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THIS IS A TEST BRIEF THAT SHOULD NOT HIDE ON CLICK
THIS IS A TEST BRIEF THAT SHOULD HIDE ON CLICK
Look past the ad to see the map. Usually we have some introductory text anyway, so this will get you there. The map is just the Hempstead Town listings from the first spreadsheet you sent. There was one sale in early April and 10 sales in August (right up to the 31st), so this seems like five months of sales.
Notice the seller names are just last names. Problem? The icons could be better: small dot is house for under $600K, bigger marker is a home up to $1m; bigger marker with a dot inside is a home that sold for more than $1M (5 of them). This’ll just give you an idea.
Ten years ago next Thursday, a gang of teenagers attacked Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero on a Patchogue street in a fatal hate crime that sparked international outrage because of its casual brutality. Although local officials said the killing was an aberration, court records later showed that “beaner-hopping,” as it was known among these teens and the day laborers they pursued, was a regular pastime.
Even worse, investigators found, Suffolk police had shown little interest in looking into the attacks.
An indictment unsealed two months after Lucero’s killing revealed that in the 13 months before his death, the same teens, in small groups with shifting members, had gone on a spree of violence, assaulting at least 12 other Hispanics, including three men who said they reported the attacks to police but received little follow-up.
Those men were not alone. Scores of Hispanics came forward to say they had been harassed or beaten and that police were, at best, indifferent. The Suffolk police department said it was unaware Hispanics had been targeted, as did then-Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who frequently spoke out against illegal immigration.
‘There wasn’t just neglect of the Latino community, there was open hostility.’ -Jonathan M. Smith, ex-U.S. Department of Justice attorney
The complaints had a disturbing similarity: Hispanic men, walking alone usually at night, were set upon, assaulted and frequently robbed. When they reported the attacks to police, they said, officers minimized the incidents or merely filed reports and frequently failed to follow up.
“There wasn’t just neglect of the Latino community, there was open hostility,” said Jonathan M. Smith, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who was involved in the case and who now runs a nonprofit civil rights group in Washington.
Lucero’s death and the pattern of attacks spurred the U.S. Justice Department to launch an investigation. In December 2013, it entered into a monitoring agreement with the county that was designed to overhaul police performance in five broad areas and to last three years.
Last month, after more than four years in which Suffolk police failed to reach substantial compliance in any of the target areas, it achieved that goal in two, according to a Justice Department report: combating hate crimes and investigating complaints against its officers. In the other target areas, which include eliminating biased policing, improving translation services and relating better to the community, police showed meaningful progress but still fell short of success, despite years of fits and starts.
Both Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart and Chief of Department Stuart Cameron said in an interview that they regarded the Justice Department’s continued monitoring as a positive.
“The goal is not to get the DOJ out of here, the goal is to keep making the department better,” Cameron said.
Despite the progress, the Justice Department’s latest 18-page report included a conclusion that could have been written after Lucero’s death:
“Our conversations with community members continue to reveal a persistent mistrust of SCPD.”
The Justice Department has cited that mistrust repeatedly in earlier reports.
Cameron said it is partly because of cultural differences since many immigrants come from countries where they don’t trust police and because many residents don’t differentiate between county and federal agents.
Still, the Justice Department conclusion was notable for reasons beyond the community’s lingering suspicion. First, the department urged police to build bridges not just for their own sake, but to improve crime fighting by establishing a trust that would lead to tips and cooperation within immigrant communities.
Second, the assessment comes amid Trump administration policies and rhetoric pointed at immigrants living in the country illegally and heightened law enforcement efforts against the vicious Salvadoran gang MS-13. These have led to hundreds more immigrant detentions on Long Island, including more than 30 that have been successfully contested in court.
As the crackdown has brought quiet to streets in immigrant communities, it raises the question of whether it also has fueled a mistrust that undermines the improvements attained through the Justice Department agreement.
“My sense is that the progress has been largely lost,” Smith said. “All the hysteria around MS-13 has driven a deeper wedge.”
‘We are looking for every opportunity that we can, even outside the parameters of the DOJ agreement, to go even further and make sure that we are doing what we can to connect with the community.’ -Geraldine Hart, Suffolk police commissioner
Hart said the department received a $1 million grant to fund gang prevention programs and that the department is utilizing social media for community outreach and has even sent commanding officers to people’s homes.
“We are looking for every opportunity that we can, even outside the parameters of the DOJ agreement, to go even further and make sure that we are doing what we can to connect with the community,” she said.
