After a brutal gang attack in Southold in October, local law enforcement, elected officials and school administrators came together to talk solutions at a public meeting held at the the Southold Town recreation center on Peconic Lane Thursday night.
Residents who turned out had real concerns to voice. Dorothy Catapano, who owns the Catapano dairy farm close to the intersection of New York State Route 25 and South Harbor Road in Southold where the shooting and machete attack took place on October 14 between members of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs, asked for what signs to look for to indicate that gangs could be in the area.
“This has really shaken a lot of us up,” she said.
Present at the event were Southold Police Chief Martin Flatley, Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell, members of the town board, the entire Greenport village board, Suffolk County Legislator Al Krupski, Greenport and Southold Schools Superintendent David Gamberg and Mattituck High School Principal Shawn Petretti.
“We’ve had a lot of requests from various members of the public who are anxious for more information about the gang attack experienced in Southold Town,” Flatley said.
Flatley said he reached out to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office and asked Steven Lundquist, a member of the gang intelligence unit, to give a presentation on gangs at the meeting.
The evening, Russell said, was meant to be an educational forum about gangs, with a “multi-agency approach. This is not a new issue to Southold or to law enforcement,” Russell added, but said after recent the recent gang attack, the aim was to work together to share resources and hopefully provide residents with a sense of security.
Greenport Mayor David Nyce thanked Flatley and said he was pleased to hear that immediately after the attack — one of the alleged gang members was a student in the Greenport school district — that the school districts and police had been in contact. “They were discussing having a meeting with staff to make sure our kids were safe. That gave me a great deal of confidence, and allowed me to say, at subsequent village board meetings, that the matter was being addressed.”
Nyce added that gang concerns are not isolated to the Southold or Greenport area but are “all over Long Island, in some shape or form.” He added that he had confidence in local law enforcement to handle the problem.
Krupski said the presence of both the town and village boards, as well as school administrators, reflected “how seriously everyone takes this issue. The community should know that everyone doesn’t think this was a one-time thing that will never happen again. We’re trying to address it now, before it happens again.”
Looking ahead for solutions, Flatley said he hopes to meet with police chiefs from the other East End towns and take a regional approach.
The district attorney’s office, Flatley said, is planning to assign another investigator to the East End Drug Task Force, whose main role will be to gather intelligence and get information from each of the towns, with an eye toward regionally addressing the problems.
Locally, Flatley said, the Southold Town board recently hired eight new police officers. “That’s very big for us, it brings us back up to staffing of 52 officers and it also means it gives us the opportunity to have a second car in Greenport for much of the time.” Having two officers in the one square mile will help to establish a greater presence, Flatley said.
One of the new officers is Latino, Flately said, and the plan is to use him as a liaison to the Spanish-speaking community.
Also, Flatley plans to schedule local, community based outreach meetings, beginning in January, that will bring law enforcement together with community members “to listen to what they have to say,” he said. An interpreter will be present to help reach out to the Latino community, too, Flatley said. The aim, he added, was to “get a better line of communication going.”
Nyce said after the meeting that building trust with the Latino community through the planned meetings with law enforcement was critical; ICE raids in years’ past shattered any steps toward trust that had been established, he said.
The chief also said that law enforcement was only one component of the solution; the educational end was equally critical. “We want to make an effort to make sure young mean and women aren’t joining gangs.” Local law enforcement has been working with the sheriff’s department and school districts to identify school programs with an anti-gang message with an eye toward preventative measures, he said.
Greenport and Southold Schools Superintendent David Gamberg said over years, the DARE program had helped to educate students about the dangers of drugs, alcohol, gangs and even tobacco.
Most recently, Gamberg said he has been in touch with the Riverhead school district about embracing the Council For Unity program, an anti-gang program founded by Robert DeSena that has been implemented in Riverhead schools, the police department, and the jail.
Gamberg said he has also been in touch with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department about a nationally known Gang Resistance Education And Training, or GREAT, program, which is “in operation in 50 states.” Gamberg said he’s looking forward to working with staff in Greenport to introduce the 13-week program to seventh and eighth graders; the program has also been put in place in the Huntington, Brentwood, Hampton Bays and Patchogue Medford school districts, so “it’s not something new and non-tested,” he said.
The fact that the North Fork school districts are small is a plus, Gamberg said, adding that every adult in the district, from bus driver to teacher, can “build a rapport” with kids. “Our mission to graduate good citizens goes beyond a test score,” he said.
Flatley said right after the shooting, a meeting was held with local school districts to discuss gang activity, with over 225 school administrators present and showing “genuine interest”.
Mattituck High School Principal Shawn Petretti agreed the smaller-sized districts allowed for school officials to establish close relationships with students. He said providing activities for kids, and recruiting those less apt to get involved, would keep them less susceptible to becoming involved with gangs — and protect the vulnerable from being preyed upon by gang members.
Members of the community spoke and raised concerns. Benja Schwartz of Cutchogue asked if stiffer penalties for gang crimes could be imposed.
Catapano asked what residents could look for and how to prevent gang members from wandering onto her property.
