By JOSEPH KELLARD
After months of meetings and working out logistics, these residents have officially formed their own Neighborhood Watch program, and recently had signs posted along their streets announcing its arrival.
³It¹s a positive, good step,² said Matthew Scully, a Suffolk Road resident, as Village of Island Park employees Joe DiDomenico and Carlos Rodriguez mounted a sign on a utility pole near his home on May 2.
Scully stood side-by-side with neighbors Michael Santana and his son Michael, Jr., and Rosemary Zezulinski and her son Ian, when Mayor Jim Ruzicka stopped by as the signs went up.
Last fall, these and other villagers presented the program to the mayor, after they endured a summer during which, they said, suspected drug activities were taking place at certain homes on their streets, as well as problems with others loitering. They said much of this activity occurred after a landlord converted some of his homes on their blocks into government-subsidized Section 8 housing for low-income families that are administered by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ruzicka admittedly knew little about the Neighborhood Watch program, but decided to research it.
³We¹re thrilled that something is getting done, and that if there are suspicious households in the neighborhood, that they are going to know that they are going to be reported,² Zezulinski said, after Ruzicka and the village board set up meetings that included her and her fellow residents and police who run the program.
With the guidance of the 4th Precinct police, the Neighborhood Watch program organizes residents to work together to address quality-of-life issues, such as drug activity, vandalism and the presence of suspicious individuals, and to correct these and related problems while preventing crimes in their neighborhoods.
³We wanted to put together a group that would address these problems,² said Santana, who last summer started finding drug paraphernalia around the curb in front of his home.
After meeting with police in February, Zezulinski and Santana worked with at least half of their neighbors to start their own program. Each block is assigned an organizer and block captains. The organizer¹s duty is to keep in touch with the precinct¹s Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) unit, providing its officers with relevant information about the neighborhood. Block captains are in charge of all the other members and relay information on suspicious activities to the organizer, who calls 911 to provide police with information.
³It¹s the beginning of a relationship that we are establishing and we¹re excited about it,² Santana said about the village¹s promise to help start the program on his block.
³The program not only reduces crime,² Ruzicka said, ³it also brings the community together. They have social meetings in which the neighbors talk about problems on their block.²
Zezulinski¹s husband of nearly 20 years grew up in Island Park, and they built their home on Radcliffe together. ³We want to bring back community to this community,² she said, ³and we want everyone to get to know each other and work as a group.²
Ruzicka said that other village residents have expressed interest in starting their own program in their neighborhoods, but they have yet to do so. ³It¹s something that is such a positive thing for the village, and I want to see it expand throughout the village,² the mayor said. ³With the help of this committee, I¹m going to reach out to other neighborhoods and maybe we can bring more people on board.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
