Suffolk police respond to Black Friday traffic jam at Tanger Outlets

Suffolk County police had to respond to a major Black Friday traffic jam at The Tanger Outlets in Deer Park.

Police said they received calls throughout the day from frustrated shoppers ready to head home who complained of being stuck in the mall parking lot.

"We have multiple units on site and have dispatched more units to help with the traffic," police said in a statement Friday night. "It is Black Friday, the heaviest shopping day of the year, and we ask everyone in the area to please remain patient and calm while we work to alleviate the congestion."

Shoppers took to social media to vent, with some saying they were stuck in their cars for hours.

"me and Brandon sat in almost 4 hours of traffic at the deer park tanger outlets...Black Friday never again!" tweeted @SweetAnnie_97.

Ashley Kimkowski, whose Twitter handle is @ashkoww, tweeted a screen shot of an iPhone stopwatch that had run up to 4 hours, 1 minute and 24 seconds. "@TangerOutlets I'm finally out of your deer park parking lot," she wrote.

According to some shoppers, the traffic problems started earlier in the day and revolved around a lack of parking attendants directing traffic.

At about 3 p.m., user @taramuller13 tweeted: "Crawling/Total Standstill at the @TangerOutlets parking lot in Deer Park. 1/2 hour and we've maybe moved 1/4 of a mile. Insane!"

Around the same time, user @_andrew_max tweeted directly to the company that operates outlet malls across the country: "@TangerOutlets Some traffic attendants at your Deer Park, NY outlets would be helpful. Sitting in traffic for 1.5 hours trying to [get out]."

Helicopter video from News 12 Long Island's Chopper 12 showed chaos and disorder in the parking lot as motorists fought through the gridlock.

None of the shoppers who tweeted directly to the Tanger Outlets' Twitter handle had received a direct response from the company as of Friday evening.