84th Precinct welcomes new commanding officer

Captain Erek Powers speaks with a local resident at the 84th Precinct Community Council meeting on Jan. 20, 2026. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — The 84th Precinct Community Council recently welcomed the precinct’s newest commanding officer, Captain Erek Powers.

The 84th Precinct encompasses Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, part of Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO and Vinegar Hill. The precinct’s previous commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Thomas Maffei, has taken the reins at the 83rd Precinct in Bushwick.

The Jan. 20 meeting, led by Council President Peter Lanfranca, was the first chance for the public at large to meet their new top cop, designated in December, and bring up local concerns.

Powers told the crowd he has been a member of the New York City Police Department for 18 years. His career has been a tour through the borough, starting with the 69th Precinct in Canarsie, where he made sergeant. From there, he settled into the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant for eight years. “I kind of consider that my Police Depart home,” he said. “Back then, I was a plain clothes anti-crime sergeant. Then I was fortunate enough to go into the Detective Bureau as a sergeant.”

Capt. Erek Powers is the new commanding officer of Brooklyn’s 84th Precinct, which includes Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill and more. Photo: NYPD Captain Erek Powers is the new commanding officer of Brooklyn’s 84th Precinct, which includes Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill and more. Photo: NYPD

Powers listed his posts over the years: At the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, then back to the 81st Precinct Detective Squad and a stint in Greenpoint. From there he worked the 73rd Precinct in Brownsville as a lieutenant, then he became the commanding officer of the 84th Precinct Detective Squad as a lieutenant, where he worked for two years. He moved to the 88th Precinct as captain, and following that was assigned to the 77th Precinct in Crown Heights. In Sept. 2025, Powers held the role of captain at the 75th Precinct, where he stayed just three months before returning to the 84th.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to return back here as the commanding officer of the 84th Precinct,” he said. “It’s a beautiful neighborhood. Whatever I can do to make this neighborhood safe and improve the quality of life, I’ll do, working with the community.”

Powers invited members of the public to “bring up any issues that you have. Nothing is too small — parking, noise complaints — we deal with everything. I’m a New York resident still and those are the things I notice when I go home.”

Attendees brought up a flurry of ongoing issues in the precinct, including traffic issues associated with the construction of the new borough jail/Brooklyn Detention Center on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill and other nearby construction.

Powers asked Howard Kolins, acting executive director of the Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation and president of the Boerum Hill Association, for the exact locations of the traffic issues, and said the precinct would give an engineering report to the New York City Department of Transportation.

Deputy Inspector Thomas Maffei, shown here at Brooklyn Borough Hall, is now the commanding officer of the 83rd Precinct in Bushwick. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Linda DeRosa, president of the Willowtown Association, expressed concern that crowds anticipated in Brooklyn Bridge Park for the upcoming World Cup events and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States would cause a scene similar to last summer’s chaotic Fourth of July “fiasco.”

Powers said that Community Affairs Officer Wallace Council had given him the rundown of the Fourth of July issues, and he had taken a look at the after-action plan. “It will be better this year,” he promised. “We already started to plan.”

Brooklyn Heights Association Executive Director Lara Birnback asked for a heightened police presence at the Clark Street subway station, after community members told BHA about seeing an increase in the number of mentally ill homeless exposing themselves or defecating in the station.

Powers said he would be meeting with a representative of Transit District 30 the following day, and weekly on an ongoing basis, and would ask for more homeless outreach.

Other community members brought up various concerns, including package theft, a stranger trying to gain entry into a neighborhood school, noise complaints, unlocked doors at a public housing project, disruptive helicopters flying low over residential buildings, and illegal vending on Washington Street.

While Powers didn’t mention it, he had been profiled in The New York Times in 2011, when he and his father Derek Powers, also an NYPD officer, both ran in the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden.

When he was younger, his father would take him to work, Erek told the Times. “I just remembered how he took me to the precinct and how cool it was.”