Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey (NCPD)
Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey announced Thursday he will step down as of April 1, about three and a half years after he was appointed the county’s top cop.
“I approach retirement very much satisfied that I have achieved what I wanted to accomplish when I accepted the job,” Mulvey said in a statement. He said he made the decision in September.
“I congratulate Commissioner Mulvey on his retirement and thank him for his years of service to the residents of Nassau County,” Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano said in a statement issued though his spokesman, Brian Nevin.
Police Chief Thomas Krumpter will serve as Acting Commissioner and will coordinate a search committee with Mangano for a permanent commissioner.
“This is not unexpected at all,” said James Carver, president of the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents the department’s patrol officers. Carver said it is customary for each county executive to appoint his own commissioner but Mangano has not yet found a replacement since he was elected in November 2010.
“Hes a decent guy,” Carver said. “We didn’t agree all the time…but we were for the most part able to resolve all of our issues in a gentlemanly way.”
Carver said Mulvey’s policy of personally shaking hands with every officer who took a gun off the street went a long way toward increasing morale at a time when the recession was taking its toll on staffing levels.
“Going forward, [Mangano] needs to make very important decisions that will impact the police department well into the future, and he needs to make them with a Police Commissioner who will be in place to see those decisions through for 2 or 3 more years,” Mulvey said. ” My plans all along were to leave at the end of this year.”
Mulvey had spent 11 years as a uniform patrol officer and rose through the ranks, serving in narcotics, auto crime and as Hostage Negotiations Team Leader before he retired in 2001 as an inspector, according to his official bio.
He worked as a private security consultant before former County Executive Tom Suozzi appointed him commissioner in July 2007.
Mulvey, who has 28 years on the job, had been under fire following revelations in December that the police crime lab’s accreditation was suspended for procedural issues. A panel was recently formed to correct issues at the lab, which processes evidence uncovered in criminal investigations.
Pat Foye, Mangano’s chief deputy county executive for finance, announced his resignation this week following a disagreement over a lawsuit filed against the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, a state fiscal watchdog panel that took over the county’s finances last week.
