County jail draws Latino gang members to Riverhead, which is MS-13 ‘base’: Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa

Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa says the county jail as a major reason why  Latino gangs have put down roots in Riverhead.

“There are some 300 gangbangers mixed into the inmate population,” Sliwa told RiverheadLOCAL last week, responding to Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller saying Sliwa was wrong about Riverhead being “a conduit for the gangs all throughout the East End.”

Riverhead, he said, is “where many of the Hispanic gangbangers congregate when they visit their homies in jail. While there, they will visit local gang members who live in town. They’ll stop at the restaurants and the bars that are the gangs haunts. On the visit they’ll conduct side business … that will involve weapons and drugs.”

Sliwa noted that recently there was a shooting in downtown Riverhead involving MS-13.

“Riverhead is the conduit for them to head out on 25 or 24 back to Brentwood, Central Islip, Wyandanch, Amityville and Huntington Station. Others will go east to Southhold and Greenport. They travel east to west and meet with their sets,” he said, explaining, “A set is a subsidiary of the parent gang.

“They are highly organized and run almost as para-military organizations. So a gang like MS-13 that has its third largest presence in Suffolk County will traffic through the hub for 25 and 24 but won’t have a base in Riverhead itself?” he asked. “That defies logic,” Sliwa said.

“More importantly, the gang task forces that were put up in Suffolk as far back as 2007 have done MS-13 contact-tracing to Riverhead itself,” he said.

For officials to claim that Riverhead doesn’t have “serious gang activity,” Sliwa said, they are either “not telling the truth or are in denial.” Sliwa has said that officials in Greenport and in Southold Town, where there was recently a gang-related shooting and machete attack, are “in denial.”

Walter said he bristled at Sliwa’s recent comment that Riverhead is “the epicenter” of gang activity on the East End. He said he spoke with friends who are corrections officers at the county jail in Riverside who told him that, on a scale of one to 10, Riverhead gang violence is a five.

Gang activity in Riverhead is “pretty much average in Suffolk,” Walter said. “It’s emanating from western Suffolk and spreading east. We’ve been on top of that curve for a long time.” Riverhead has the Council for Unity program in the high school and a gang awareness program in the middle school. Council for Unity also operates inside the jail.

The jail releases people to the road outside its entrance — a short walk from the Main Street business district.

“That’s a problem for Riverhead,” Walter said.

Riverhead would welcome the Guardian Angels establishing a patrol here “with open arms,” Walter said in an interview yesterday.

The supervisor, who also serves as Riverhead police commissioner, said he and the police chief would like to go into the city to meet with Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa to discuss what the group can do to help Riverhead combat gangs. Hegermiller told RiverheadLOCAL in an interview last week he’d welcome the group here as “more eyes and ears on the street.”

“We’re doing everything we possibly can,” Walter said. “I will not let our police force go below 84 or 85 [its current level] and we’re hiring six new cops to replace officers who are retiring. But there’s still only so many officers and I need eyes on the street,” he said.

“I need to reach out to the Hispanic community. I’m not the president or congress. I’m not asking immigration questions. I have my opinions but they are irrelevant to what I have to do as supervisor.

“I need to be able to protect them from gangs, from crimes and from outside forces,” Walter said, referring to the sometimes brutal attacks on Hispanic males who were beaten and robbed on the streets of downtown Riverhead in the last year.

“I think Curtis can help us.”

The Guardian Angels conducted their first patrol in Greenport this weekend.

“I would be more than happy, at no cost to the taxpayer, to visit the officials in Riverhead and share our information with them,” Sliwa said.

Walter said he looks forward to meeting with Sliwa, though he’d prefer to do so in Manhattan — in part because of the Guardian Angel’s “celebrity,” he said.

“I want to see how he functions and what his operation is like,” Walter said.

Top photo caption: Inmate makes Ms-13 hand sign. (Photo courtesy of Guardian Angels)