Town of Islip hosts seminar on gangs, drugs

Images of Suffolk County teens flashed on a screen in the Connetquot High School auditorium Wednesday night: groups of kids dressed all in blue or red, flashing hand signs and bearing tattoos.

They are the faces of Long Island gangs.

"If your child has a new group of friends and they are all wearing the same color clothing," then they might be part of a gang, Suffolk Police Sgt. David Dougherty warned about 100 parents in the audience.

The seminar on gangs and drugs, organized by the Town of Islip, comes as town residents - particularly in Brentwood and Central Islip - have rallied to fight escalating gang violence in their communities.

After a succession of shootings and killings earlier this year, residents began to speak out in public forums, demanding more police, a crackdown on graffiti and better resources for after-school programs.

Since then, Islip Town, Suffolk County and local civic groups have initiated a range of anti-graffiti programs. And more than a thousand people took to the streets on May 27 for a peace march through Brentwood and Central Islip.

"The gang situation is very bad," said Wunmi Green-Wright, a Central Islip resident and retired correction officer, who brought her three boys, ages 10, 11 and 13. "I wanted them to hear it from someone else as well. This is information they need to get out to every community."

Among the speakers Wednesday night were a special agent from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, who listed a heartbreaking series of armed robberies and fatal car crashes related to drugs; and the parents of Natalie Ciappa, 18, who died of a heroin overdose in 2008.

Long Island law enforcement officials have intensified their anti-heroin efforts since the death of Ciappa, of Plainedge, whose overdose death brought attention to a problem touching nearly every community on the Island.

"Download parenting software," said Doreen Ciappa, Natalie's mother, who urged parents to disregard their child's privacy. "Search their car. Search their clothes," she said.