DA investigating guns at polling site

The Nassau County district attorney is investigating an Election Day incident in which a Long Beach detective held up a pellet rifle and a disabled shotgun outside the polling place at City Hall, prompting a complaint of attempted voter intimidation.

Ruth Bernstein, a local Democratic lawyer who was monitoring the polling site for the party in the early evening last Tuesday, said she considered the appearance of Det. Sgt. Howard Domitz, holding a long gun in each hand, an "intimidation" effort aimed at driving away minority voters.

"The guns were clearly a huge political intimidation of people coming in to vote in this heavily minority area of North Park," said Bernstein, who filed a complaint with District Attorney Kathleen Rice's office.

DA spokesman Chris Munzing declined to give details of the investigation, other than to say it follows a complaint filed by a city resident.

City Manager Charles Theofan, part of the city's Republican-led administration, said the firearms display had nothing to with politics. He said Domitz and another officer were working in the police property room organizing evidence seized on Nov. 7 in a loan sharking and marijuana sales investigation, and the long guns were in their way. Domitz brought them out to ask chief of detectives Lt. James Canner what to do with them.

"It was probably not a good idea to do that on a busy day with people around," Theofan said. "But he only briefly brought these nonfunctioning replicas out to ask what to do with them."

Told of the city's explanation, Bernstein said she did not believe that the guns "just happened to be brandished, and waved around right outside a polling place on Election Day in the regular course of police business."

Canner said in a memo to Theofan that the weapons "were outside in public view for less than two minutes," before Domitz and another detective sergeant returned to the property room, which is located in City Hall. "No one was reprimanded because this is the course of normal business around a Police station," Canner said in the memo. "No one did anything wrong."

Neither Canner nor Domitz could not be reached for comment.

Thomas Sofield Jr., the Republican City Council president, said Newsday's call to him Wednesday was the first he had heard of the incident.

"But if the police said they were just doing their job, then I believe them," he said. Sofield, the son of acting Long Beach Police Commissioner Thomas Sofield, lost his bid for re-election last week.

Democrats, who had led this 35,000-person city for 30 years and have a more than 2-1 majority over Republicans among registered voters, lost control in 2003, won it back in 2005 and then lost again to the GOP in 2007. The GOP now has a 3-2 majority on the City Council; come January, Democrats will have a 4-1 margin.