Suffolk District Attorney Timothy Sini served as police commissioner during a spree of violence attributed to MS-13 from January 2016 through October 2017 during which at least 16 youths were killed in Suffolk alone. Sini said the department had built bridges to the community by cracking down on MS-13. Making arrests and ramping up policing yielded tips from residents that helped solve murders and prevent other gang crimes — including the attempted abduction of a teenage boy MS-13 had targeted for death.
“Do we have a perfect operation? Of course not,” he said.
“I think that, by and large, the police department before me and after me does a tremendous job. And I think it can always improve,” he said.
But those in the immigrant community who have experienced waves of detentions still feel wary, said Patrick Young, program director of CARECEN, a nonprofit immigrant-rights group that provides counseling and legal services. “People are just frightened of them now,” he said of police.
The county’s relationship with its burgeoning Latino population is one filled with twists, turns and points of friction.
A 1983 federal civil rights lawsuit cited the county for discriminating against women and minorities, including Hispanics, in hiring and promotion. Suffolk, along with Nassau, which was also named, agreed to a federal consent order that required it to pay $500,000 in damages, create a new hiring test and employ job-seekers who were discriminated against in past tests.
The consent decree is still in effect. As of October, roughly 10 percent of Suffolk’s sworn officers were Hispanic, according to police statistics.
Three years after that lawsuit, the county’s relationship with its Hispanic population took a different direction. In 1986, Democrats in the Suffolk County Legislature, responding to a newly passed national law that required employers to verify the legal status of employees, pushed the county to accept people fleeing civil wars in Central America. It officially designated the county a place of sanctuary for refugees, who had begun to settle in Brentwood and surrounding communities, where there were plenty of jobs for unskilled workers.
Then, as the population of immigrants grew to more than 7,000, attitudes shifted. By 1993, the sanctuary resolution was reversed.
By the mid-2000s, Levy’s rhetoric was grabbing headlines. He said foreign women who had children in the United States were having “anchor babies” and once joked at a roast that he’d have to deport “the guys back there in the kitchen.”
Early in his administration, Levy proposed deputizing county police as immigration agents, which would have allowed them to question people about their immigration status and detain and deport them, an idea that was criticized at the time by Jeff Frayler, then-president of Suffolk Police Benevolent Association.
"Right now, we’re giving a significant portion of the minority community reasons to distrust the police," he told Newsday.
In an interview, Levy, a lawyer who also writes a column for the Conservative online publication Newsmax, disputed persistent criticism that he stoked intolerance, saying it was a myth “perpetrated by the media.”
He said his statements reflected the concerns of taxpayers dealing with immigrants living here illegally in overcrowded housing and competing for work as cheaper labor.
“You had house after house with dozens of people in them, and no one was doing a darn thing about it,” Levy said. “People were seeing their neighborhoods turned upside-down, and it wasn’t racial. It was density.”
Challenged at the time on his rhetoric and policies, Levy stood firm. “The public is in agreement with me,” he declared.
He was right. When Levy ran for re-election in 2007, he won with 96 percent of the vote, as a Democrat endorsed by Republicans.
On Nov. 8, 2008, Lucero’s murder changed the political landscape.
Lucero, 37, was set upon near the Patchogue train station by seven teenagers he had never met in an assault that was shocking not just for its randomness, but because of the casual way in which the teenagers described attacking local Hispanics, according to police statements.
It was nothing more than a pastime, one of the teens, Anthony Hartford, 17, told police. “The last time I went out jumping beaners was Monday, Nov. 3, 2008 . . . I don’t go out doing this very often, maybe only once a week.”
Jeffrey Conroy, 17, who later was convicted of fatally stabbing Lucero, asked police, “Is this going to be a problem with wrestling season?” Another teen in the group asked if he would have to miss the Giants game.
There had been talk within the Hispanic community of unprovoked attacks before Lucero’s killing. After his death, the stories became public.
‘This was a kettle ready to boil over.’ – The Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter, who presided over Lucero’s funeral at the Congregational Church of Patchogue
The Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter, who presided over Lucero’s funeral at the Congregational Church of Patchogue, set aside a room in his church with a translator, where Hispanics could come forward to tell their stories to officials. More than 50 people showed up, and they gave such searing accounts of abuse — not just by roving gangs, but by landlords and employers — that the translator couldn’t stop crying, Wolter said. Woven throughout their accounts were reports of police indifference.
“This was a kettle ready to boil over,” Wolter recalled.
