Angry at break-ins and a fatal shooting, Flanders and Riverside residents demand more police

Flanders and Riverside residents are calling for more police patrols after a spate of more than 70 vehicle break-ins, a fatal shooting and a home invasion in the past three months.

Residents plan to pack a Southampton Town Board meeting Tuesday at 6 p.m. in Town Hall to press officials to dedicate more officers to the area.

"All of us are very proud of the police," said Ron Fisher, president of the Bayview Pines Civic Association in Flanders. "They're very diligent and they do a good job when they come. The problem is there's not enough of them."

More than 70 vehicles were broken into throughout the area over the past three months, Southampton Town Police Lt. Susan Ralph said.

Police arrested Anthony Jenkins, 50, of Riverside, on Saturday and charged him in four cases, but are continuing to investigate, Ralph said.

"We have two dedicated units up in the Flanders area," she said. "We are directing our community response unit up there. Would we like to direct more? Absolutely. But currently we are directing staff up there."

Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said at a Nov. 10 town board meeting that police are "very aware of it" and "have all hands on deck" in Flanders and Riverside.

Flanders and Riverside are pockets of middle-class and economically distressed neighborhoods at the edge of affluent Southampton Town. Residents have complained for years that town officials neglect their communities.

Southampton Town officials and Plainview developer Renaissance Downtowns LLC are planning a revitalization project in Riverside designed to attract developers to the community. Fisher said he supports the project, but the recent criminal activity calls for more immediate attention.

On Nov. 17, Thomas Lacolla, 27, of Riverhead, was shot to death in a 2005 Mercedes-Benz on Old Quogue Road in Flanders, police said. On Nov. 10, three men burst into a Flanders home brandishing a handgun, shotgun and box cutter while the homeowner was home and stole $1,000. Roy Jones Jr., 28, of Shirley, and Charles M. Schruggs, 27, of Riverhead, were arrested Nov. 17 and charged in that home invasion, police said.

Matthew Deerkowski, 25, of Flanders, said someone broke into his two unlocked trucks in early October and stole a sweatshirt and sneakers but did not take a cellphone, an ambulance radio and a GPS unit. A month later, he said, someone set the car alarm off twice on his mother's car.

Susan Tocci, 47, said five of her relatives had their vehicles broken into this fall.

Tocci said she and her family and friends organized a neighborhood watch in October and the group patrolled the streets in vehicles or on foot every night for three weeks. She said they encountered other watch groups, some brandishing baseball bats.

She said her group did encounter plainclothes police officers patrolling the neighborhood. "They are very, very helpful," Tocci said. "They want to do their job. They can't do their job because they don't have the resources."