WILLIAMSBRIDGE — The NYPD announced plans to establish a sex trafficking hotline and discussed topics ranging from providing security for Donald Trump to the neighborhood policing model with Bronx community members on Wednesday morning.
The event, billed as a human justice summit, took place in the Bronx Christian Fellowship church at 1015 E. Gun Hill Road, where Commissioner James O'Neill and other top NYPD officers engaged in a lengthy discussion about policing with Bronx residents.
O'Neill opened by giving a strong defense of the department's relatively new neighborhood policing model, which aims to let officers spend part of their workdays getting to know their neighborhoods by going to meetings, visiting businesses or visiting schools.
The idea is that this will help improve the relationship between police and the areas they serve, according to O'Neill.
"Our goal is to have each sector cop have a third of their day not answering radio runs, so they actually have the opportunity to make that connection," he said.
The department's old model often had officers spending their entire days either responding to 911 calls or doing administrative or traffic work, which rarely gave them an opportunity to connect with people in the neighborhood, according to O'Neill.
He said the NYPD had gotten good feedback on neighborhood policing so far from officers and community members and stressed that preventing crime would continue to be the department's top priority.
"Looking out at the audience here, I see that there are more than few people that were in the city 20, 25 years ago, and you know what it was like," he said. "We can never go back — and we will never go back — to those days."
Bronx Christian Fellowship Senior Pastor Rev. Que English noted that the event was taking place on National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, and the police department is working to set up a sex trafficking hotline that will help them handle such cases, according to the NYPD.
Officers also talked about the issues of providing security for Trump and protocols for dealing with children when their parents are arrested.
O'Neill said Trump was costing the city a substantial amount of money, but he expected they would be reimbursed in the future.
Chief of Department Carlos Gomez said officers make every effort possible to place children in the care of another adult if their parents are arrested, maintaining that sending them to ACS was a last resort.
English said she was extremely grateful that O'Neill was able to come to her church.
"Thank you for not only being here but also valuing our relationship as faith and community leaders and for bringing those that are the top brass into our space today," she said. "We don’t take that for granted."
