BY JOSEPH KELLARD
The owner of Cinelli's, at the corner of Davison Avenue and Oceanside Road, found the human waste wrapped in newspaper and rags in his parking lot at 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 16. He immediately checked the tapes from his surveillance cameras and found that a man pulled into a parking stall about an hour earlier in broad daylight. "I noticed that he goes to the bathroom in the rags and newspaper in his car, and then when he's done, he throws it at us and pulls away," Abballe said.
For Abballe, an Elmont resident, the incident was the topper among a lengthy list of various acts of vandalism and thefts committed on his restaurant property since he opened for business more than 18 months ago. Just in the past month alone, there was the feces-dumping incident, a car accident involving teens fleeing from his parking lot and others stealing plants and pots from his patio.
About three weeks ago, one of his drivers returned from a delivery at about 10:45 p.m., only to find a group of teens hanging out and drinking in Cinelli's lot. When the delivery car pulled in, the boys got in their vehicles to flee, tossed their beer cans out of their cars and one of the teens reversed his car into the delivery car totaling it, Abballe said.
"... I got the kids information, and he's crying he doesn't want his mother to find out," Abballe said. " ... The point is, they're coming onto private property after hours, and they're crashing into my bread and butter. So now I have a car out for two weeks, and I have to have my guy making deliveries in his pickup truck, which is exactly what we try not to do. We're proud of our vehicles."
Then, on Oct. 11, at about 3:45 a.m., Abballe's surveillance cameras captured some adults stealing about $600 worth of flowers, plants and pots that he had purchased two weeks earlier to decorate his restaurant's outdoor patio.
"I would have to assume these were neighbors, because they knew exactly what to take, the most expensive bushes and high-end pots, and knew to leave the cheaper mums and pots," Abballe said.
Abballe estimates that these and other incidents from last year ‹ including a drive-by BB-gun shooting that took out a delivery man's personal car window, a group of kids egging one of his delivery cars on Halloween and someone stealing custom-made signs from the top of his taxicab yellow cars ‹ have cost him as much as $6,000.
What concerns him is that all the other prior incidents involved kids, but now adults were among the culprits.
"The community is obviously not embracing us," said Abballe, whose family owns some 12 Cinelli¹s restaurants from Franklin Square and Williston Park to North Carolina.
When asked if he or any of his employees have had any prior run-ins with customers who may be exacting revenge against his business, Abballe said no, and chalks all the incidents up as random acts. In part, he believes his business may be targeted because it is a new building on a busy intersection and near Oceanside High School.
The Herald asked the owner of the recently reopened Farmer Joel's, a deli, produce and grocery store at the northeast corner of the same intersection, if he has experienced any vandalism or other criminal incidents. "No," he said, "and I hope they don't start now."
Abballe's calls to police did lead to two arrests in the BB-gun shooting incident from last year, but the faces of the thieves who swiped his plants and the license plate number of the motorist who dumped his waste in his parking lot were not picked up or blurred on his surveillance cameras.
Officers from the 4th Precinct's Problem Oriented Police unit were unavailable to speak to the Herald, but Abballe said that they have vowed to take some specific measures concerning his restaurant.
"The police said now that on some nights they will station a patrol car here," Abballe said, noting that down the block from his restaurant on Davison Avenue, across from the Oceanside Library, is a police booth for patrolling officers.
" ... I'm kind of exhausted now. I mean, how much more complaining can I do? It's like beating a dead horse at this point."
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
