Kenneth Singleton plans ahead. He still has 16 months left on the job, but he has already sent his wife and two teenagers to the Georgia home where he will be living after putting in his papers. “We bought a house in Fayetteville and we know that’s where we’re going, so why not have the kids get their transition over with as calmly as possible? In the long run it’ll be easier on all of us.”

member of the Queens South Task Force since 1992, the 38-year-old Singleton (“I’m not the guy who played for the Orioles and announces for the Yankees”) doesn’t attribute his long-range preparations to any burnout with his NYPD job. “Not at all,” he says. “I haven’t got that much to complain about. In fact, I’ve already talked to some people down in Fayetteville and one of the jobs I’m considering is joining their police force. But that’s still a ways to go and I’ll decide when I get down there.”

As one of the QSTF veterans, Singleton, who was born in St. Albans and grew up in East Flatbush, has seen more than one change in southeast Queens both in terms of job priorities and internal organization. Organizationally, the watershed year was 1994, when the borough’s task force unit was split into Queens North and Queens South. “That also reduced the pool of cops in each section from the original 200 to the barely 60 we have today,” he notes.

Apart from the resignations and retirements without replacements that have cut down the unit over the last decade, he has also marked a new kind of cop moving in on North Conduit Avenue. “By new kind of cop,” he stresses, “I don’t just mean the recent graduates from the Academy.

Even the veterans like me, we’ve become new kinds of cops, too. We’ve learned more, I think we’re a lot more well-rounded than maybe the people who preceded us. Even things like having to master computers have made it an ongoing education, and I don’t think that can ever be bad.

The other side of that coin is that maybe in the past the old timers got very used to their routine. They were a lot more laid back than today. I think cops today, and I don’t just mean here, are more high-strung.”

And the new cops coming in?

“I’m sure anybody who’s had two hours on the job and is asked his opinion of the guy with one hour on will say the new guy is more book smart than street smart. You feel like a traitor if you don’t say that! But when you get this revolving door trend — guy graduates, guy gets his first posting, guy runs off to Long Island after a couple of years — how can you not think there hasn’t been enough exposure to the streets?”

Singleton admits to a personal incident to illustrate how perilous street education can be. “It’s in 1995. My partner and I get a call to this bar. The report is somebody’s inside with a gun and has already killed one person. I grew up in Brooklyn, right? Nobody has to tell me anything. So we get to the bar and there I go practically dancing toward the door. My partner almost tackled me to get me down. Sure enough, less than a minute later, the shooter comes out blazing away. He was going to take down anybody who came through that door, whether they were wearing blue or green.”

And the moral of the story?

“A, you never know enough, no matter where you’re born or grew up. B, if you’re a cop, always expect the unexpected. C, never go waltzing through bar doors if there’s a killer with a gun inside.”

As for the changes in the Rosedale-Laurelton-Springfield Gardens area since the early 1990s, Singleton shrugs in bafflement. “It’s the same as other places in the city and even around the country — you see just about less of everything except for maybe robberies. In the last few months, okay, maybe a few more guns popping up, but overall nothing that can be compared to what was going on ten years ago. Is it a natural cycle? I don’t know.

Were there cycles like this before? Who’s ever come up with those numbers?Is it because you got gang leaders in jail and their successors haven’t taken over yet? That argument was a lot better five or six years ago, but we’re moving along here by now and maybe we just have to think these successors aren’t there, period.”

General crime statistics aren’t the only thing that has baffled Singleton after being on the job for so long; there are also some of the attitudes emanating from One Police Plaza. “Call me commissioner for a day,” he laughs. “I don’t think there’s anything more important than reestablishing good relations between cops and the public. You got this mania for handing out summonses and making the number. Always making the number. The way I see it, that’s not the same thing as helping people. In fact, the more we get wrapped up in those numbers, the more I think we’re hurting people instead of helping them. What’s it about? Somebody’s career? Somebody’s promotion? Maybe I’m naive, but that’s not the first thing that comes to mind when somebody asks why did I become a cop.”

Unlike some other cops, Singleton has no strong feelings one way or the other about one of his own children coming in one day to announce a desire to put on a uniform. “If that were to happen, I’d have to say right now it’s more likely to come from my 14-year-old daughter. She’s caught up in all these CSI TV shows and talks about being a forensic scientist. The boy, who’s 16, wants to be an athletic director. But they’re both still teenagers, and who knows what they’ll end up doing?”

While waiting to rejoin his family in Georgia, Singleton will be living with his mother in Brooklyn. “I guess maybe I’ll have a lot more time for my tropical fish and motorcycle,” he says. “Got to make sure that bike is in good working order when I head south. And I don’t mean Queens South.”

— Donald Dewey

Back to Queens South Task Force