.
Whelan is gratified that crime is down in the precinct with an overall drop of 8.9 percent last year, and perhaps more tellingly, a 74 percent drop over the past thirteen years. Although the murder rate has doubled from 3 to 6 murders it appears that these murders are random and unrelated. &#8220While there are pockets of gang activity in the precinct, gangs are not a huge problem here,” he said.
&#8220We chase the dots, that's how we allocate our personnel. If a hot spot of crime is identified more resources can immediately be deployed to that area,” Whelan said. The precinct maps crime on a daily and weekly basis and makes judgments based on that information.
&#8220We map burglary and robberies, and we find if an arrest is made following say, a rash of burglaries in a particular area, the crime rate drops and we can redeploy the officers somewhere else they're needed,” he explained.
Whelan, who is married with two children, a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, is especially keen to reach out to the community. &#8220We really want to people to know about and participate in the Community Council.
Some of the programs Whelan is especially interested in include cleaning up graffiti. The precinct has a full time graffiti officer and he plans to work with community groups to clean walls. &#8220The unusually warm weather means we've been able to continue the cleanup into the winter,” he said.
Most of all Whelan, who grew up on Long Island and lives in Nassau County, wants to encourage different community groups to contact the 109th Precinct.
&#8220We want to hear from civic organizations to work with them. We want them to let us know what their problems are and I'd like to attend their meetings and hear their concerns.” His main project will be to reach out, and work with, the Asian community, and encourage his officers to reach out. &#8220We always want to do better,” he said.
&#8220I look forward to working with residents and business people and hope they look forward to working with me,” he said.