W.H. residents form neighborhood watch

To help reduce and prevent crime in their community, about a dozen West Hempstead residents have joined forces to form a neighborhood watch.

The group, led by Terese Russo Santoro, met with an officer from the 5th Precinct’s Problem Oriented Policing Unit last week at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church to learn about the process and purpose of starting a watch.

“It’s a very basic concept,” said Officer Rita Bopp-Carroll. “It’s just about you sharing information.”

Russo Santoro, who sits on the West Hempstead Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, began exploring the idea of a neighborhood watch last summer, after her 17-year-old son, Noah, was mugged in broad daylight near their West Hempstead home.

“We shouldn’t have to worry about things like that,” said Russo Santoro’s husband, Steven Santoro, who shared his wife’s sentiments that a neighborhood watch could go a long way toward improving safety in the area.

West Hempstead residents do expect a significant drop in crime, now that the notoriously crime-ridden Courtesy Hotel is closed, but a watch will work to further that goal, according to Judith Santiago. “It’s timely and consistent with what we want to do with our neighborhood,” she said, nothing that beautification projects and new developments are taking West Hempstead in a positive direction.

But vacant store fronts still line Hempstead Avenue and Hempstead Turnpike, and graffiti is scrawled across building facades, mailboxes and telephone poles — major concerns for chamber President Karl Reisterer Sr., who encouraged residents to take pictures of new graffiti they see to potentially help cops find the perpetrators. People park at night outside residential homes on quiet and isolated streets, and sit in their cars, engaging in what many suspect is criminal activity: the trash they leave behind is often a testament to that.

“I found a crack pipe the other day,” said 52-year Lakeview resident Helen, who declined to provide her last name. “I usually find baggies and condoms. Cars feel like they can come here and do what they want because the area is wooded.”

Helen lives near the intersection of Eagle Avenue and Woodfield Road on the Lakeview-West Hempstead border — a convenient and appealing location for kids who want privacy or a place to hang out: not only is the area covered with trees, it’s home to railroads tracks. A neighborhood watch all her own, Helen calls the police whenever she sees suspicious activity outside her home. She jots down license plate numbers and car descriptions, and has formed a close relationship with members of the 5th Precinct’s P.O.P. Unit. But her vigilance seems to have little effect.

“This has been going on for 10 years and it doesn’t seem to stop,” she said. “No one seems to want to do anything about it — they’re afraid.”

Even the cops who respond to her calls have little impact, Helen said. Police sirens often scare away the unwanted cars before the patrol car even reaches the scene, and in cases where there is a confrontation, the alleged scofflaws are let off with a warning, according to Helen.

Often, police presence is merely a temporary fix to a problem. Denise Johansen, also a 52-year resident of West Hempstead, calls the cops every few weekends to report loud and unruly parties taking place at two fraternity houses at either end of her block. When the officers show up on Spruce Street, where dozens of cars are parked from one frat house on Hempstead Turnpike to the other on Hempstead Avenue, the students quiet down; when they’re gone, the partying continues, according to Johansen.

“You know there’s underage drinking going on in there,” she told Bopp-Carroll. “And then these kids are getting in their cars and driving drunk. … One day my kid’s going to come home sober and get killed.”

Bopp-Carroll assured Johansen that she would personally take it upon herself to get plainclothes P.O.P. Unit officers in the area the next time a party takes place. She also encouraged Santiago and her husband, Charles Cruse, to call the cops whenever they see people in parked cars throwing trash out their windows — which is often. Santiago and Cruse, who live on Hawthorne Street across from a Hempstead Town sump, have spent many a day picking up trash left behind by unknown people in unfamiliar cars. They’ve reached out to the town for help maintaining the area around the sump.

It’s quality-of-life concerns like these that a neighborhood watch could address, Bopp-Carroll said: if people know they’re being watched, that there’s a network of local residents who will report them, they’re less likely to come into a neighborhood to engage in illegal or suspicious behavior.

“It’s being a nosy neighbor, being a caring neighbor,” Bopp-Carroll said. “Before you put your key in the door, look around.”

The officer took care to explain that a neighborhood watch is not a civilian patrol. “We want you to be the eyes and ears for us,” she said. “Never should you get involved in anything.”

Russo Santoro simplified the concept further. “If you see something, say something,” she said.

When she first decided to create the watch group, Russo Santoro reached out to Hempstead Town Councilman Ed Ambrosino for help. In a matter of weeks, his office had neighborhood watch signs created and installed throughout West Hempstead, primarily in what appear to be trouble spots. The signs, which can be found on McKinley Street, Groton Place, Locust Street and Colony Avenue, among other places, are a deterrent, according to Ambrosino.

“It puts the neighborhood on notice that you’re in a neighborhood watch community,” he said. “When people are coming into a certain area with the intent of doing something that’s not nice, it tends to be a dissuasion from doing that.”

To ease concerns of those who fear neighborhood watch signs may give the community a bad image — or imply that it’s crime-ridden — Ambrosino, Bopp-Carroll and Russo Santoro all pointed to the success of neighborhood watch groups in neighboring communities. If anything, they said, the signs are reassuring to potential home buyers or business owners that they’re entering a neighborhood where people know each other and care about their community.

“I just want to commend the spirit of neighborhood cooperation,” Ambrosino said, “and anytime people take the initiative to improve their neighborhoods, it trickles down, it trickles up, it provides for better safety. It’s all about being vigilant and looking out for each others’ homes, cars and personal property, kids and family. That’s the spirit of the neighborhood watch. I think it’s a great, great endeavor.”

Residents interested in learning more about or joining the neighborhood watch can call Russo Santoro at (516) 220-2803 or email her a trusso14@aol.com.