By JOSEPH KELLARD
That's what some parents who go to Shell Creek Park in Island Park with their children told Hempstead Town Councilman Anthony Santino at a town hall meeting earlier this year. These are the doing of teenage boys who, these parents seem assured, live in Long Beach, not Island Park.
Shell Creek is a general fund park only for residents of Hempstead township, which thereby restricts Long Beach residents from using it.
"It's a great park to bring your children," said Teresa McSpedon, who has children ages 3, 5, 8 and 12, "but what we [parents] have found is that the park wasn't being monitored properly by the people working there ... There's a lot of cursing -- really bad cursing -- going on at the basketball courts. Because of the bad language, I couldn't stay there with my young kids."
Pam Gaynor, whose four children are at the park virtually every day during the warmer months, said that while at Shell Creek her son's friend had a knife pulled on him, and another child had his scooter stolen.
"It really got to be a safety issue last year," Gaynor told the Herald. Gaynor is president of the Island Park Little League, which plays its games at Shell Creek. "I had kids playing in the park after the game who were getting scared by [the way other kids in the park were acting]."
During the afternoon the park is "OK," Gaynor said, but once night falls the teens come from out of town, and that's when the problems occur. "The fire department plays softball games in the park that sometimes go until 11 p.m., and you walk by the playground and see the teens hanging out there and you smell pot and you know what they're doing," said Gaynor, whose children range in age from 11 to 15. "And you ask the park people to do something, and you hear, 'I'm here by myself, there's nothing I can do.'"
When residents such as McSpedon and Gaynor voiced these complaints at the town hall meeting in February, claiming the park's workers give little or no assistance to correct these problems, Santino said changes would be made. Residents suggested that park users be required to show ID to use not just the tennis courts, but also the basketball and handball courts, and that there should be a time limit to their use.
Ed Sieban, executive assistant to the Town of Hempstead board, told the Herald last week that the park will enforce one-hour sign-ups for the basketball courts that require proof of residency.
"Whether it's a library card, a driver's license or whatever ID, they will have to show they are residents of the Town of Hempstead, not Long Beach residents," Sieban said.
Regarding the claim that workers at the park aren't doing enough to address parents' complaints about unruly or unlawful park users, Sieban said that the deputy commissioner of the Parks Department, Bruce Halber, attended the February meeting and "took all the residents' comments, and they will be addressed and corrections will be made accordingly before the season starts."
Asked what plans the Fourth Precinct has for the park, Lt. Larry Feffer, who attended the town meeting, told the Herald, "As the weather gets warmer, [police] are going to do more intensive patrolling of that area to address any problems that may arise."
Feffer said police plan to patrol the park on foot, as part of the department's Park Walk & Talk program, "to find out any complaints from the park personnel to see what feedback we can get."
As the parks and local night clubs become more populated during the summer months, and knowing safety is a prime concern of residents, Feffer said, "We will take whatever reasonable procedures are available to us to ensure their safety."
