Latino Residents File Lawsuit Against Islip Town

ISLIP, NY - Town of Islip residents recently filed a lawsuit accusing the town of preventing Latino residents from electing candidates of their choice to the town board, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed by attorneys from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, the Law Offices of Frederick K. Brewington, and Newman Ferrara LLP.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of residents Ana Flores, Rene Flores, Maria Magdalena Hernandez, Magali Roman as well as Make the Road New York, and New York Communities for Change against the Town of Islip, the Islip Town Board, and the Suffolk County Board of Elections.

Make the Road, a non-profit that works with local immigrants led a rally to announce the lawsuit on Tuesday afternoon.

“As a long-time resident of Islip, I’ve seen time and again how the Town Board has treated the Latino community like second-class citizens,” Hernandez, who is also a member of Make the Road New York, said. “They have repeatedly failed to provide interpretation and translation to Spanish-speaking residents like me. They have ignored our requests for cleaner streets and safer roads. And they make us feel unwelcome. Until our community can elect a representative of our own, the Town will never listen to us.”

The residents allege that the Town’s current voting system should be replaced with single-member districts because, under the current system, the Town Board has been "unresponsive to the needs of the Latino community and repeatedly failed to afford Islip’s Latino residents the same rights and services that it provides to more affluent white communities," according to the lawsuit.

Related:

• DA: St. James Man Among 6 Indicted in Islip Town Dumping Scandal
• Roberto Clemente Park Reopens After 3 Years
• Brentwood Officials, Residents Call For Reopening of Roberto Clemente Park

The alleged examples cited in the lawsuit include:

• The Department of Public Works ignores requests to repair potholes, traffic lights, and stop signs in Latino neighborhoods.
• The Town fails to provide proper public services (such as street cleaning, garbage pickup and snowplowing) on an ongoing basis in the Latino community, while ensuring that white communities are given priority access to these same services.
• The Town has repeatedly failed to provide translation and interpretation services to Spanish-speaking residents.
• Latino residents are often met with hostility or indifference when they ask local law enforcement and municipal services for help.

“The Town handles complaints from our neighborhoods differently than it handles complaints from other parts of Islip,” Roman said. “When people in the Latino community call to report streets that need to be repaired, the Town does not respond to us. When these problems are not fixed, accidents happen, people’s cars break down. They might miss work and lose their jobs, or they might be hurt. These problems start out small, but because the Town neglects them, they grow and have big consequences.”

According to the lawsuit, Latinos make up one-third of the Town’s population but no Latino has ever been elected to the Islip Town Board and in the past 30 years, only one of the 30 residences belonging to elected Town Board members was located in the Latino community; the single residence located in a Latino community belonged to a Republican Town Board member who owned three residences.

Currently, all Islip residents vote for each Town Board position, meaning that the same majority can control the outcome of the race for each Town Board seat.

As a result, the residents are claiming that Islip’s Latino community has little chance of electing any candidate of its choice. They argue that the current system should be replaced by a single-member system, in which the Town would be divided into separate districts with one council member representing each district, as is the case in Long Island towns such as Hempstead, North Hempstead and Brookhaven.

In support of their argument for a district-based system, the plaintiffs highlight the Roberto Clemente Park dumping incident as an example of the Town’s neglect of the Latino community.

In the lawsuit the residents used the Roberto Clemente Park dumping incident as an example of the Town’s neglect of the Latino community.

In 2013, the Brentwood park was shut down after it was discovered that garbage had been illegally dumped in the park.

During the eight-month investigation, dangerous toxins, including colbalt, dieldrin and asbestos, were found at the park.

In 2014, former Islip Parks Commissioner, Joseph Montouri Jr. and his former parks colleague, Brett A. Robinson, were both charged with 12 crimes related to the dumping at Clemente Town Park, according to a previous Patch articles.

The residents are accusing town officials of knowing about the dumping at the time and attempting to cover up evidence of the incident.

Residents accuse the Town of failing to provide adequate translation services at a town hall meeting intended to explain the dumping to Islip’s Latino residents.

In addition, when the park reopened last year, residents say construction was not complete and many were concerned whether the park was safe for children.

The pool, which had been closed in 2011, has still also not yet been reopened.

“The pool at Roberto Clemente Park has always been an important place for me, my family, and my community,” Flores, who is also a member of New York Communities for Change. “It is our pool. Our pool has been closed more than five years and it’s still closed. Because of the Town’s neglect, my brother didn’t grow up with the same pool that I grew up with. The Town’s behavior is unacceptable and would never be accepted in the rich, white communities that the Town rushed to help in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.”

The lawsuit also claims that Brentwood and Central Islip, which has a large Latino population, are home to a disproportionate number of environmental hazard and waste sites, including Superfund sites, that are located right inside residential areas. According to the residents, these sites are not well-maintained, posing serious risks of contamination of water sources and other community resources.

"By filing this lawsuit today, the Latino residents of the Town of Islip are making it clear that they will no longer be relegated to second-class status,” Greg Laufer, a lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP said. "For the past three decades, the democratic process has been manipulated to maintain the one-party rule that perpetuated political corruption and the inequitable distribution of the Town’s resources."

"When I became a citizen, I thought I would never be treated like a second-class citizen in my own country," Flores said. "I was promised that — as a citizen — my vote could elect someone to represent me and my community. Here, in the Town of Islip, that promise has never been kept."

Screenshot: Video/Make the Road New York