Many of the beating victims came in with yellow pieces of paper, copies of police reports they had filed. The assaults were each listed as an “incident,” never a hate crime, Wolter said.
The year before, in 2007, only one anti-Hispanic hate crime had been reported in Suffolk County.
“It was a different attitude, or they just never followed up,” Lucero’s brother, Joselo, said in a recent interview of the police.
All seven teenagers charged in connection with Lucero’s killing were convicted of charges from first-degree assault to first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime. Their sentences ranged from five to 25 years.
He was 17 at the time of the attack.
His role in the crime/convictionsHe was convicted of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime for fatally stabbing Marcelo Lucero. (While testifying at his trial, he said it was another teen, Christopher Overton, who was the killer.) He was also convicted of second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime in attacks on three other Hispanic men, including Lucero’s friend Angel Loja, first-degree gang assault and fourth-degree conspiracy.
StatusCurrently in prison serving a 25-year sentence. He will be eligible for parole on April 9, 2030.
2 2 Jordan Dasch
He was 17 at the time of the attack.
His role in the crime/convictionsHe pleaded guilty to first-degree gang assault and fourth-degree conspiracy in the Lucero attack. He also pleaded guilty to second-degree assault as a hate crime and second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime in connection with two other attacks earlier that day.
StatusReleased from prison on Aug. 26, 2015, on parole after serving almost five years of his seven-year sentence.
3 3Anthony Hartford
He was 17 at the time of the attack.
His role in the crime/convictionsHe pleaded guilty to first-degree gang assault in the Lucero attack and to four counts of second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime for attacks on four other Hispanic men.
StatusReleased from prison on Dec. 31, 2014, on parole after serving four years and three months of his seven-year sentence.
4 4Christopher Overton
He was 16 at the time of the attack.
His role in the crime/convictionsJeffrey Conroy tried unsuccessfully to blame Overton for the stabbing of Lucero. Overton pleaded guilty to first-degree gang assault in connection to Lucero’s death, fourth-degree conspiracy and second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime in attacks on two other Latino men. At the time of Lucero’s death, Overton was on probation awaiting sentencing for his role in a 2007 home invasion that ended in an East Patchogue man’s death.
StatusSentenced to six years in prison, with five years of supervised release, according to a NYS Department of Correctional and Community Supervision spokesman. He was paroled on Nov. 4, 2014, violated his parole and sent back to prison on Dec. 4, 2015. He was released again on parole on April 18, 2016, and will remain on supervised released until Nov. 4, 2019.
5 5Jose Pacheco
He was 17 at the time of the attack.
His role in the crime/convictionsHe pleaded guilty to first-degree gang assault in connection to the Lucero killing. He also pleaded guilty to fourth-degree conspiracy and three counts of second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime for attacks against other Latinos.
StatusReleased from prison on Nov. 5, 2014, on parole after serving four years of his seven-year sentence.
6 6Nicholas Hausch
He was 17 at the time of the attack.
His role in the crime/convictionsHe pleaded guilty to first-degree gang assault and fourth-degree conspiracy for his role in the Lucero attack. He also pleaded guilty to second-degree assault as a hate crime and second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime in connection with attacks on two other Hispanic men.
StatusHe was released from prison on July 9, 2014, on parole after serving three years and eight months of his five-year-sentence.
7 7Kevin Shea
He was 17 at the time of the attack.
His role in the crime/convictionsHe admitted to punching Marcelo Lucero in the face before the victim was fatally stabbed and to involvement in assaults on three Hispanic men including Lucero’s friend Angel Loja. He pleaded guilty to first-degree gang assault, second-degree attempted assault as a hate crime and fourth-degree conspiracy.
StatusReleased from prison on Sept. 11, 2015, on parole after serving five years of his original eight-year sentence.
Click on a number to learn more about each of the young men convicted in the Lucero attack. Photo credit: James Carbone
All have been released but Conroy, who was sentenced to 25 years and is imprisoned at the Clinton Correctional Facility, not far from the Canadian border. Tall and trim, with short-cropped hair, he became angry when a Newsday reporter visited him unannounced, and he refused to be interviewed.
The others did not respond to requests for interviews.
Armed with the complaints from the Hispanic community, activists petitioned the Justice Department to intervene. In 2009, the department’s civil rights division started an investigation.
As investigators began their work, a different kind of violence hit the community hard.
