Levy speaks with N. Bellport merchants on community tour

The Suffolk County executive made an unannounced visit to North Bellport Wednesday, boarding a van with local representatives to tour businesses and neighborhoods that are changing - slowly, slowly, much too slowly - for the better.

Last week, the community was rocked, once again, by gunfire, which resulted in five people being shot - none fatally - over two days. There was also a suspicious fire in some local woods.

County Executive Steve Levy did not go to North Bellport in response to the shootings. He went, as he did in May and in June, to talk to leaders who are working to revitalize the community.

"We have been here, the police have been here," Levy said. "The statistics show that crime is down, but that doesn't mean much to people who are hearing gunshots, people who are living with things like that."

One issue, according to the Rev. C.T. Bullock, pastor of the New Bethel First Pentecostal Church, who drove the van, is that there are residents who will not call police.

"Police can't be everywhere, and they especially can't be where people who see or hear something don't call them to be," he said. "That is something we have to change and I understand that it's hard because of gangs and fear, but it has to change."

Two years ago, after Alvin Brothers, 15, was shot to death after an anti-drug rally, Levy joined other elected officials at a local park that catered more to drug dealers than children. At that time, "Snitching" stickers were slapped below the word "Stop" on traffic signs at many intersections.

Wednesday, the stickers were gone.

And the van carrying Levy drove past the park, where the courts and swings and picnic area had been torn down and cleared away.

In a few months, the community - realizing one of the requests made during revitalization meetings a few years ago - will break ground on an expanded recreation area that will have several fields and a skateboard park.

Nearby, some streets have new sidewalks and streetlamps. And not-for-profit organizations, including local churches and Habitat for Humanity, are filling a few long-vacant parcels with new homes, said John Rogers, chairman of The Greater Bellport Coalition.

There are also plans for the community's commercial strip, which for now centers around a tumbledown, gravel-like parking lot edged with almost as many closed or never-opened businesses as open ones. It's supposed to be expanded, by almost a half mile, and transformed into a true downtown.

Levy - accompanied by two pastors, chairman of the local revitalization committee and the head of the local precinct - visited almost every open store at the existing site. Where, to his immense pleasure, workers and owners alike reported that an increased police presence had made them and their customers feel safer.

"Are you seeing any rowdies, any of the criminal element?," he asked Anthony Montenegro, the owner of a local pawn shop who was visiting a mobile telephone store in the strip.

"No," Montenegro said, "Not at all."

"That means security and that's a good thing," Levy said.

From there it was on to Holla Dollar and Variety Store, a barber shop and Hermanos Martinez grocery, where Mitchell Friedenthal, who works for Pride, a general merchandise vendor, was checking the company's products on the shelves.

"This is a great store, a great area and we do a great business here," he said. "I'm not afraid to come anymore. There used to be a lot of people hanging out front, but not anymore."

At a 24-hour convenience store across the street (which had seven surveillance cameras inside, and several more facing the parking lot outside), Levy did hear a few complaints.

About loitering. And from a resident, Annette Cummins, who said that police were sometimes overzealous in dealing with some neighborhood residents.

After more than an hour, Levy was back in the parking lot of Victory Church of God, where the tour had started. He'd seen much of the community. And most of the 70 privately owned houses - which sit, block by block, beside rental housing and well-attended owner-occupied ones - boarded up by absentee owners.

"The meeting served its purpose," said the Rev. Anthony Seaton, Victory's pastor. "He's met with us before and he is going to meet with us again, but he's seeing things from our point of view, and that's good."

Levy said the tour made it clear that an increased police presence alone won't speed community change. "It's not going to be one thing, it's going to have to be many things, many people, many parts of government, continuing to work together," he said.