ne of the first things you notice about the 111 Precinct on the Queens border with Nassau County is what isn’t there. Within the vast 9.4-square-mile area of the command covering Douglaston, Bayside, Little Neck, Fresh Meadows, Auburndale and Hollis Hills, there isn’t a single subway station. That’s not supposed to happen, at least not outside Staten Island, and it only gives more resonance to the often-heard crack that 111 Pct. cops may be working in the city, but they’re not exactly of the city.

“What’s wrong with the bus?” Wes Flippen laughs. “We’ve got plenty of them, and they’re run by the MTA, too, aren’t they?”

By their second hour after reporting to the stationhouse on Northern Boulevard and 215th Street, most cops like Flippen have begun growing a thick hide against insinuations that they’re working in Candyland or Fort Azalea. Yes, the command can be a scenic tour of neatly manicured one- and two-family homes, lush garden apartments and well-preserved Victorian and Tudor structures from yesteryear. Yes, there are marinas, golf courses, and — count ’em — three parks all around the major thoroughfares of Northern and Bell boulevards. But as Anderson notes, “For a cop a city is only as calm as the unexpected waiting around the next corner, and that’s true of any neighborhood anywhere.”

As might be anticipated from a heavily residential district close to major highways, auto theft and burglary are the chief plagues of the 111 Pct. During a holiday season day tour, Flippen and partner Danny Conway could also predict more calls about victimized shoppers. “T’is the season to be jolly, but also to be taken,” the 40-year-old Flippen says. “Property crimes really go up around here come Christmas, especially in the big stores and the malls. Pickpocketing, con games with headlights and shopping carts in the parking lots, just about any of the tried-and-true larcenies you can think of. The more distracted the shopper is about gifts for this one and gifts for that one, the easier for the crook.”

The first call of the day, though, reflects another holiday problem — mental depression. A teenage girl with more than one spell in a psychiatric ward in the past has disappeared between her home and school after an argument with her parents. Along with other command units, Flippen and Conway scour the neighborhood for the teenager, but without success. The cops can only hope their search doesn’t end as two other cases did the previous day. As Conway relates it:

“The nerves of a lot of people are just shot around the holidays. Yesterday, we got a call that one car was tailgating another toward us from Brooklyn. Bang, bang, bang — all along the highway, endangering not only each other but also every other vehicle they passed. We finally grabbed them here, and both drivers were practically spitting blood with road rage. How had it started? One guy just passed another and he didn’t like it.

“We’re still taking down the particulars on that one when we get a call about an EDP near Bell Boulevard. A guy there has attacked his mother with a frying pan over Christmas presents. She was in pretty bad shape, but we got to her in time. Neither one of them could really explain what had led up to the explosion.”

The 31-year-old Conway, a native of Flushing who now lives in Whitestone, is as familiar as anyone in blue with the 111 Pct. Before he was assigned to the command, his brother William had been on patrol there. “It was really just a coincidence,” he says, “but I was transferred here just after my brother was called by the Army to do criminal investigation work in Iraq. He should be back in the early part of 2005.” The two Conways also have a father on the job, most recently as an investigator for the attorney general’s office. “I never felt any particular pressure to wear a uniform, but I guess you could say it’s been something of a family business. Besides, other places where I worked — the Bronx Zoo, the Queens Botanical Gardens — didn’t exactly knock me out as career alternatives.”

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