In February 2010, four MS-13 members, believing that 19-year-old Vanessa Argueta had shown “disrespect” by sending rival gang members to attack one of them, lured her to a vacant lot in Central Islip. According to federal prosecutors, she had brought along her 2-year-old son, Diego Torres, because she couldn’t find a baby-sitter. The killers shot her in the head and chest as Diego cried and clutched the leg of one of them. They then shot him, reasoning that if they let him live, he would one day seek revenge, the prosecutors alleged.
Their killers were caught and convicted. Three of the four were sentenced to life in prison, and the fourth was sentenced to 45 years.
Though the hate crime that felled Lucero and the gang violence that claimed Argueta and her son may not appear connected, the Justice Department took note of both types of crime in a September 2011 letter to Levy. It outlined ways in which the department should handle hate crimes and, with an eye toward the growing gang problem, urged police to establish gang prevention units at the precinct level where they would be most directly involved with the community.
The letter provided recommendations aimed at improving the department overall.
“This is not just about police legitimacy and the legitimacy of the law,” said Christy Lopez, a former Justice Department lawyer who led civil rights investigations into police departments across the country and negotiated the Ferguson, Mo., settlement in 2015 after the fatal shooting a year earlier of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a police officer. “It’s about the effectiveness of policing.”
In December 2013, the county and Justice Department agreed that the department would monitor Suffolk police for three years. But because the department has failed to reach substantial compliance, the monitoring has continued, as the Hispanic community in Suffolk has expanded to more than 270,000, or 18 percent of the county’s population, according to the U.S. Census.
In the seven assessments that followed, the federal monitors provided a rare and detailed look at the internal workings of a suburban police force struggling to change its culture and connect with a wary community it has committed to serving better.
Over the years, according to the Justice Department assessments, monitors found “disturbing patterns” in Internal Affairs investigations of police misconduct. They were plagued by long delays — in some cases, more than two years. In addition, community members told “troubling stories” about being rebuffed when they tried to file complaints against police.
In 2016, the department’s anti-bias training program was suspended because it was riddled with problems, with instructors undermining it with an “us against them” mentality. One instructor told her class, “I know this frustrates you, but this is what we have to do.”
‘SCPD has demonstrated little to no involvement by the patrol and investigative units in community and problem-oriented policing.’ – Department of Justice report in December 2015
Several reports faulted the department for failing to fully engage the community — or its own officers — in its efforts. “SCPD has demonstrated little to no involvement by the patrol and investigative units in community and problem-oriented policing,” the monitors said in a December 2015 report.
The lack of translation services and interpreters has been a particular problem. A report last year noted that officers on patrol had such difficulty using the department phones to link non-English speakers to translation services that they began using their own cellphones instead.
But federal monitors have cited meaningful improvements, as well. In the last six months, the department has reached substantial compliance in two areas: tracking hate crimes and hate incidents, and investigating allegations of police misconduct.
The police department achieved success in the hate-crime category by overhauling its training and launching a reliable system for mapping hate crimes — a critical tool for preventing deaths like Lucero’s. Federal monitors applauded the department’s decision to make the mapping data public “to bolster transparency.”
As for police misconduct, the department has gone beyond the requirements of the monitoring agreement. In addition to reducing delays in completing Internal Affairs investigations — the average investigation now lasts 91 days — police have implemented a policy to keep complainants apprised of the status of their complaints.
Earlier Justice Department assessments credited Sini with revamping the Internal Affairs Bureau by adding staff, training and higher-ranking officers.
Still, between 2013 and 2017, there were at least 134 complaints about biased policing, racial profiling or civil rights violations involving Suffolk police. None of the complaints was substantiated by Internal Affairs investigators, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information request in a lawsuit alleging police bias.
In response to a question from Newsday, the department issued a statement saying that the Justice Department did not find any of its investigations deficient.
Smith, the former Justice Department attorney, said the failure to substantiate any complaints of biased policing is “a huge red flag.”
The question of what happens at traffic stops has been particularly vexing for Suffolk police. A Newsday investigation last year found that Hispanics and other minority group members were arrested nearly five times more than whites on Long Island on charges like resisting arrest and a variety of drug offenses that typically stem from traffic pullovers. Experts told Newsday the charges were the result of the suburban equivalent of “stop-and-frisk.”
Data analysis is critical in determining what factor bias plays in these stops, but Suffolk police have experienced years of failure in being able to track the encounters.
In 2017, Suffolk police scrapped a data system developed by an outside vendor because it generated thousands of incomplete entries. But when they replaced it with their own software, the system failed on its first day. Patrol officers repeatedly complained that it was unwieldy and took too long to complete.
