Hempstead neighbors fight back at crime

Madelon McCullough threw garbage in the trash bin behind her Terrace Avenue apartment building and found the body of a man who had been shot once in the head.

That was 10 years ago, she said. Today, she walks down the calmer streets of the Hempstead Village neighborhood, saying hello to mothers pushing strollers and young men in baggy clothes.

"I think there is less violence and less drug activity," said McCullough, 35, who lived in the neighborhood at three different times. "It is great to walk outside without fear of . . . getting shot."

McCullough has put her energy into continuing the transformation of her old neighborhood, a six-block area described three years ago by Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice as the most notorious "open-air drug market" on Long Island.

For decades, the area known simply as Terrace was a magnet for drug dealing, gangs, robberies, stabbings and shootings, officials and residents said.

McCullough, who now lives in Baldwin, has formed IAmTerraceAve Inc. to support residents' efforts to make their streets safer. The group hosted its first small event on March 8 at Genesis Barbershop on Main Street and Nichols Court, where eight children got free haircuts.

"I am just a little person trying to make a big difference," McCullough said.

Change started in the blighted neighborhood in 2008 when Rice, Hempstead Village Mayor Wayne Hall and neighborhood activists launched the Terrace-Bedell Initiative. The crime-reduction plan combined zero-tolerance law enforcement and social service assistance. Under the initiative, the neighborhood saw an 80 percent reduction in crime since 2007, according to the district attorney's office.

"We set out to do something that nobody has ever been able to do for this neighborhood," Rice said last week. "While it's far from mission complete, we've made lasting progress."

But Terrace resident Charles Johnston, 60, said crime is picking up again with an increase in gang activity and drug dealing.

"I don't really see how it is getting better," said Johnston, a member of the community organization Helping End Violence Now Coalition. "I see it as getting worse."

McCullough acknowledges the challenges, saying, "Sometimes it seems like there is a black cloud over this block."

She plans to create a documentary about the Terrace and Bedell corner -- the heart of the neighborhood -- with the help of Hempstead videographer Earl Holder and other volunteers. It's an effort to counter the portrayal of the neighborhood in ABC's "Primetime" special from August 2008 that showed, among other things, a drug deal taking place with a toddler watching.

"People fail to realize that everyone and everything changes," McCullogh said. "We must forgive and move on."