Pretend police at funeral?

Two weeks after a man was shot dead on a Long Beach street, police have not provided any information about the suspect or any further details about the incident than they offered in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, but officers reportedly passed around fliers containing information on the suspect as well as a photo outside a church at the victim's funeral.

To date, Nassau County police have reported only that a man shot and killed Ernest Cummings, 46, of Long Beach outside his girlfriend's home, at 19 E. Hudson St., at about 3:34 p.m. on March 22. "We have no further information at this time," officers at the department's public information office in Mineola told the Herald on Tuesday and Wednesday.

After the shooting, an East Hudson Street resident, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Herald that he knew the suspected gunman, whom he identified as a 19-year-old who lives in the neighborhood. City Manager Charles Theofan said that police told him the suspect could be as young as 18, "that he is somebody who has been of interest to police for various things," and that the police are "pretty sure that the initial report of him being seen getting into a car and driving away are accurate and that he's not in town."

Meanwhile, Marcus Tinker, a parishioner at the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church on J.J. Evans Boulevard, where Cummings's funeral was held, said that two men in plainclothes who identified themselves as police officers were handing out fliers with the suspect's photo printed on them outside the church at the service.

"We told them that we thought it was disrespectful to the family," said Tinker. "We had to stop them from doing that. The pastor had said something to them, and they stopped for a minute, and then they started back, and the deacon said something, and they stopped and started back."

Tinker added that the men said they didn't know if the suspect was hiding in Long Beach or had skipped town.