In the most recent assessment released in October, federal monitors noted that police have implemented a robust data collection system that is projected to yield its first comprehensive results in a year.
Nonetheless, community advocates remain skeptical and question whether technical changes and policy directives trickled down to the rank and file. The DOJ monitoring has been “a force for good and change,” said Walter Barrientos, a consultant for the Brentwood-based advocacy group Make the Road New York. While the department made some strides “on paper,” he said the average Latino immigrant still receives poor treatment from police.
Joselo Lucero, who worked at a dry cleaner with his brother, became an immigrant advocate after Marcelo’s murder. Once shy about public speaking, he now does so in memory of his brother. He said he is frustrated by the pace of change and the discourse at community meetings hosted by federal monitors, which he regularly attends.
“We listen to them, and you know, they listen to us,” he said. “But I don’t see it that way really. They don’t listen to us. Every time it’s like, ‘We are looking into it, we are going to find out.’”
‘If community members are afraid to go to the police because they feel that immigration could end up being informed, that is going to affect their ability to report cases to the police.’ – Nadia Marin-Molina, advocate
One longtime Hispanic advocate, Nadia Marin-Molina, who organized day laborers in the early 2000s, said it’s “disappointing” to see some of the same issues being debated, intensified by the federal government’s aggressive campaign against illegal immigration.
“If community members are afraid to go to the police because they feel that immigration could end up being informed, that is going to affect their ability to report cases to the police. All of these things are connected,” said Marin-Molina, now associate director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. She said, as a result, a “difficult climate” remains concerning interactions with police “for the immigrant community in general.”
By 2016, a convulsion of MS-13 violence wracked Suffolk County. First, there were disappearances, which attracted little public attention. Three Hispanic youths, all teenagers from Brentwood, went missing in February, April and June. Then came the double murder that turned all sights on MS-13.
The murders of 15-year-old Kayla Cuevas and 16-year-old Nisa Mickens, whose mutilated bodies were found in Brentwood in September 2016, became national news and galvanized the police department to crack down on MS-13. The killings, by machete and baseball bat, jolted the public consciousness.
Sini said police waged an all-out effort, assigning officers to specific gang members, who were targeted for arrest and for whatever intelligence they could provide.
“We are coming for you,” he declared at a news conference in March 2017 in Brentwood, where he stood in front of five rows of uniformed cops and recruits, a police helicopter, an armored SWAT vehicle and K-9 unit dogs.
The next month, police found the mutilated bodies of four young Hispanic males, ranging in age from 16 to 20, in a park opposite the Central Islip Recreational Center. They all had been murdered the day before, according to police. Their bodies were found after gang members sent text messages to their families.
Law enforcement agencies at every level struck back. Since then, 235 alleged MS-13 gang members have been arrested. More than 20 have been indicted on racketeering charges, including conspiracy to commit murder.
Today, the MS-13 gang graffiti once so apparent in Brentwood and Central Islip has been painted over. Children can be seen outside playing in the evening, and the schools have quieted. Police figures show crime down by 20 percent to 30 percent.
“In my opinion, it’s a great thing that they’re taking all these people out,” said Elkin Lorenzo, of Huntington Station.
Cuevas’ mother, the late Evelyn Rodriguez, said in an interview shortly before her death in September that police are looked at in a far more favorable way today. Residents “know they’re being heard,” she said.
But such sentiments are tempered by complaints reminiscent of those from the Lucero era.
Carlota Moran, the mother of one victim murdered in a machete attack, told the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica in a story that ran in Newsday that police said her son, Miguel Moran, 15, had probably gone into New York City with friends and not to worry. The mother also said it was her daughter, not police, who discovered text messages that suggested Miguel had been lured into the woods on the night he was killed.
Hart said, as a mother, she sympathized with Carlota Moran’s anguish and said the department began an extensive investigation into Miguel’s disappearance immediately after he was reported missing.
Several other families of murdered children have complained of police indifference and callousness, raising questions about whether a more aggressive response to those cases could have prevented some of the gang’s later violence.
A former Salvadoran police officer said in an interview with Newsday that his missing daughter was grilled by a detective as if she were a gang associate, not a crime victim, when she was found disheveled and disoriented by the railroad tracks in Brentwood after what he described as "two or three" days of captivity by an MS-13 clique. The father secretly recorded a video, obtained by ProPublica, of the detective telling the teen, “You think we’re as dumb as the kids you hang out with? You think this is all a joke?”
