In an effort to cut back on spending, Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano and Police Commissioner Thomas Dale announced Monday that four of the county's eight police precincts will be restructured.

Four precincts will remain intact while the remaining four will be transformed into new Community Policing Centers, Mangano said.

According to a release from the county, the Second Precinct in Woodbury, Third Precinct in Williston Park, Fourth Precinct in Hewlett and Seventh Precinct in Seaford will continue to operate as regular precincts, while the First Precinct in Baldwin, Fifth Precinct in Elmont, Sixth Precinct in Manhasset and Eighth Precinct in Levittown will become community policing centers.

The plan also eliminates more than 100 desk jobs and slashes "costly" built-in overtime benefits, Mangano said. A total of 48 police officers will be reassigned from desk jobs to Problem Oriented Police (POP) positions.

While the number of precincts and desk jobs will shrink, Mangano said the number of patrol cars will remain the same.

"Keeping residents safe is my number one priority," Mangano said. "This plan keeps all 177 patrols cars in their current neighborhoods, assigns more cops to POP and opens four new Community Policing Centers throughout the county while increasing efficiencies."

According to Nassau County Communications Director Brian Nevin, the timeline to complete the entire process will take approximately six months.

The plan also corrects a workload imbalance that had been seen throughout the eight precincts, as three police precincts presently perform twice the workload of the remaining five precincts.

"This plan saves taxpayers significant dollars while streamlining duplicative work, redistributing workload and assigning more officers to POP and special patrol," Dale said. "... Residents should know that response time will not be impacted as police officers will remain in their current neighborhoods and additional officers will be assigned to our neighborhoods."

James Carver, President of the Nassau PBA, told 1010 WINS' Mona Rivera that he is going to fight the plan.

"We currently have eight police precincts and they're trying to tell everybody that having four police precincts is a better way to police Nassau County, well they're dead wrong on this," Carver said.

Claudia Borecky, president of the North and Central Merrick Civic Association, told Patch that she is already concerned that the special units have been discontinued and with the removal of the problem-oriented police officers, she feels that it will hinder the community's ability to watch out for trouble.

"The problem-oriented police officers are the liaisons between the police and the community. When they cut those officers out, it seriously affected our ability as a Neighborhood Watch Program to alert our community of policing issues in real time," she said.

"There comes a time when you cut so much that it compromises the safety of our communities. With the increase in crime that we’ve been seeing, I don’t think now is the time to cut our police precincts in half," Borecky added.