Better ways to fight gangs in Wyandanch
Brendan Grogan, a Suffolk County anti-gang police officer, talks to residents as he patrols the streets of Wyandanch (Feb. 3, 2012). Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa
New county executives owe it to the voters to rethink the policies of their predecessors, keep the ones that work, adjust those that could work better, and scrap the clunkers. In that spirit, new Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone is right to have backed away from a constitutionally dubious anti-gang strategy for Wyandanch.
There's no question that gangs are a problem there, more than in many other Long Island communities. So former County Executive Steve Levy decided to ask the courts for help. He sought a preliminary injunction to restrict the movements of 37 admitted members of two gangs.
An injunction would have prohibited these young men from associating with each other along a two-mile stretch of Straight Path, the primary road in downtown Wyandanch. If they violated it, they could face contempt of court charges and jail time.
Nobody wants gang members to feel free to hang around and create fear in a business district. And gang activity is starkly incompatible with Wyandanch Rising, a long-term effort to bring new business and residential development to one of the Island's poorest communities.
But the way to disrupt gangs is through more traditional policing, not by running roughshod over their First Amendment rights of association, or other rights, such as due process of law. While similar bans exist in other states, the U.S. Supreme Court has not spoken definitively on this strategy.
Bellone's county attorney, Dennis Cohen, took a fresh look at Suffolk's chances to get the preliminary injunction. He decided that the county would have a tough time meeting the legal standard to get it. That's what he told Bellone, who decided it wouldn't be a useful part of his anti-gang strategy.
That decision is correct. But it won't make gangs go away. Bellone, who pushed hard for Wyandanch Rising as supervisor of Babylon, clearly knows how vital it is to get gangs under control there. Now that he has rejected the court injunction approach, he and his new police commissioner, whoever that turns out to be, must find more constitutionally acceptable ways to make Wyandanch safer.
