Southampton Town residents call councilman's drug conviction 'bizarre'

Residents of northwest Southampton Town, who are demanding more police protection from drug dealers and addicts, learned Tuesday that their own town representative was selling prescription painkillers.

Hours after Councilman Bradley Bender pleaded guilty to illegally distributing oxycodone, his neighbors in Flanders, Riverside and Northampton filled the seats at a town board meeting in a previously planned demonstration for more patrols to combat a crime wave.

Bender resigned before the meeting and did not attend.

"It's heartbreaking, bizarre and ironic," said Vince Taldone, who succeeded Bender in 2013 as president of the area's main civic group -- the Flanders, Riverside & Northampton Community Association. "We're all going to Town Hall to demand protection from drug dealers. He would have been sitting up there."

Residents expressed disappointment at Bender's plea, which follows more than 70 vehicle break-ins, a fatal shooting and a home invasion in the area over the past three months.

"The issue in our community is just drugs and prostitution," Susan Tocci, 47, of Flanders, said at the meeting. "Other than that, we have a wonderful community. As we see, drug dealers come in all forms. . . . It's a sad day in Southampton."

Bender's community includes pockets of poverty at the edge of affluent Southampton. His 2013 election was seen as a victory for an area that has grappled with drug-related crime and the perception it was overlooked by representatives from elsewhere in town.

Some expressed frustration that a town official sold drugs while his constituents lived in fear of crime. Ronald Fisher, 32, a Flanders resident who said his younger brother is imprisoned for crimes stemming from addiction, said it's a "relief" the councilman is no longer selling pills.

"To see Councilman Bender in a position of power and respect while my brother is in jail is appalling," said Fisher, president of the Bayview Pines Civic Association in Flanders.

Others spoke of the councilman as an energetic advocate who fell victim to addiction. Bender, 54, of Northampton, a building contractor and avid weightlifter, suffered a shoulder injury in recent years that required surgery and painkillers, though he showed no outward signs of addiction, Taldone said.

"I feel badly because I imagine there is an element of addiction here that has driven him, like so many people, to make really awful choices," Taldone said.

Bender, in remarks Tuesday outside the federal courthouse in Central Islip, asked for patience as he recovers from addiction.

The Independence Party member was part of the town board's three-person Independence-Democratic majority.

Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said the town board would meet Monday to schedule a special election in 60 to 90 days to elect Bender's replacement.

"I just want to assure the public that we will continue to conduct business as we are elected to do," Throne-Holst said at yesterday's meeting.

Southampton Democratic chairman Gordon Herr called Bender's arrest a "tragedy." Democrats, he said, are considering several candidates including Julie Lofstad, a Hampton Bays resident who lost her bid for town board Nov. 3.

Southampton GOP chairman Bill Wright called the arrest "sad" and said Republicans have not thought about the special election. "If he truly does have an addiction problem, we hope he gets the help that he needs," he said.

Throne-Holst also said Tuesday that a newly ratified police schedule would assign six officers to the town police's community response unit, at least some whom would be deployed in mid-January in Flanders, Riverside and Northampton. "We take this matter very, very seriously," she said.

Michael Bruno, a retired New York City sanitation worker who moved from Brooklyn to Flanders in 2000, told town board members: "We appreciate what you just said about extra cars and extra police, and we're going to hold you to it." With Robert E. Kessler