A group of frightened and frustrated Greenport residents met with Southold Police Chief Martin Flatley at Floyd Memorial Library Tuesday evening to demand stepped up neighborhood patrols.
The residents complained that Southold Town Police presence in Greenport is mostly limited to the village’s business district. The result, they said, is unchecked criminal activity on residential streets — everything from groups of people openly smoking marijuana to a “serial masturbator” who’s “terrorized” neighborhoods for many years.
One man has roamed residential streets in the village during early morning hours, peering through windows and exposing himself to women and girls, according to residents at the meeting — several of whom said they’d been victimized by him themselves. He’s been caught masturbating outside the windows of homes multiple times. He has been known to toss pebbles at a window to draw the attention of those inside so that he can expose himself or masturbate when they come to the window.
He seems to know where single women or single moms live, residents say.
“I don’t want to say we’re being stalked, but sometimes it feels that way,” said one single mom, who has been victimized by this behavior more than once.
Another woman, who lives alone, said she’s caught him masturbating outside her own home twice.
“We’re being very polite calling this man a ‘peeping tom,’ as has been reported in the press. This is not a peeping tom. He’s a serial masturbator and we should start calling him what he is,” she said.
“He’s a sexual predator,” another woman interjected.
“He has a serious mental problem and it’s really disturbing,” said the woman who called him a “serial masturbator.”
“He watches the house. He sees you’re alone. He wants to wake you up so that you see him masturbating. I think he gets off on the idea that you’re scared,” she said. People need to call police when this happens, she said, but sometimes they don’t because they feel embarrassed. “I’m not embarrassed. I didn’t do anything wrong. But it terrifies you and makes you uncomfortable in your own house.”
People who attended the meeting — a group of 12 women and four men — asked that their names and photos not be used and that references to the locations of their homes be nonspecific. They are afraid of the man they describe as a heavy-set black man, late 30s to early 40s, who dresses in black from head to toe and skulks around in the shadows near homes just before dawn.
“If you see a suspicious person, call us,” Flatley told the group. “There’s no reason for a man to be walking near your house at four or six in the morning, all dressed in black,” he said.
One woman said this behavior has been going on for more than 15 years and law enforcement seems powerless to do anything about it.
Flatley expressed his own frustration. Police department manpower levels don’t allow him to put multiple sector cars on the streets in Greenport neighborhoods, he said. One car on the midnight shift covers the village and everything east to Orient.
He pointed out that the subject in question has not been known to burglarize or enter homes.
But residents point to a recent incident this summer where an intruder allegedly opened a window screen and put his hand inside.
“What’s he going to do next?” one woman asked. “He’s not sane.” Residents are worried his behavior may escalate.
“It almost feels like we’re just waiting until something really bad happens before we do anything about it,” said one woman.
A single mom said an intruder actually entered her home and stole a jar of coins. “He waited for us to leave and then just walked in the back door. My son was upstairs in the bathroom. The two cops that came when we called did nothing. We waited two weeks for a detective to come. We never heard from him after that.”
“There’s too much tolerance,” she said. “What if that was your kid? What if these were your families?” she asked the chief.
Residents said they believe police response would be different if this were going on in another hamlet, like Southold or Mattituck.
“When a purse is stolen at the Magic Fountain [in Mattituck] the police post a $5,000 reward,” said one woman. “But we have to live with this. Why isn’t a reward offered for this man?”
Flatley denied that Greenport gets disparate treatment or that police tolerate crime in the village. “There’s not a tolerance,” Flatley said.
The residents and police chief all believe they know the identity of the man who’s been looking in windows, exposing himself and masturbating outside people’s homes.
Flatley said he had himself arrested the man in question for a strong-arm robbery in the early 1990s. “There’s a psychological profile, so many different abnormal behaviors. It is scary. It’s a matter of trying to intercede and stop it,” he said.
“I wish I had four officers to put on him every night.”
Other residents expressed dismay with the way officers respond to residents complaints. One woman said when she called police to file a complaint the responding officer asked, “How long have you lived here? Didn’t you know the neighborhood you were moving into?”
She suggested “sensitivity training for patrol officers” so that they treat complaining residents with more respect and take their complaints seriously.
“I want to live here happily and safely. I want to know my children are safe.”
A woman asked the chief if police monitor social media in their efforts to combat crime and suggested that, if not, they should begin to do so.” The man described as a “serial masturbator” had posted “some very disturbing videos” on his Facebook page, she said, suggesting police should be looking at social media.
Another woman, who said she’d been victimized by the man, said “I think about it every night, I still do. When I’m sitting on my couch watching TV, I think about it. I’m alone usually, or with my children. It’ scary. I keep thinking about how if I didn’t wake up, he could have been right on top of me.”
“So far he’s not known for going into houses,” the chief said. But that brings no comfort to residents.
“It’s no less traumatizing,” she said.
Another woman who lives alone in a ground-floor apartment said she moved her bed into her living room because her bedroom windows open onto the porch and she felt uneasy sleeping there.
A man said he’s installed a fence, cameras, and motion-activated lights on his property — and bought a large dog — in an effort to keep his family safe. “I’ve spent thousands of dollars.”
Another man suggested victims try to take pictures of the man.
“You don’t realize how scary it is,” a woman told him.
Police don’t recommend victims do anything but call 911. “Don’t engage him in any way,” Flatley said.
“In closing, I hear your concerns,” the chief said.
“I’m going to do everything I can to put manpower out there on midnights. We’re looking to hire two or three new officers in the next month or so. Regardless, we will try to redirect the 3 a.m. to 6 a.m patrols,” Flatley said.
