By Joseph Kellard
The flash point for trouble in recent months has been La Mansion nightclub, at 3942 Long Beach Road in Island Park, said Lt. Larry Feffer, adding that police patrol cars in Island Park have a "strong and visible presence. However, you just can't be every place at every moment of the day and night."
In October, a Long Beach man was arrested after firing a .357 Magnum at a man coming out of the nightclub, then called Club Heat, and chasing him across the Island Vendors parking lot as he fled to the Long Beach Motor Inn on Austin Boulevard.
On April 3, Tafare Berryman, 22, a senior varsity basketball player at LIU-C.W. Post, was shot and killed on Long Beach Road in Oceanside after hundreds of people barreled out of La Mansion and rioted in the same parking lot.
Calls to La Mansion for comment were not returned.
Police said that in the fighting that took place in the parking lot, bottles were broken and gunshots were fired. During the melee, Aaron Daly, 19, Berryman's friend, was stabbed in the forehead with a broken bottle by an unknown assailant, after which he got into his car with Berryman to drive back to C.W. Post. Daly pulled over at the intersection of Henrietta Avenue in Oceanside, and a car pulled up to them and fired shots that killed Berryman.
Asked further about the whereabouts of police during such a violent episode, Feffer said, "First of all, the incident occurred at 5 in the morning. You can't be every place at once. Because a lot of people are coming out of a nightclub or hanging around at 5 in the morning doesn't mean we are going to be right there."
Berryman and Daly were attending a party together at La Mansion that they had learned about from fliers handed out at a fashion show on the C.W. Post campus. As a result, hundreds of students showed up at the nightclub.
Feffer said that part of the problem in this incident was that the owner of the club had contracts with promoters who were bringing in people who live outside the area.
Police stressed that they would be stepping up efforts to curtail non-violent incidents as well. As the summer approaches and increased numbers of motorists travel through and around Oceanside and Island Park, heading to the beach by day or the restaurants and bars by night, police will increase their patrols of certain areas.
Once Memorial Day hits, the Fourth Precinct assigns a unit to monitor clubs and eateries. The beat includes one of the rare foot patrols in the Fourth Precinct, as officers stand outside where they station their cars - usually by Montego Bay restaurant - on busy nights, and motor patrols are deployed to circle the area as well.
Their assignment is to keep the peace in the surrounding neighborhoods and ensure the safety and security of the patrons of these establishments. "We're inspecting all the restaurants and bars, and keeping a watch on the streets to ensure it's peaceful," said Feffer.
He added that some patrons who barrel out onto the streets "are loud and boisterous, relieve themselves of their biological callings" and often fight, and that the police are there to maintain order.
The motor patrols are mainly used to look for drunk drivers who find their way onto Austin Boulevard in Island Park and Long Beach Road in Oceanside. Feffer said that police have "a lot of extra units" in the area out looking for drunk drivers, "and we make many DWI arrests."
Motor patrols also look out for parking violations, with hundreds of cars crowding area streets. "When we observe parking violations, we ticket the cars," Feffer said, "and the Town of Hempstead has established a tow zone in that area, and they have a concessionaire who, after cars are ticketed, can tow away illegally parked cars."
If a car is ticketed, the owner must go to the town to get a release for it, then to the towing agency, where they pay a towing fee. "And then you still have the ticket to pay, so it's a pretty arduous process," Feffer said.
All of these issues have long been sources of complaints among residents of the Yacht Club condominium complex adjacent to Pettit Place. In years past, parking was allowed on both sides of Pettit, but then the law was changed so that parking was permitted only up until 8 p.m.
"What happened was, people would go there and not realize they could park there only until 8 p.m., stay later, and when they came out their cars were ticketed and towed," Feffer said. "To alleviate the confusion, the town changed the parking restrictions on some of the locations to no parking any time."
While Feffer declined to say how many police generally patrol Oceanside and Island Park, he explained that officers have their assigned areas, and that this works in two ways. "If additional units are necessary and we assign them from other areas of the precinct," he said, "we can go beyond the precinct to the First Precinct, to assign cars to Oceanside or Island Park if necessary."
Comments about this story? Dmiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
