New York’s Nassau County Wants to Deputize Armed Civilians for Disaster Relief

As growing concerns of authoritarianism grip the U.S., residents of Long Island’s Nassau County are pushing back on a new government initiative deputizing armed civilians.

In March, Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman began recruiting armed citizens and training them to respond to natural disasters, unrest, and other emergencies. Local justice-oriented groups, anti-gun violence organizations, and even former law enforcement officers have criticized bringing these volunteers on as special deputies. They say the move essentially forms Blakeman’s own private militia.

“We want it disbanded now — not before there’s a horrible tragedy, which could hurt or kill somebody,” said Jody Kass Finkel, founder of Concerned Citizens of NY-03.

Located next to New York City, Nassau County has one of the largest police forces in the country. For some, it’s unclear why additional citizens need to be on call — or why disaster volunteers would need weapons in the first place.

“I lived through Superstorm Sandy. We did not need gun-toting neighbors running around the streets,” Kass Finkel said. “We needed electricity, a lot of people needed blankets, we needed food, we needed gasoline.”

Communities dealing with extreme weather events usually need the most support around obtaining emergency supplies, according to Samantha Penta, an assistant professor of emergency preparedness at SUNY Albany.

Distributing these resources — including food, water, and medicine — is usually more important than placing a heavy emphasis on security concerns.

“Not to say that there are absolutely none, but typically, that’s not what we see as the most concerning thing happening to the folks in the immediate aftermath,” Penta said.

Penta said mobilizing the local population is a typical emergency management strategy during natural disasters.

“In one sense, this is kind of doing that, but we also know from decades of disaster research that disasters do not function like war zones,” said Penta.

The recruitment ad emphasizes using the force to guard property and other infrastructure and to protect human life. It implies looters could be an issue during emergencies.

“In fact, looking at historical studies of disasters, we don’t actually see widespread looting,” Penta said.

Media coverage of previous extreme weather events, notably Hurricane Katrina, often frames Black civilians as looters while categorizing white people taking food as a survival measure.

The captain of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) told officers they “have authority by martial law to shoot looters” a few days after Katrina touched down in 2005. NOPD officers end up killing five residents by gunfire and shooting at least 11.

Law enforcement tactics during Katrina brought to light many issues with policing extreme weather events. Even outside of shooting deaths, over-enforcement can cause more danger than necessary during emergencies.

“One of the things [NOPD] did was implement a curfew,” Penta said. “That actually inhibits response because one of the things that we consistently see is that people help each other in disasters.”

Curfews can be especially detrimental in situations where it’s difficult for formal aid and response efforts to get into communities — especially when law enforcement is focused on protecting property over human lives.

While New Orleans residents awaited relief during Katrina, “dozens of NOPD officers reportedly protected buildings, standing guard over private property with rifles rather than helping those stranded,” according to reporting from Grist.

The Nassau County program comes as the U.S. is seeing a rise in what have been dubbed “cop cities,” a.k.a massive police training centers. Research has tracked 69 cop cities in the works. Just three states — Vermont, North Dakota, and Wyoming — have no current plans to break ground on these multimillion-dollar projects.

Despite narratives of widely defunding police in the U.S. following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, budget analyses have shown that typically is not true. A 2022 ABC News report examining 109 police agencies found that only eight slashed funding by more than 2%. Ninety-one agencies boosted funding by at least 2%.

Blakeman’s plan to deputize armed civilians comes after an onslaught of controversial moves.

“I call him the Don Quixote of Nassau County because he sees all these imaginary problems, and he comes up with these solutions, which are disasters,” Kass Finkel said.

Most recently, he signed off on a law banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports at Nassau County-owned parks and facilities. Transgender men were spared from the ban, which allows transgender men and boys to compete with cisgender men and boys.

Twenty-five recruits have been trained for the special deputies program thus far, Blakeman said, according to The New York Times, with potentially 50 more to be onboarded. Former law enforcement, security professionals, and military veterans are said to be prioritized during recruitment, but Blakeman mentioned one enrollee was previously a bank chairman.

Concerns with the measure revolve around the level of training recruits receive, which includes instruction on handling service weapons and the use of deadly force.

“He’s saying that most of them are retired police or retired military, but have they been trained in the most recent and the best [tactics on] how do you deescalate a situation?” Kass Finkel said.

The County Executive’s office did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.

Some members of Long Island law enforcement have come out against the program, including Micheal Moore, a retired Nassau County court officer who now serves on his local Community Emergency Response Team. He told the Associated Press that during Hurricane Sandy, the county didn’t need people “picking up their firearms to challenge somebody to a duel on Main Street. It’s freaking ridiculous.”

Special deputies are required to consent to a background check and drug testing, have no felony convictions, and have no misdemeanor convictions within the past five years. They must be aged 21-72 and a local resident or a property or business owner.

“They might have retired in their 40s or 50s, so they may have been out of this game for a long, long time,” Kass Finkel said.

Instead of deputizing armed civilians, the county may better protect itself from extreme weather events by beefing up disaster mitigation measures.

“In the context of flooding, that could be implementing new zoning and land use planning that would prevent buildings from being built in a high-risk flood area, but it could also mean taking existing structures that are in a high-risk area and elevating them on stilts,” Penta said.

Preparation around outreach for marginalized groups during storms is also vital. Those with language barriers are especially vulnerable to missing out on important warnings. More than 30% of those 5 years old and older in Nassau County speak a language other than English at home, according to recent census data.

Penta emphasized that in disaster situations, first responders are often community members assisting each other. Mobilizing neighborhood watch groups to keep the streets safe could be an alternative to the armed civilians method.

That strategy takes “more of a community-oriented neighbors-helping-neighbors approach to managing the event,” Penta said.

“Recovery is also something that’s really important that doesn’t get a lot of attention,” Penta said. “So, making sure that people have access to the financial and other kinds of resources that they need long term in order to go back to work [or] rebuild their homes or find new housing.”

As the initiative continues recruitment, advocacy groups are pushing back. A petition aiming to halt the “creation of the unnecessary and dangerous militia” had more than 2,800 signatures as of July 24. Meanwhile, Kass Finkel and other Nassau residents are forming a working group to address this and other Blakeman initiatives.

“What happens [is] you let these politicians do what they want to do, and nobody does the oversight [and then] things start to get normalized,” Kass Finkel said. “We really don’t want that to happen.”

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