Concerns voiced at Shirley neighborhood watch talk

About 60 people attended an informational session Thursday night at the Shirley-Mastics-Moriches Community Library in Shirley on how to start a neighborhood watch.

The meeting, organized by Suffolk County Legis. Kate Browning (WF-Shirley), featured a presentation by representatives of the Suffolk County Police Department Seventh Precinct.

To start things off, Browning, encouraging residents to start a neighborhood watch, said, “We need your eyes and ears to help the local police department to do their jobs.” Browning’s office has helped start a number of neighborhood watches in her district recently.

Most residents said they came from Mastic Beach, followed by Shirley, Mastic, Center Moriches and Middle Island.

One woman who said she is part of a neighborhood watch in Mastic Beach insisted that in recent years police haven’t been responsive to 911 calls about issues with a nearby home.

“We’ve called, and they’ve never come. We’ve been calling for three years,” she said.

Another man said he was told to “mind his own business” when he called police about starting a neighborhood watch.

Sgt. Joe Suarez of the Seventh Precinct C.O.P.E. division said the department was dedicated to helping residents, and that it was further “going in the direction of community policing.” He said he hoped to soon add a community relations officer to aid in the effort.

He added that neighborhood watches in the past have helped to nab criminals by sharing important information which police wouldn’t have otherwise known.

Referring to George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain in Florida who has been charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Police Officer Louis J. Lioio said, “It was a horrible situation that went awry. His sole mistake was that he didn’t follow the rules. He followed the guy. That’s definitely what we don’t want to see. That’s our job.”

Some residents praised local police officers for their work in the area and touted the benefits of neighborhood watch programs.

That included Mastic Beach Village Trustee Gail Cappiello, who is part of the Osprey Pointe Neighborhood Watch in Mastic Beach. A number of people from her group came dressed in neighborhood watch T-shirts.

“The one thing our neighborhood watch did was make our neighborhood a neighborhood,” she said.