After a community meeting held in Greenport last week, during which residents asked about how to identify “hand signs” used by members of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa has shared photos of the signs, so educators, elected officials, and police can be aware of what to look for.
The hand signs are depicted in the gallery below.
In addition, Sliwa shared his thoughts about the community meeting and described next steps, should the community decide to move forward.
“The response from those who attended was more positive than what I would normally expect. Most came with an open mind and were prepared to learn as much as they could to share with the rest of the community,” Sliwa said last week. “Normally a few naysayers will populate the room and try and distract away from the central points. Luckily, that did not take place.It was clear that many took their cue from the tone established by the host of the meeting,” he said.
In addition, Sliwa said, Sister Margaret Smyth of the North Fork Spanish Apostolate “definitely promoted an action agenda, not a wait and see attitude. People were enlightened and, I believe, left thinking that these things for the most part could be done. Most importantly, many seemed like they were ready to do some heavy lifting to make this happen and to take on their missing-in-action village officials. It was a good first start.”
While Greenport Village Trustees George Hubbard, Jr. and Julia Robins were present, as well as Village Clerk Sylvia Pirillo, Greenport Mayor David Nyce was not in attendance, and said that he believed a community meeting organized by the village should have preceded the gathering. No Southold Town board members were present, although board of education members from Greenport, Mattituck and Oysterponds attended the meeting. Southold and Greenport School Superintendent David Gamberg did not attend the meeting and has not returned requests for comment.
Sliwa said patrols in Greenport in 2005 set the stage for last week’s meeting and left a good feeling among those present.
Next steps, he said, are to “follow up on what different people in that room committed to doing. We need to make sure that people were not just styling and profiling to sound good in front of their peers. Once a lot of that groundwork is done then I will reach out to the mayor of Greenport and the village trustees to meet.”
Sliwa said he’d prefer an open meeting with village officials but would not turn down the chance to meet with the mayor and village officials behind closed doors.
“I am hoping that the village folks will attend their next meeting this week and question their officials as to their noticeable absence at Tuesday night’s meeting. Also I would hope they try to pin down the MIA officials to do more than just deny the gang problem and stonewall the Guardian Angel suggestions,” Sliwa said.
A Greenport village board work session takes place Monday at 6 p.m. at the Third Street Firehouse.
Sliwa added that he would also then reach out to Southold police to try to organize a meeting and then, ask them to assign a police liaison that the Guardian Angels could communicate with. Next, Sliwa hopes to reach out to the local school boards and meet with local school officials, as well.
Meanwhile, Guardian Angels will commence patrols, focusing on Fridays and Saturdays, Sliwa said. “While patrolling we will recruit and train local residents with an emphasis on getting Latinos and Latinas trained and into the ranks of the Guardian Angels. I will also move to encourage citizens to put together a Guardian Angel support group, to continue to lobby those who continue to remain in denial or who silently work behind the scenes to slow or scuttle our effort.”
That group, he said, would educate both English and Spanish-speaking members of the population and detail solutions, raising awareness on how they can help the effort and showing them how to do so.
In addition, funding must be sought to help the Guardian Angels raise resources to offset the cost of transporting Spanish-speaking Guardian Angels from New York City to Southold and Greenport, Sliwa said.
And, he added, Riverhead must be spotlighted, too. “All roads lead back to Riverhead, which has had a longer history of Latino gang activity and serves as a conduit for the gangs all throughout the East End and Southold areas. It is the epicenter of the street gang activity that plagues the area,” he said.
If invited to address a group in Riverhead, Sliwa said the goal would be to begin the same process of patrolling and organizing Guardian Angel activities to “root out the problem, suppress, it and begin to grind it down. People and officials in Riverhead appear to be far more cognizant of their gang problems and more willing to acknowledge them publicly. I would hope that they would be cooperative of our efforts.”
Gangs, he said, have spread out to the North Fork from Riverhead, in much the same way gangs in years’ past used Coney Island as a hub before infiltrating surrounding communities.
The differences, he said, are that while Coney Island, a dense and urban area, had Puerto Rican gangs that assimilated years earlier, today’s MS-13 and 18th Street gangs “are much better organized. They are more insular and tougher to crack. They have a more defined leadership. They are less likely to cooperate with the cops when arrested. They have affiliated gangs all over that they can go to when the heat is on and their countries of origin have become sanctuaries for those same gangs.”
Sliwa and the Guardian Angels came out to Greenport and Southold after a recent alleged gang attack in Southold. The fifth suspect in that brutal attack was arrested last week and is slated to appear again in Southold Town justice court today at 1 p.m.
Nyce, Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell, and Southold Police Chief Martin Flatley have all said they believe the issue can be addressed locally, and the mayor said he was organizing a community meeting to that end.
But those that attended last week’s meeting at St. Agnes in Greenport said they learned a great deal and believed the Guardian Angels could help in unique ways to help address the burgeoning gang issue in local school districts, which Sliwa said are fertile grounds for gang members who begin their efforts to recruit new members with children as young as six or seven years old.