Flatley said if she or other residents had any suspicions, they should call the police and allow them to investigate further.
Another woman asked what was being done about “hot spots” such as the Third Street Park in Greenport where the fight that led to the October shooting originally began, or on Webb Street, near the cemetery.
Flatley said again that the addition of eight new police officers would mean an enhanced police presence in the entire village.
Another resident said the “biggest bang for the buck would be to work on prevention in the school districts and said the primary effort should be on creating a “bridge into the Hispanic community”, with more than one person necessary and a comprehensive, not just ad hoc, effort introduced.
Gamberg agreed and said he’d recently spoken with a translator at the Spanish speaking mass at St. Agnes in an effort to “create a bridge and openness, and a desire to be proactive.”
Guardian Angels, who are also patrolling Greenport, recently reached out at a Spanish-speaking mass and spoke to the congregation about joining the volunteer-based group, with new recruits joining the patrol last weekend.
Gamberg said he is also hoping to bring a small group of students to a leadership conference in Albany in March. “We have highly talented, bright and successful high school students of Latin descent. I’d like to see them be part of the solution and take the lead inside and outside of school.”
Language barriers compound issues, one resident said. She asked how many in the Southold Police department speak Spanish; Flatley said two officers and one phone operator speak Spanish.
Former Greenport Mayor David Kapell emphasized that the problem was townwide. “This is not just a Greenport problem,” he said, to applause. He added that the actual shooting took place in Southold, not Greenport, and a gang-related murder years ago also took place in Southold.
Flatley agreed the problem was townwide, stressing that the gang population is transient. “It’s not like the average citizen who buys a house and lives there for 20 years.”
Another resident asked what role the Guardian Angels would have in the solution, according to Flatley.
For weeks, Flatley and Nyce have said the problem could be handled internally without outside help.
On Thursday, Flatley responded, “They’re not under my control. It’s not something I have any control over.”
He added, “In my opinion, do I think we need extra patrols or uniformed patrols? I don’t. I feel we added, with the hiring of new officers, ample patrols of areas inside town. Our staffing levels are back up. But the Guardian Angels are a private organization and they certainly have a right to form anywhere within town. They only thing we would expect and would want is some feedback from information gathered, or concerns of the neighborhoods they may operate in.”
After the meeting, Nyce echoed Flatley’s statements and said while the Guardian Angels are a private group and could patrol where they wanted, he had full faith in the Southold police department. He said he was happy to see the Southold police department hire additional officers and said true answers would take time. “This didn’t happen overnight,” he said, adding that he preferred a “thoughtful, rationale response.”Gangs, he said, have been part of the immigration issue “forever”; a “long-term, thoughtful approach” needs to be taken, “with the community involved”.
Greenport Deputy Mayor George Hubbard, however, said the Guardian Angels, or any group of residents who wanted to volunteer to walk the streets and keep them safe were welcome to do so. “I don’t see any problem with that,” he said.
Village Trustee Mary Bess Phillips said the meeting brought to light the fact that the gang issue was not just local, but nationwide.
After the meeting, Benjamin Garcia, a Guardian Angels patrol leader in Greenport who attended the meeting with two other Guardian Angels members, spoke with Catapano about possibly starting a Guardian Angels chapter in her own neighborhood. She took a flyer and said she would be interested in organizing residents for a neighborhood watch, especially in the summer.
Of Flatley’s comments, Garcia said, “Everyone has the right to their own opinion. but the Guardian Angels go out in all communities to make sure everyone is safe. Our number one priority is safety for everyone.”
Asked whether Flatley’s response would have any impact on the Guardian Angels’ patrols in Greenport, Garcia responded, “As long as I can help someone and make sure they are not victims of crime, I will be there. I will never stop.”
When asked for his response after the meeting, Sliwa, who was unable to attend, said in an email, “Now that the police chief has been able to host his town hall gang meeting for the residents of Southhold where the local Guardian Angels were able to attend, I will now reach out to Police Chief Martin Flatley and Supervisor Scott Russell to try and set up the same kind of meeting that we just recently completed with the town officials of Riverhead.”
Sliwa met with Riverhead Town Supervisor Sean Walter and Police Chief David Hegermiller this week; both embraced the idea of Guardian Angels in their community.
“It was good to see Police Chief Flatley promise more public meetings in the future on this subject,” Sliwa added. “”It was also good to hear reports of the many positive comments about the Guardian Angels’ presence in Greenport by residents who thanked the Guardian Angels after the meeting.”
During the meeting, Flatley, who said he’s been sitting in on county gang roundtable meetings for years, introduced Lundquist, who has focused on gang intelligence for 12 years, said he sees those arrested in Suffolk County from Lindenhurt to Orient. “We get the North Fork South Fork, East End, west end,” he said. “We debrief most people coming into jails about gang affiliation.”
Although the recent incident involved members of the 18th Street and MS-13 gangs, Lundquist said in the past, there had been some Bloods gang activity in Greenport.
Lundquist said the gang intelligence unit was located in the Riverside jail, where there are approximately 700 male and female inmates. The new county jail in Yaphank also has about 700 inmates he said. Of the total 1400 inmates, about 250 have been identified as gang members or gang associates, Lundquist said, with “roughly 30 different gang” affiliations.
