Opening of new Queens precinct is delayed – again
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The NYPD said that the planned 116th Precinct in Southeast Queens should open in December, pending “operational realities.” Rendering via New York City Department of Design and Construction
By Ryan Schwach
A new police precinct set to open in Southeast Queens has its first-ever commanding officer, but when he and his new cops will start patrolling remains a mystery as the project appears to be delayed once again.
The long-awaited 116th Precinct, which will cover the neighborhoods of Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Brookville and Laurelton, was originally supposed to open earlier this year. As first reported by the Eagle, construction delays pushed the opening back to sometime in the fall.
Now, city officials tell the Eagle that cops won’t hit the beat out of the precinct until at least December, and a firm date has yet to be decided upon.
According to City Hall, the precinct, which residents have been calling for for decades, is still under construction, which most recently was expected to be completed in the spring. Initially, construction was supposed to be completed by January 2024.
The building, which is located in Rosedale, is still under the purview of the Department of Design and Construction, which planned to release the building to the NYPD once construction was completed.
In July, the NYPD said that they were hoping for an opening by the end of the year, but as the winter months begin to creep up, no opening date has been set.
According to the NYPD, the department still expects the precinct to open in December, but said even that is “subject to change based upon operational realities.”
The NYPD declined to comment further on what those operational realities may include.
While it is unclear when the precinct will actually open, the NYPD recently announced that Captain Jean Beauvoir, commanding officer of neighboring 105th Precinct, will take up the command whenever it does open.
Beauvoir’s selection as precinct commander comes after he and several others vied for the spot in a public forum, and fielded questions from residents of the precinct’s soon-to-be borders.
The new precinct has been pushed by a group of residents in the far corner of Queens for around four decades. Some of the residents, who currently fall within the lines for the 105th Precinct, live as far as six miles away from their current precinct house in Queens Village and have been subject to some of the slowest response times in the city.
After decades of organizing, several false starts and countless delays, officials put shovels in the ground to build the new 116th Precinct in Rosedale in 2021.
But the delays continued.
The delay earlier this year was caused by “unforeseen circumstances in the construction process,” the police department said in January.
That month, local advocates told the Eagle they weren’t too worried about the delays because they had already been waiting nearly half a century for the precinct.
“What is a couple more months?” Bess DeBetham, a resident and community board member who has been boosting the precinct for four decades, told the Eagle at the time.
In early July, the mayor’s office told the Queens Chronicle that the precinct would open in October.
Later that same month, the NYPD held a meeting in Southeast Queens, promising updates on the precinct. At that event, Assistant Chief Kevin Williams, the commanding officer of Patrol Borough Queens South, told community members the precinct was around 90 percent complete, and said it was on track to open before the end of the year.
But at a recent community board meeting in October, Williams said that inspections were still not completed on the building, and furniture, computers and other technology had yet to be installed.
At that same meeting, the NYPD announced that Beauvoir would be heading the long-anticipated precinct. Beauvoir’s appointment was first reported by the Queens Chronicle.
Beauvoir was born in Haiti and has been a cop since 2007. He will be replaced at the 105th Precinct by Captain Douglas Moodie, who was also a candidate for the 116th job.
At the July meeting, locals participated in a somewhat unusual “community interview” of four potential candidates for the precinct’s commanding officer – which included Beauvoir and Moodie.
The awkwardness came when candidates tried to stack their policing records against those of their NYPD colleagues, and when they made policing promises they very likely would not be able to achieve as a precinct commander.
“I was wondering if they were running for borough president,” the actual Queens borough president, Donovan Richards, told the Eagle after the meeting.
NYPD Captain Jean Beauvoir (standing) was named the inaugural commanding officer of the 116th Precinct. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
The far-and-away favorite at the interview was Beauvoir, who had already been running a local precinct, and was well liked by locals.
“I am dedicated to this journey with you, because I understand working here,” Beauvoir said. “I am heavily invested, and I want to see this product right to what we imagine it could be.”
The precinct’s future City Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers said that she has not been given any new information regarding an opening date. She also said that she has concerns about the precinct since DDC and NYPD have blown past several opening commitments.
Brooks-Powers also said she looks forward to working with Beauvoir.
“I look forward to working closely together with him on protecting public safety in the community,” she said.
Richards also applauded Beauvoir’s appointment.
"After more than 40 years of advocacy from community leaders, the new 116th Precinct in Rosedale is just about complete, and we look forward to officially cutting the ribbon on this historic investment in public safety in the very near future," he said.
“This is what community development looks like, and Southeast Queens is a better place because of massive investments in our future like these,” he said.
