“I’m a little out there,” says the Captain. “I’ll just walk up and start talking to people. A lot of times when I’m dressed like this,” pointing to his slacks and dress shirt, “people don’t seem to recognize me… they’ll say hello but I don’t think they put two and two together.”
Living in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, or Red Hook, chances are you’ve encountered police officers from the local 76th precinct. But you may have also met the man in charge without even realizing it.
Those who have been approached by the fit grey-haired man in plainclothes may not have given it much thought, thinking he’s just another friendly neighbor. But in and out of the uniform, he’s the man responsible for the safety of the area.
Though he’s only been Captain of the 76th for about 10 months, Justin Lenz is already making a difference. Crime is significantly down, while there has been an increase in arrest activity. However, the past year has also shown a reduction in civilian complaints against officers; all types of complaints were down last quarter by 67%.
“It sends me a message that our cops are acting in a professional way… it’s a fragile line, but somewhere we’re getting it right.”
Military background
Lenz grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, and began his career in public service by enlisting in the military. In 1983, he recalls, just after the US invasion of Grenada, Lenz became a paratrooper for the army. Though he was stationed in Italy for a while, a “great assignment” that didn’t involve much except training, he began considering police work after returning.
“In 1987 I was home on leave,” he recounts. His friends had joined the police department and he remembers, “they were all telling these great cop stories. I figured I could do that, and I decided to leave the army to become a cop.”
Working first as a correctional officer on Riker’s Island for 13 months, Lenz joined the NYPD in October 1990. His police assignments would take him from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to East New York, as well as a return to the military with two deployments to Iraq, before finally landing him at the 76th. His last job before becoming Captain was working Narcotics in East New York, where he spent three and a half years between 2010 and 2013.
This past September he was surprised with the news that he would be transferred to take command of his own precinct. Though this is his first time policing in Brooklyn, he raves that the neighborhood is “beautiful and pleasant to work in.”
Today Lenz still remains in the physical shape one would expect of a military man. His sharp eyes often fix in an intense gaze past his long nose, almost like a hawk, but his demeanor is more neighborly than intimidating. He speaks with a commanding, but unmistakably amiable voice, and has a personality fitting of the Brooklyn cop archetype.
A great community to work in
Though he commutes from Bellmore in Nassau County each day, the Captain seems glad to be working in this community. Unlike his home in Long Island, he finds the neighborhood very close, both in terms of the community bonds and the physical living space. For his job, this has a clear advantage – neighbors know each other well, and everything is relatively close by. In any case, he claims the mark of a good job is “when you can walk out of the place you work and go get a coffee or something to eat.”
As an athlete, he says it’s also a great neighborhood to run in. He often does races in Long Island, including the Ocean-to-Sound relay, and says that he goes to Arizona every other year for the Phoenix half-marathon. Having recently run the Long Island half, Lenz is training now for the New York Marathon in November – his first full 26.2 mile race since 2006.
As the Commanding Officer, Lenz has gotten to know the neighborhood fairly well, and for all its unique qualities he finds it somehow familiar. “There’s a lot of similarities between the Upper West Side and Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Red Hook,” he explains. “When you really look at it in terms of commercial, residential, housing developments – one really mirrors the other.”
He’s introduced his family to his workplace, too. Lenz says his wife of 24 years and his two college-aged children have always encouraged him in his life and career. “You couldn’t ask for a more supportive family,” he beams, and they’ve visited the neighborhood with him on several occasions. He’s brought his family to Brooklyn for fireworks twice this year, under very different circumstances: once for 4th of July, and once in February.
“I had them out here for the fireworks for the Super Bowl,” he explains, and quickly adds that “it was ungodly frigid. You know, it was good… but it was cold.”
A community partner
As the police captain, Lenz wants to maintain a safe and comfortable community. Thus far it seems he’s been mostly successful. He’s had to deal with very little negative feedback, and has even gotten positive feedback from neighbors. He remembers a recent call he got from a mother in the community – her young son had been playing with a ball on the sidewalk, and when it rolled out into the street a patrolling officer got out of his car to hand it back to the kid. The mother felt compelled to call Lenz and thank him for the officer’s professionalism, but he felt it was unnecessary.
“I appreciate the call, don’t get me wrong,” he says, “but people videotape us all the time doing great work and no one ever knows about it.”
