NYPD Names New UES and UWS Precinct Commanders

Changes are afoot at two Manhattan precincts on the Upper East Side and Upper West, sources said.

Deputy Inspector Noreen Lazarus, who has commanded the Upper West Side’s 24th Precinct for nearly two years, will move east and take over the 19th Precinct as commanding officer.

Captain Veniece Gayle, currently at the 32nd Pct. in northeast Harlem, is moving south and crosstown to take over the 24th Pct. as commanding officer.

Inspector Neil Zuber, who has headed up the 19th Precinct for nearly two years, is being promoted to special projects head of the Strategic Response Group, a five-borough operation in charge of coordinating coverage on parades as well as violent and peaceful demonstrations across the city. The SRG is in the crosshairs of many city council members and leading mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who are calling for the unit to be abolished.

Captain Julieann Stapleton, the No. 2 executive in the 19th, will get her own command, taking over the 44th Precinct in the southwest Bronx, a precinct that measures only 1.97 square miles and includes Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Terminal Market, and the Grand Concourse. It is currently commanded by Deputy Inspector Joe A. Pulgarin.

The Bronx was the scene of deadly shootings on Aug. 27, when three people were killed and four injured in five separate incidents over one 24-hour period. But that’s not the precinct where Stapleton is headed. She is a vice president in the New York chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and had been in the 19th since October 2024.

There could be more shuffles down the road, police sources said. Deputy Inspector Maggie Clamp, who heads the 17th Precinct, which includes Kips Bay, Murray Hill, Sutton Place, Rose Hill, Turtle Bay, and stretches from East 30th Street to East 59th Street, is rumored to be headed to the vacant CO job in the 13th Precinct. That precinct includes Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village, Gramercy Park, parts of Union Square and Midtown East. The past commanding officer, deputy inspector Daniel Orlando, was moved to counterterroris, lower Manhattan security initiative, which includes the World Trade Center.

But sources say a replacement move at the 13th Pct. may not happen until after the UN General Assembly, which is slated for Sept. 22-30.

Deputy Inspector Lazarus is taking over a job that police insiders call a “promotion precinct.” Before Zuber, the precinct was headed by Inspector William Gallagher, who was moved to One Police Plaza HQ to take over the NYPD’s 80-person legal bureau. Gallagher, who had done two stints in the 19th, was the No. 2 executive before landing the Central Park precinct for about three years and then returning in February 2023 as the commanding officer of the 19th. He is the rare police officer who is also a lawyer.

The 19th Precinct, which includes commercial retail districts as well as upscale residential neighborhoods including Yorkville, Lenox Hill, and Carnegie Hill, and stretches from East 59th to East 96th Street, is generally one of the lower-crime districts in the city. One former officer in the 19th joked that it has an unusually high number of burglaries reported on Monday because many of the upscale residents go away for the weekend and don’t realize someone has broken into their apartment until they return at the end of the weekend.

Despite that reputation, it is not immune to shocking crimes. On Aug. 30, the 19th was the scene of a horrific traffic fatality, when a cabbie driving a Toyota SUV southbound on York Avenue near 72nd Street struck and killed 36-year-old James Mossetty as he was crossing from west to east and became lodged in the undercarriage of the car. He was not dislodged for about 10 blocks, until the cab reached the lower roadway of the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Police later arrested the driver, 71-year-old Abdul Hakim, and charged him with leaving the scene of an accident that caused a fatality.

The 19th Precinct was also the scene of some 18 auto wheel and rim thefts by fast-moving three-man gangs during the summer who stripped wheels and rims from cars and left them propped up on milk crates. The wheel-theft crime wave is hitting other districts across the city as well.

Overall, the precinct has seen the number of reported crime incidents remain basically flat through the first eight months of this year after declining the previous year. There were 1,578 reported incidents through Aug. 31, a 1.94 percent increase compared with the same eight-month period a year earlier. Four of the seven major crime categories were trending downward. There were no murders, and the number of reported rapes dropped to seven, which was two fewer than during the same period a year earlier. Robbery incidents at 115 were down 19.6 percent compared with a year earlier, and grand larceny auto plunged 43.5 percent, to 35. There was an increase in felony assaults (130, up 6.6 percent), burglary (188, up 19 percent), and grand larceny (1,103, up 4.8 percent).

The 24th Precinct, which runs from West 86th Street to West 125th and from Central Park West to the Hudson River, had fewer reported incidents than the 19th, but the crime rate has ticked up in the mid-single digits so far this year. One impressive figure among the stats: Over the past year, the number of grand larceny involving autos in the 24th Precinct, which includes Riverside Park, Manhattan Village, and a NYCHA housing project, plunged dramatically to only 25 through Aug. 31, a 41.9 percent decline. The overall crime incidents in the first eight months of the year were up moderately to 699, a 4.48 percent bump, fueled by a rise in felony assaults (121, up 21 percent), burglaries (118, up 51.3 percent), and grand larcenies (356, up 5.6 percent). There were 13 reported rapes, an increase of three from a year earlier. The number of robberies, which means the theft was executed against a person, dropped dramatically to 65, down 35.6 percent.

The precinct was unable to provide the number of wheel/auto thefts in the precinct when asked recently by Straus News. The 20th Precinct, immediately to the south, had reported at least nine incidents so far this summer.

The NYPD had not returned emails seeking confirmation at press time, but sources said the personnel moves were announced internally on Sept. 2 and were slated to take effect on Sept. 8 as part of a series of transfers and promotions announced across the five boroughs.