Northern Queens locals wants Mamdani to fulfill Adams’ precinct promise

Queens CB7 Chair Chuck Apelian wants Mayor Zohran Mamdani to follow through on an Adams-era promise to look into putting a precinct in Northern Queens.  File photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office, Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach

By Ryan Schwach

Locals in Northern Queens are once again calling for the city to meet their demands for a new police precinct in their community after it went unmentioned in the mayor’s preliminary budget released earlier this month.

Community Board 7 has long requested a new precinct to supplement the 109th Precinct located in Downtown Flushing, and wants the Mamdani administration to take up the mantle after Mayor Eric Adams left them hanging.

The board was promised that the city would look into building a new precinct as part of their approval of the massive Willets Point development two years ago, a development they thought would contribute to the necessity for more police coverage in the region.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has yet to comment or weigh in on if his administration would fulfill the promise of his predecessor, however, his recently released budget plan, which itself is hampered by a $5 billion budget deficit, does not include plans for a new precinct.

City Hall did not respond to questions about the precinct.

Chuck Apelian, the chair of CB7, continues to argue that a new precinct is needed to help speed up response times in the 109th, which includes the entirety of Northern Queens and Flushing.

“The community needs a standalone police precinct that's going to be located further to the north, that's going to be able to take care of Whitestone, College Point, Bay Terrace, Malba, Beechhurst,” he said Tuesday. “Those areas that really need to be serviced, and allow the 109th to take care of the majority of Flushing and everything to the south.”

“The time for them to make any kind of meaningful response from the 109th, which is located down in the southwest corner of our district, out to the top corner, is just insurmountable,” he added.

Apelian expects those response issues to only get worse as thousands of new housing units are built in Willets Point, along with Etihad Park and the Metropolitan Park casino complex. One of the two other awardees of a downstate casino license, Bally’s, is building their multi-million dollar casino in the Bronx just minutes across the East River from CB7.

To meet their concerns, the NYPD and Adams administration put a satellite precinct in College Point located inside the police academy in 2024, well after the board approved phase two of the Willets Point development under the assumption that the city would explore a new precinct’s viability.

Locals want the Mamdani administration to fund a new NYPD precinct in the board’s communities before the end of the year.  Screenshot via Google Maps

Apelian called the satellite merely a “stopgap measure.” Meanwhile, staffing numbers at the 109th have dropped by nearly 60 cops between the end of 2024 and the end of 2025.

Staffing numbers have also gone down at the satellite, according to Apelian.

In December, he and local State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky sent letters to the lame duck mayor asking him to make good on his promise before exiting City Hall.

Their calls went unanswered.

“We didn't ask for the moon, we asked for something that was very dire,” Apelian said. “We asked for something that was within their scope to do, and they didn't do it.”

So far, the board has not reached out to nor heard from the Mamdani administration, which did not include any new fiscal plan for the 109th in their preliminary budget.

The letter sent by Stavisky in December was also addressed to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who remains in that position under Mamdani.

Republican City Councilmember Vickie Paladino isn’t optimistic that the ball will get rolling on the new precinct any time soon.

“Under Eric Adams we were confident it could happen in his second term, under Mayor Mamdani it almost definitely will not,” she said in a statement to the Eagle. “At this point, I’m going to have to fight to keep our satellite precinct staffed. This is not a good situation for public safety.”

On Monday, a representative from CB7, said that the precinct remains the board’s number one priority at a budget hearing before Borough President Donovan Richards.

“Our number one capital submission is a precinct within Community Board 7, which is desperately needed,” said Mary O’Neill. “We desperately need public sector safety equity for a very undeserved community board.”