Changing the Behavior, Not the Location

Police in the district’s community service department said they have been speaking to the teenagers who loiter on Main Street and safeguarding the area. Their efforts, they said, should help prevent assaults like the one that happened two weeks ago when a

Residents and local business owners have called for authorities to spend more time on Main Street and tighten enforcement to so that the teens who hang around the block stop barking at the Durty Harry’s staff, breaking storefront windows and harassing passers-by.

Neighbors have said that the disruptive youth need to play sports, get back in school or get a job instead of loitering in front of A-1 Convenience Store, on the block between Salem and Sullivan streets. But Sgt. Thomas Lema said that the police and community members should concentrate on changing not their location, but their behavior.

“Some of these kids are in their late teens and early 20s,” he said. “They aren’t going to the Boys and Girls Club.”

Further, he said, loitering isn’t illegal, but some of their reported behavior might be.

“If they’re intimidating people or blocking the way and we advise them not to, that becomes a possible criminal offense for being a disorderly person or disturbing the peace.”

Lema said that controlling crime on the block has become a priority for neighborhood police. One way the police control it, he said, is regularly talking to the youth.

“If you really want to hang here,” Lema said he tells them, “You have to change your behavior.”

But the teens, he said, give him a number of excuses for hanging around: Where are we supposed to go? Why are you bothering us? I just got here. It’s not me.

“We want them just to basically be neighborly people. If they’re not that way, we’re expected to step in.”

Police increase presence after latest assault

There are seven patrol officers in the neighborhood, said Lema, and one police officer patrols Main Street on foot from 4 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. every day.

Lately police have done a number of enforcement operations on and near the block, such as “Operation Criss-Cross,” in which about six patrol officers monitor high-crime areas for about 45 minutes during their shift, said Officer Robert Luongo.

Luongo said that the police did such an operation last Wednesday afternoon. They got out of their cars, he said, walked the area and accosted suspicious-looking people. 

For now, Lema encourages business owners and neighbors to call the police when they see the group of teens or anyone else creating a nuisance or damaging property.

“Our goal is to create a partnership with owners of businesses and assure them that if they call 911, we will respond,” he said.

The station hasn’t planned a special community meeting about the assault, he said, but will hold its regular monthly meeting June 14.