Valley Streamer claims she has been racially harassed

Last summer, when Jetta Kingsberry bought a home tucked away in a quiet Valley Stream neighborhood on Wingate Road, occupied mostly by retirees, she thought it would be a safe and charming place to raise her two daughters.

“We saved our money,” Kingsberry said of herself and her husband, Val, “and decided that after renting an apartment in Queens after 10 years, it was time for us to get a house and let our kids grow up in a better district.” But since they moved in, said Kingsberry, who is Black, her family has endured ongoing racial harassment by her nearby white neighbors.

Because her husband is an electrician who works at all hours, Kingsberry has mostly been at home alone with her daughters, who have faced the brunt of the racist taunts and intimidation. Last fall her older daughter, who Kingsberry said was living in fear, left to live with relatives in Suffolk County.

“I do fear for my kids … it’s been a nightmare,” Kingsberry said.

Some of the tactics her neighbors have used, she said, have verged on the criminal. The tires of her car have been slashed, and the rear windshield has been shattered. Her house has been broken into several times. She first contacted Nassau County police last September, but, she said, officers did not take her complaints seriously, including her request for more police patrols in her neighborhood at night.

One officer, Kingsberry claimed, told her, “That’s the problem with people — you think you can move from New York City and come over here and do what you want to do.” Kingsberry later filed a complaint against the officer, which, she said, is still pending. 

Soon after a home visit from the police, she suspected that one of her neighbors ripped a piece of natural gas piping from her house.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Throughout the night for several months now, Kingsberry said, beginning at around 9:00, cars have pulled up in front of her home, idling their engines and shining their headlights into the house. Others have prowled up and down the street, all in an attempt, she says, to scare away her family.

Video from home surveillance cameras recorded in December showed two cars revving their engines before disappearing from view. The same two cars, Kingsberry claimed, have stalked her house for weeks on end, their occupants often yelling racist slurs at her family.

In January, Kingsberry reached out to Village Clerk James J. Hunter, who advised her to call Code Enforcement. Officials there suggested that she go to public meetings to plead her case, and install surveillance cameras and lights in the yard in order to gather tangible evidence of harassment, Kingsberry said. The village has made modest efforts to help, she said, including ordering a streetlamp for the block to help deter would-be troublemakers.

Frustrated by the lack of a more robust response, Kingsberry has called on other officials to do something. She reached out to the Town of Hempstead, including then 3rd District Councilman Bruce Blakeman, last December, notifying him of her situation, but, she said, nothing has come of it. Blakeman is now Nassau County executive, and calls to his office seeking comment had not been returned at press time.

Her neighbors’ harassment reached a new low, Kingsberry said, when a raccoon was set loose in her backyard in late February, she suspects by her backyard neighbor. That was the breaking point for Kingsberry, who decided to go public with her story, contacting the Herald earlier this month.

She once again emailed her complaints to Hunter, this time notifying him that she had reached out to “the news.”

Last Friday, a day after the Herald asked the Nassau County Police Department to comment on Kingsberry’s claims of harassment, detectives visited her home, she said, at the urgent request of the village clerk and took statements from the family. As of press time, calls to the NCPD seeking comment had not been returned.

To make the community aware of her plight, Kingsberry recently hung a large handwritten sign on the front door of her house — following the lead of Jennifer McLeggan, a single mother who, in 2020, as detailed in the Herald, posted a sign that listed racially motivated harassment allegations against her neighbors at her Valley Stream residence. Kingsberry, however, has since taken down the sign at the insistence of her husband, out of fear of retaliation.

Nevertheless, she said she believes something needs to change. “It’s just horrible…,” Kingsberry said, her voice shaking. “I’ve never had this kind of experience … what did we do to deserve this?”