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NYPD to Expand its Community Policing Program to 12 New Precincts

 Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and other officials announce the expansion of a community policing program in Astoria on Aug. 2, 2016.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and other officials announce the expansion of a community policing program in Astoria on Aug. 2, 2016.
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DNAinfo/Jeanmarie Evelly

ASTORIA — An NYPD program designed to better connect police officers with the neighborhoods they serve will launch in a dozen new precincts this fall, officials announced Tuesday. 

The Neighborhood Coordination Officers (NCO) program — in which the same officers patrol the same portion of a precinct each day — will expand to areas including Astoria, the East Village, Harlem and Hunts Point, as part of an ongoing effort to improve relations between the community and the NYPD, officials said.

"When people know the name of their officer, they feel that their officer belongs to their immediate neighborhood — knows them, understands them," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday at a National Night Out event in Astoria.

"There's a constant dialogue," he said. "It's a whole different kind of policing that helps everyone to be safer."

Under the program, the precincts have a certain number of Neighborhood Coordination Officers assigned to work the same area during the same hours each day — an effort to foster familiarity between them and the residents who live there.

Astoria's 114th Precinct, for example, has four sectors and will have eight Neighborhood Coordination Officers, with two officers assigned to each, according to Deputy Inspector Peter Fortune.

"We're very excited that it's coming over here," Fortune said. "It's great to really bring back that community connection."

Other precincts slated to get the program — to roll out in October — are the 9th, 28th, 41st, 60th, 69th, 84th, 88th, 103rd, PSA 1, PSA 4 and PSA 9.

The city first launched the community policing model at four precincts in 2015, and it's currently in place at 32 precincts in total. With the expansion this fall, more than half of the city's precincts will have the program, de Blasio said.

The announcement came the day Commissioner Bill Bratton said he'll step down in September in order to take a private sector job.

His successor, NYPD Chief of Department James O'Neill, praised the neighborhood policing program at Tuesday night's press conference.

"You have the sector cops in the same place every day, the same hours," he said.

"So they'll know the people calling 911, they'll know the people calling 311, they'll know the residents, they'll know the people that have businesses, and we can have that connectivity."