In another minor disturbance recently, police were called as a crowd was leaving a bar around closing time. “It was 4:03 am and everyone was coming out of the bar. What do you expect? Everyone was being loud and boisterous.” But within three minutes of the police arriving, everyone dispersed and no arrests were made.
He later found out that people had been videotaping the officers from a window across the street without them knowing. Though he figures that this is just another example of the kind of good work they do every day, Lenz did use the opportunity to address his officers. After congratulating them for their effective policing, he used the case as proof that “you never know who’s watching.”
However, he sees this as a positive thing. “If you go to work every day thinking the whole world is watching how you interact with people, it steps up the professionalism.” Of course the captain and the community have certain expectations of their officers, but Lenz has hopes and expectations of the community, too.
“The entire system is based on what the community believes are its issues when it comes to quality of life.” This is why he says communication between the police and the community is so important. “I want to know about crime… I can’t solve it if I don’t know about it.”
To an extent, the communication he describes does exist. He happily admits, “there’s the dedicated members of the community that come to every community meeting, the activists that are really involved in the issues that affect the neighborhood, that guys like me get to meet all the time. They’re not afraid to tell me when they think we’ve screwed up and something needs to be fixed. I love to have that rapport.”
And that rapport is effective. When the residents communicate with the police, the problems are often taken care of. Whether making complaints, or better yet as witnesses, the police rely on community members to address their problems. Unlike his previous assignment, working Narcotics in East New York, Lenz says that in this neighborhood there are typically a number of cooperative witnesses for any crime. He says that most of the quality-of-life crimes, things like car break-ins, are only a handful of people, anyway. “We continuously arrest them,” he explains, “and when they’re in jail all the complaints go down.”
Example of police work
He points to the recent shooting in Gowanus as a perfect example of this type of communication. The incident took place on July 30th and involved a shooting in a basketball game turned ugly, possibly in an act of revenge for a Red Hook shooting on April 22nd. Though the police are still looking for ballistic and DNA evidence to confirm their suspicions, they’ve pieced a story together already.
Purportedly, the April incident involved the shooting of two brothers in Red Hook. Though arrests were made, witnesses later recanted their testimony leaving the police to continue searching for hard evidence. In the July episode, a former friend of one of the brothers was present. Rumor was that this acquaintance was becoming friendly with the April shooter. In what was likely an act of vengeance, the brothers opened fire.
The two were arrested and the gun was recovered that same night. When the 78th precinct conducted a search warrant the next day they found another. Witnesses were working with the police and helped identify who was involved, though they later encountered the similar problem of recanted statements. Regardless, “we were immediately able to connect the story to a previous shooting on April 22nd in Red Hook,” the Captain proudly explained. “Literally, by the time I came to work the next day I had the full story, which is like television-show policing!”
Unfortunately, things don’t always go so smoothly. He explains that a lot of the time people will come to meetings that “are only there for something negative.” Hopefully their concern is addressed, he adds, but Lenz says they typically never come to another meeting after that.
Still, Lenz remains largely satisfied with the direction of the department. The only change he says he’d want is more officers. Several have been transferred out of the 76th for promotions and new assignments, but no one has been assigned to fill in their place. Even though the overall crime numbers for the neighborhood are very good Lenz says more cops could mean a bike unit and greater foot patrol, which he believes would foster better interaction with the community on a daily basis. “In a neighborhood that’s really residential and close-knit like this, it would be great to have cops walking around.”
One solution to both further community interaction and new officers lies in the local kids. The 76th precinct runs an Explorer program for youth age 14-20. Lenz says he’s absolutely looking for more high school students with an interest in policing to get involved with the program, since it’s practically a form of scouting.
“We constantly have them here in the station house… it’s a great opportunity for them to have an inside look at what really happens inside a police station.”
However, the program is presenting its own problems. Though applications are readily available online to be printed out and filled in, the number of applicants is low. According to a demographic survey from juvenile justice, Lenz says that the percentage of children eligible for the program is relatively low compared to other commands. Not only that, but the program is only partially subsidized by the police department, so kids who are both eligible and interested have to pay a fee to be involved.
But what these considerations make clear is that Captain Lenz wants to put the community first. With all his emphasis on interaction and communication, Lenz wants to make sure people feel the statistics that indicate a positive trend in neighborhood safety.
“That’s the whole key to success: collaborating with as many different groups and as many different people as possible, getting our message out there – sometimes you do it through will of personality,” he says sincerely. “And that’s what to me has always made this job kind of fun.”
