Downtown businesses say ‘no’ to Guardian Angels, but owners near LIRR station say they’d welcome patrols

Downtown businesses are taking a public stand against the Guardian Angels coming to Riverhead, arguing that their presence will create the perception of  a crime problem in downtown Riverhead just as Main Street is finally coming alive again.

“We’ve tried to change the perception of Riverhead, which has always been bad,” said Ray Pickersgill, Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association president and owner of Robert James Salon on East Main Street. “And I honestly, truly believe that, in the last six years, we have succeeded.

“People aren’t afraid to come downtown anymore,” he added. “I have a lot of ladies that come to my salon, and it’s dark at night. But they come to my salon and they’re not afraid.”

In a unanimous vote last night, the BID board decided to publicly oppose the Guardian Angels patrolling downtown Riverhead.

“I don’t think they’re going to be here at a time that you need them,” said Bill Allan, owner of Minuteman Press on East Main Street. “You don’t want them during the day, when your customers are coming in. You don’t want customers seeing that.”

But Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa in an interview this morning said the patrols will be focused on the area surrounding the Riverhead train station and Railroad Avenue, north of Main Street, and will have a presence at night, not during the day.

“No one has ever heard me say we’re going to be on Main Street,” Sliwa said. “We’re focused on an area that everyone we’ve spoken to there — immigrants, business owners, everyone — has said, ‘Yes, you’re needed here.’”

Railroad Avenue-area business owners agree.

“It’s very bad here, especially at night,” said one store owner. “People don’t feel safe. I don’t feel safe. Women waiting alone for the train say they don’t feel safe waiting outside – I let them come in and wait in my store.”

She says the problem is in the beggars, sex offenders and drug activity “that happens on this street every day.”

“People get out of jail and they come straight here,” she said. “I had one man harassing me so badly, I called the police – the man was out of jail and back outside of my store the next day,” she said. Police respond very quickly, she said. “They’ve been great. But it doesn’t seem to do any good. I’ve lost all hope,” she added.

“I’m just a business owner, trying to make a living. If I’d known Riverhead was like this, I wouldn’t have opened a business here. But now I’m stuck,” she said, referring to her long-term lease with 15 years left on its term.

The shopkeeper says she hopes the Guardian Angels will make a difference, but that there are “too many bad people” for one organization to handle. “But it’s better than doing nothing,” she added.

Frank Sessa, whose family owns the Birchwood of Polish Town on Pulaski Street, echoed that sentiment. “If the Guardian Angels can help in any way, shape or form, then I welcome them,” he said today. “We have a thing where we walk women to their cars when it’s late at night. We want them to feel safe.”

As a former New York City Housing Authority cop, Sessa said he knows from his own experience that the Guardian Angels “made people feel more secure.”

“They were never afraid to go where the most crime was,” he said. “They deterred crime, just by their presence. People knew if they did something wrong, the Guardian Angels would call the police with detailed descriptions of them.”

A woman walking on Railroad Avenue with two small children this afternoon also thought the Guardian Angels could be a positive change for the troubled area. “I live on Roanoke Avenue, and I feel safe over there,” she said. “Not so much over here.”

Sliwa hopes the Guardian Angels will put people at ease on Railroad Avenue. He bristles at the BIDMA’s suggestion that the Guardian Angels would have a negative effect on the community’s reputation.

“I challenge anyone to find one community  — just one — where, in our 36 years of patrols, we’ve had a negative effect like that, where there’s been businesses boarding up and leaving town,” Sliwa said.

He added that business owners in Greenport had the same fears before the angels began their first round of patrols years ago, but he met with them and put those fears to rest. “We were able to eradicate a drug problem that was damaging the village at the time,” he said.

For several months, Sliwa has been in talks with town officials to bring the Guardian Angels to Riverhead. Though both the town supervisor and police chief recently signed off on their patrols, which are set to begin this month, some business owners and Riverhead police officers have spoken out against their arrival.

“The angels are coming here for [Hispanic] gangs, and they’re just doing it upside-down,” said John Mantzopoulos, a downtown restaurant owner who was also a Guardian Angel in New York City in the ’80s. “Hispanics are actually the victims here.”

Mantzopoulos is referring to a series of muggings and attacks on Hispanic men last year, which have left victims with fractured skulls and other serious injuries.

The Guardian Angels patrols, which will begin right after Memorial Day weekend, Sliwa said, will be targeting the area where most of those muggings took place.

Town Supervisor Sean Walter added in an interview this morning that the Guardian Angels will provide young Hispanic men, who usually immigrate to America without their families so they can work low-wage jobs, with an alternative to joining criminal gangs.

“There’s a void in the 20- to 30-somethings in our Hispanic community who don’t have families, they don’t have wives, they don’t have that social support group,” he said. “And that void can easily get filled with gangs. You see it happening in other towns, and it will happen here.”

While those men might turn to criminal gangs for protection in the wake of the violence against their community, the Guardian Angels would provide them with an alternative support system, he says.

“If the void needs to be filled with a gang, I’d rather it be filled with a positive gang,” he said. “And that’s what the Guardians Angels are, in a way.”

He added that they are more of a “neighborhood watch” organization than any kind of real law enforcement.

“It’s a tool,” he said. “They gather information, and they’ll have a good, working relationship with our police department, so they’ll give that information to their contacts.” Riverhead Police has appointed one of its sergeants as a liaison to the group for that purpose.

“There’s not one single person that has given me a way to do a dramatic outreach effort to the Hispanic community,” Walter said. “The Hispanic community, with their immigration status or the country that they come from, they are afraid of the police. This is a great way to protect them, and get them involved helping them and helping us. I think it’s worth a try.”