Huntington houseboat deaths renew police staffing debate

Standing on the shore of Huntington Harbor on a blustery night in March, Josephine Grotle watched her boyfriend row a dinghy through the choppy water to a houseboat just offshore.

The three people on the houseboat, one a close friend, had not responded to shouts from shore, and she was beginning to panic. The boat's windows were black, though a single speck of light, perhaps a candle, was visible inside.

Grotle looked across the water as her boyfriend pointed a flashlight into the houseboat. Then she heard his scream pierce the wind. And as she began dialing 911, she heard his voice again: "Oh my God!' "

It was 8:53 p.m. Seven minutes later, police on the scene called dispatchers: "It's inaccessible. They are out in the water. We need FD [fire department] to respond forthwith with boats, we need Marine Bureau also."

In the harbor just a few hundred yards away sat one of two Suffolk Police Marine Bureau vessels stationed on the North Shore. It was equipped with medical supplies, but it was unstaffed. So two officers cut loose a dinghy and rowed to the houseboat, where they began CPR on the three people who had been overcome by carbon monoxide from a gasoline-powered generator.

"I kept telling them that they need boats," Grotle said of her conversation with a 911 operator. "They need boats that are on the water. And no rescue boat ever showed up."

By 9:27 p.m., all three victims were at Huntington Hospital, about a mile away, where they would be pronounced dead.

With the summer boating season under way, the deaths have renewed debate about staffing at the Marine Bureau dating back to 2002, and further fueled a dispute between County Executive Steve Levy and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association over more recent staffing reductions.

The houseboat deaths, the union says, are evidence that the pruning of personnel can prove lethal. The administration counters that any attempt to link the deaths to the idle rescue boat is "false" and "highly speculative."

"Using the tragic deaths of three people to try to secure more overtime is simply reprehensible," said Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, to whom Levy referred questions. Dormer has been asked to appear before the legislature's public safety committee Thursday about the controversy, first reported last month in The New York Times.

Bureau staffing questioned

This isn't the first time bureau staffing has come under scrutiny. In 2002, before Levy was executive, then-Police Commissioner John Gallagher linked deficient numbers to a delayed response to a drowning.

In that case, the bureau failed to launch a boat until 31 minutes after a man fell into the Great South Bay in April and drowned. Only one of the bureau's 83 officers was on duty at the time.

After that death, staffing was boosted. At Timber Point, where two South Shore rescue vessels dock, the minimum number of officers on duty was increased from one to three from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. The Suffolk Legislature also authorized the $125,000 purchase of a rough weather rescue boat.

"We are an island community and the residents of this county and those visiting deserve to have the protection," Suffolk treasurer Angie Carpenter, who backed the changes, said Friday. "It's that simple." Carpenter, a legislator representing West Islip at the time, said she was unfamiliar with the houseboat case and had no comment.

Noel DiGerolamo, police union second vice president, said he could not give precise staffing figures at Timber Point now, but that under Dormer staffing minimums are a thing of the past. "What I can tell you is that the commissioner has made it clear on numerous occasions that commanding officers have the discretion to go as low as they want," DiGerolamo said. "The only requirement would be a self-imposed one."

Dormer defended the police staffing. "While the union has continuously tried to say that there is less staff and that other major crimes have increased, the truth is that we have fewer officers on the payroll and far more on sector patrol than four years ago," Dormer said.

There was a small craft advisory the night of the houseboat deaths, and the union contract puts the minimum staffing on a bureau vessel at three officers during such advisories. Rather than meet the requirement, the union says, the administration has let vessels sit idle. Records show the Huntington Harbor vessel was staffed 22 percent of the time last winter, compared with 56 percent in the winter of 2003-04, when Levy took office.

"I saw more of the police boats in the late '90s into the early 2000s," said Jon Ten Haagen, past commodore of the Greater Huntington Council of Yacht & Boating Clubs. "But in the last several years, we've not seen a heck of a lot of them."

Cooper, Dormer at odds

Legis. Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) said instead of authorizing needed overtime and officer hiring, the administration has frequently shut down boats, shortchanging taxpayers who expect a higher level of enforcement.

Cooper said he was told two of the victims were still alive when they were brought ashore and "could have been saved had it not been for the county executive's shortsighted failure to maintain adequate police staffing."

Dormer said there was no evidence the outcome would have been different had the boat been staffed. "It might not have been docked a few hundred yards away and could have been out on patrol many miles from the harbor," he said.

When on patrol, police said, the Huntington Harbor vessel covers an area from the Nassau County border to Nissequogue, roughly 17 miles, and halfway across Long Island Sound, about 2.5 miles.

Don Franklin of Lake Ronkonkoma, brother of one of the victims, acknowledges it's impossible to know whether the three would have survived had the marine vessel in the harbor been staffed. But he said when he got to the hospital that night, he was told his brother had a "pulse or heartbeat" when he arrived. He thinks the rescue boat might have been his only chance.

"It's like having a car wreck on a street corner and having an ambulance 500 feet away," he said, "and not being able to use the thing."

With Bill Bleyer, Rick Brand and Chau Lam

The night in question

Following is a timeline of the events of March 23, when three people died after being overcome by carbon monoxide aboard a houseboat on Huntington Harbor. It is based on a witness account, local first responders, county documents and tapes of police radio transmissions, along with the police department and police union officials:

8:53 p.m. From shore, witness Josephine Grotle calls 911. Juan Torres, 43, and a married couple, Patrick and Susan Franklin, ages 45 and 44, are on the boat, unconscious.

8:58 p.m. Suffolk police arrive at the shore.

9 p.m. Suffolk police officers say they can't get to the boat. One relays: "It's inaccessible. They are out in the water. We need FD to respond forthwith with boats, we need Marine Bureau, also."

9:01 p.m. A dispatcher asks the nearest Marine Bureau officers, about 25 miles away in Port Jefferson, to respond. There are three officers in Port Jefferson, home to the second bureau rescue vessel on the North Shore. They begin driving to Huntington Harbor. Their estimated time of arrival is 35 minutes.

9:04 p.m. Personnel from the Huntington Fire Department arrive at the shore with an inflatable motorboat on a trailer.

9:08 p.m. Two patrol officers are on the houseboat performing CPR. They had cut a dinghy loose and rowed about 200 feet to the houseboat.

9:14 p.m. By now, a fire department inflatable is in the water to ferry the three victims ashore.

9:22 p.m. The marine bureau officers driving from Port Jefferson are told to slow their response. The victims already have been taken from the houseboat.

9:24 to 9:27 p.m. All three victims arrive at Huntington Hospital, where they would be pronounced dead.

9:47 p.m. The marine officers coming from Port Jefferson arrive at Huntington Harbor and board the bureau vessel.

10 p.m. The marine officers treat the two patrol officers with oxygen aboard the houseboat.