Community Corner

Shop Owners Express Frustration With Route 112 Vagrancy

Trespassing, panhandling and more quality of life issues have at least one shop owner re-thinking his choice of location - while others have already left the Route 112 corridor.

"I'm thinking of taking my business up the road because of how bad it is."

While Suffolk County Police start moving on a recently-initiated plan to reduce crime and vagrancy long-term in the Upper Port/Port Jefferson Station area, business owner Mike Langone said it's nearing the point where moving might be his best option.

Langone, the 30-year-old owner of Port Jeff Tire and Brake – located on the corner of Hallock Avenue and Route 112 – expressed his concerns Tuesday night at the Port Jefferson Station-Terryville Civic Association meeting at the Comsewogue Library. While he and others at the meeting said the plan, dubbed 'SAFEPORTs,' sounds like a step in the right direction, Langone said near-daily interactions with vagrants loitering in the area is a problem he's getting sick of dealing with.

He wasn't the only one.

Dan Cicciaro, owner of Dano's Auto Clinic, ran his shop out of the corner of Railroad Avenue and Route 112 for 24 years. Finally, he said, he left last year, moving south of Route 347.

"The homeless, the vagrants, the thievery, the drugs – anything else you can say happened, happened," he said Tuesday night. "I just moved up the road ... it's heaven. What a world of difference. How this side of Route 347 protects itself, I don't know."

Less than 24 hours after Tuesday night's meeting, Langone signed five affidavits for trespassing across the street from his shop – a property vacated by GMA Mechanical about two months ago. GMA owner Joe Ianuso said people would ask his customers for money, urinate on the building – "basically aggravate the hell out of me and my employees."

"Since we moved, there hasn't been anything," he said.

Langone, a Mastic resident who says he was drawn to open a shop in Port Jefferson five years ago largely because of the motorcycle crowd, said that he has noticed an increased presence in recent months. But pointing to the trespass incident on Wednesday, he still hopes for more in the short-term.

"Over the past two months it has got better," he said. "These cops are working. I'm not saying they're not working. But the owner of that building wants them arrested. They get a summons."

Port Jeff Tire & Brake is located directly next to St. Paul's Lutheran Church, which holds a weekly soup kitchen, and while the programs for homeless offered at St. Paul's and elsewhere serve many in need – and it's not illegal to hand out food or money – others said that they also serve as a "magnet" for the homeless, creating an unwelcome atmosphere.

Sgt. Andy Gliganis, who presented the SAFEPORTs plan Tuesday night, asked for the public's patience as the new plan is implemented, asked them to call any time they feel the law is being broken, and added that police have identified 11 'hotspots' they are keeping a close eye on. A special "whiskey chart" shift – from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. – was added in the area last year during summer hours, hoping to press down on illegal activity before it gets out of hand in nighttime hours.

And Mayor Margot Garant pointed to meetings she's held in the past two years with Legis. Kara Hahn and other county agencies to improve things on the village side of the tracks. A village constable meets trains coming into Port Jefferson until 2 a.m., keeping an eye on people coming off.

But it's also the daytime crowd Langone is concerned with.

"I've had fights here on top of customer's cars and I've had to go out there and fight bums," he said. "It's getting old."

Click here to download a copy of the SAFEPORTs survey. Sorry, we uploaded the cover page twice. Surveys can be mailed to the Sixth Precinct. 


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