Not only big, nationwide and statewide gangs such as the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings and Trinitarios are represented, he said; smaller, neighborhood gang members are also found in the jail.
But, Lundquist emphasized, “It’s not illegal to belong to a gang,” and just because someone wears the colors or tattoos of a gang, it doesn’t mean they are gang members. Kids on Facebook, he said, often throw hand signs, and “want to be gangsters, but most are not hard core. Wannabes are sometimes just as dangerous because they’re aspiring to be like those gang members,” he said.
Giving a historical overview, Lundquist said before the late 1990s, most of the gangs in Suffolk County were neighborhood gangs or Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. The Bloods on the East Coast, he said, were formed on Rikers Island in the late 1990s and “then quickly spread to Long Island.” Tracing the history of the Bloods, which originally began on the West Coast, Lundquist said on the East Coast, the black inmates at Rikers Island saw “how established” Latino gangs were, including the Latin Kings and the Netas, controlling the illegal drug trade in the jails. “The main contraband in jail is weapons and drugs,” he said. “It’s a lucrative business in jail.”
Many joined gangs while in jail for protection, Lundquist said.
The black inmates wanted to seize some of the money and power — which garnered respect behind bars — so they organized and formed the East Coast Bloods or the United Blood Nation, or UBN. “These gangs were eager to prey on other inmates,” he said.
Once the gang formed, leaders in jail were able to “put out hits,” he said.
And, as the Latino population grew on Long Island, so did gangs such as the Latin Kings, MS-13 and the 18th Street gangs, the three largest Latino gangs on Long Island, Lundquist said.
MS-13 and 18th Street gangs, both with members from Central America, are “bitter enemies,” and the “Bloods dislike them both,” he said.
In recent years, Lundquist said the the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office has identified almost 400 gang members and their associates, but less than 100 live in Southold Town at the time they’ve been incarcerated in the Suffolk Count Correctional Facility. But just because they don’t live in town, doesn’t mean they don’t visit, he said. “Gang members tend to be transient,” he said. “They will relocate or frequent areas where they can hide from other gang members and engage in criminal activity.”
Affluent areas such as the North Fork and the East End attract gang members, Lundquist said. “They know people have money there.”
Gang members head to the North Fork and Riverhead, he said, to engage in criminal activity such as selling drugs, burglaries, robberies, illegal gun sales and assaults. “They will often target members of their own nationality or ethnicity because victims are less likely to report the incident to police due to fear of retribution.”
And gang members flock to popular areas such as the North Fork during the popular summer season for work, or to hang out in bars or restaurants and sell drugs, he said.
Lundquist gave an overview of the MS-13 or La Mara Salvatrucha, a criminal gang that began in Los Angeles with roots in Central America and has spread to other parts of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America and is comprised of mostly Central American males, he said. “La Mara” is a street gang in El Salvador, Lundquist said; and the “Salvatrucha” stands for the guerillas that fought in the Civl War in El Savador. The gang started because members were a minority in Los Angeles who formed the gang for protection, he said.
MS-13, he said, are the “least popular” with other gangs and are bitter enemies with Bloods and 18th Street gang members. MS-13 members have a reputation of “being very violent” and organized; the FBI and a Long Island gang task force have solved murders in western Suffolk County and Nassau County attributed to MS-13 gang members, Lundquist said.
MS-13 members, he said, call their groups “cliques” with several in Suffolk County; members stay in contact with gang members in El Salvador. Cliques in Suffolk County are concentrated in Brentwood, Central Islip and Huntington Station, he said.
Lundquist also described various tattoos and hand signs used by the MS-13 gang members; in recent years, some have hidden their tattoos inside of their lips, between fingers, and behind their ears. Some MS-13 wear a “503” tattoo because 503 is the area code of El Salvador, he said. Others have three dots as tattoos either signifying La Vida Loca or the three end results of gang membership — jail, hospital or death.
Examples of gang graffiti were also shown.
Next, Lundquist described the Bloods, the largest gang in Suffolk County, with a presence on the East End, and a presence in Riverhead and Flanders. Area gangs, he said, “are all competing in the drug trade for territory. They recruit in schools and on the street.”
Bloods, he said, are members of a “set” that follow paramilitary structures. Members must be initiated; one of the fastest ways to achieve status is to assault or harm a police officer, Lundquist said; all gang members use street names and codes to communicate, he added.
Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa first gave SoutholdLOCAL a comprehensive look at the history of gangs in the area immediately after the attack, preceding a community meeting on gang activity in the area held at St. Agnes last month.
Also on Thursday, Southold police gave a rundown of the violent attack on October 14 that resulted in the arrest of the five suspects, all MS-13 members.
Flatley outlined the police response to the attack, including an “aggressive investigation to locate all five suspects in a short period of time”; all five have been indicted by Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota’s office, he said.
In addition, Flatley said he will continue to attend gang roundtables in Suffolk County to share information on the local, county, state and federal level.
Russell said the dialogue would continue at future meetings.
