After string of violent muggings targeting Hispanics, Riverhead will reconstitute its anti-bias task force

In response to the violent muggings of Hispanic men in Riverhead over the past year, the town is looking to reinvigorate its anti-bias task force — a committee established in the early 1990s that has been inactive for the past several years.

Members of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission and members of the anti-bias task forces in Southold and Southampton attended yesterday’s town board work session to discuss bringing the Riverhead task force back to life.

“All town anti-bias task forces except Smithtown’s and Southampton’s, have gone into ‘sleep mode’ since first being established,” in the early 1990s, Rabbi Dr. Steven Moss, chairperson of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission, told the town board yesterday.

Riverhead anti-bias task force member Louise Wilkinson, who attended yesterday’s meeting, said afterward the town group had not met in about three years.

According to the town website, Wilkinson is one of eight members of the Riverhead anti-bias task force. The town board liaison to the task force is Councilman John Dunleavy. Supervisor Sean Walter asked Dunleavy to “spearhead” getting the task force active again.

The current “dormant” state of the Riverhead task force has been the status quo for quite some time, according to officials.

Town board meeting minutes show the board was discussing “reinvigorating” the task force more than a decade ago, a task undertaken by former councilman Jim Lull in 2003.

Most of the current task force members, as well as liaison Dunleavy, have been members since at least July 2009, according to town board meeting minutes of July 21, 2009, when former supervisor Phil Cardinale honored an outgoing member, the Rev. Led Baxter, then pastor of Old Steeple Church in Aquebogue.

“I don’t think we’ve paid attention to it over the years,” Cardinale said at that meeting.

“People weren’t showing up for the meetings. It would be just me and Gwen Branch, so after a while, we just stopped,” Wilkinson said yesterday.

As Moss noted, that was a common state for anti-bias task forces in most towns in Suffolk County, where reported hate crimes jumped from 39 in 2011 to 117 in 2012 — making Suffolk the county with the most reported hate crimes in the state outside of NYC. Suffolk accounted for one-third of the 331 hate crimes reported statewide by counties outside of NYC.

In response to the 2012 statistics reported by the N.Y. State Division of Criminal Justice Services in November 2013, Suffolk County earlier this year began an effort to reactivate anti-bias task forces in all towns.

“You have to send out a clear message,” Moss told the town board. “We are intolerant of intolerance.”

Moss emphasized that participation in the task force by a cross-section of the community is crucial, as is sending out the message that the task force is not an investigative or law enforcement body. This helps win trust, especially with members of the Hispanic community worried about immigration enforcement.

“We want to stand tall and strong against those who want to fragment us, whatever the motivation,” the rabbi said.

Walter said the town police department has made an effort to communicate to the local Hispanic community that it is an agency that protects all residents, regardless of immigration status.

“We’re not immigration enforcement. We want the hispanic communty to know we’re not asking immigration questions. We are everyone’s police,” Walter said.

He said he has met with Sr. Margaret Smyth of the North Fork Hispanic Apostolate and has “knocked on doors at other Hispanic churches” and left his business card but has not been contacted by others.

“Where are the leaders of the Riverhead Hispanic community?” Walter asked.

“They’re working,” answered Carolyn Peabody, one of the county human rights commission members who attended the Riverhead town board meeting yesterday.

Suffolk County Human Rights Commission member Luis Rodriguez, an attorney, said he would get in touch with local lawyers serving the Hispanic community.

Dunleavy said he’d like to have the initial meeting of a reconstituted task force in September.

Dunleavy, former Juvenile Aid Bureau officer in the Riverhead Town Police Department, said working through the schools to educate kids and their parents should be a focus.

“I don’t think people are born with prejudice,” Dunleavy said. “They get it through social means, at home or from friends.”

The most frequently reported bias motivations for hate crimes against property in N.Y. state in 2012 were anti-Jewish (64.5 percent) and anti-black (13.7 percent), according to the Division of Criminal Justice Services report, which was issued in November 2013.

The most frequently reported bias motivations for hate crimes against persons in N.Y. in 2012 were anti-sexual orientation (26.4 percent), anti-black (25.4 percent) and anti-Jewish (21.9 percent), the report said.

The violent muggings of Hispanic men this year are “crimes of opportunity” and not necessarily motivated by bias, in the opinion of Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller. He told RiverheadLOCAL in April he believes the perpetrators are taking advantage of a population perceived as vulnerable.