Hart and Cameron said they opened an investigation immediately after the nine-minute video was posted online. They said they are trying to obtain the entire video, which is more than an hour and was made in 2016, but have not gotten it yet.
According to a Justice Department report, a Latino mother complained that she was kept waiting three hours when she came with her 8-year-old son to report that he was sexually molested. Police officials said the time it takes to get an appropriate investigator on a case can vary.
In other Newsday interviews, three young men from Bay Shore alleged they were beaten by cops in January 2018 — but never charged with a crime — after they tried to outrun a car that turned out to be an undercover vehicle, called 911 for help and were surrounded by patrol cars.
The young men — Angel Rivera, 19, and his friends, Yan Simas, 21, and Mario Vitagliano, 19 — said two cops, shouting racial epithets, punched Simas and Rivera, and a third yanked Vitagliano out of the car, handcuffed him and slammed his head onto the ice.
Then police searched the car and found nothing and let them go. They said were never told why they were stopped.
‘You teach your kid to do everything right and he does, and then the police abuse him when he’s doing nothing wrong.’ – Tina Rosario, mother of a teen who said he was beaten by police
Like Rodriguez, Rivera’s mother, Tina Rosario, was a supporter of police, but she said she remains traumatized by the incident and has filed a notice of claim signaling her intent to sue the department.
“You teach your kid to do everything right and he does, and then the police abuse him when he’s doing nothing wrong,” she said.
Since the incident, Rivera said he has been questioned twice by police — once when they pulled him over as he was driving and another time when he had been sitting in his car in a McDonald’s parking lot — without being charged with anything.
Hart said the department had opened an internal investigation into the January 2018 incident but said she could not comment on it because it is still open.
Since Marcelo Lucero’s death 10 years ago, the Department of Justice has been the most prominent and persistent prod for change in the Suffolk police force.
And despite the tough criticism they have often received, Suffolk police officials say the Justice Department monitoring has been good for the department.
But Trump administration officials see agreements like Suffolk’s differently.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a February 2017 speech to the national attorneys-general association, said that they hurt departments’ crime fighting and that the government would back away from using them.
“We need, so far as we can, in my view, to help police departments get better, not diminish their effectiveness,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ve done some of that. So we’re going to try to pull back on this, and I don’t think it’s wrong or mean or insensitive to civil rights or human rights.”
Lopez, the ex-Justice Department civil rights lawyer who is now a visiting law professor at Georgetown University, said she’s spoken with former colleagues at the Justice Department, and, “Everyone feels they have had the rug pulled out from under them.”
She added, “If you are going to go through the entire process of a federal investigation and a settlement agreement, you want to fix the culture.”
Those issues aside, Joselo Lucero said he knows what he sees on the street. “If something is working,” he said, “don’t you think we would have more cooperation with the regular people approaching the police?”
In Queens, he said, some police actually give residents their personal cellphone numbers and residents use them.
“You have that here?” he said. “I don’t think so.”
With Michael O’Keeffe and Stefanie Dazio
To find out, Newsday had the consulting and research firm Energage anonymously poll more than 11,000 employees at 82 LI employers, on everything from pay and benefits to leadership and company alignment.
After analyzing all the results of the 82 companies that participated in the survey, Newsday and Energage have selected 66 as top Long Island workplaces and we are proud to spotlight the winners in each category, along with a look at what their employees had to say, islandwide trends and much more.
Adults and Children with Learning & Developmental Disabilities, Inc. (human and social services) “I know my job affects the people that I support, and I feel really good after getting something accomplished.”
BNB Bank “Senior leadership is always available to me. If I need to talk to someone through a phone call or email, it is always taken. This is not usually the case at other banks.”
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (research) “I feel that I’m contributing in a very small way to the betterment of our world through the scientific research done at the lab.”
Family Service League Inc. (human and social services) “When you can help someone, who has lost a loved one to suicide, and then be supported by colleagues after the emotional intervention – even if it’s in the evening or on a weekend – you know you are part of a great team and you’re working in the right place.”
New York Cancer & Blood Specialists (health care) “Knowing that I’m making a difference in someone’s life during the tough time they are going through is so very rewarding to me. This job has made me decide to go back to school this fall and I am hoping to move up in this company and become a nurse one day!”
New York Life – Long Island “I have real pride for the work I do helping clients with their finances and putting safety measures in place for the unexpected. My family and friends were underinsured before I started this career.”
Piping Rock Health Products, LLC (vitamins and nutritional supplements) “The production of vitamins is very interesting, and the company is growing a lot because it is making the best decisions.”
Stony Brook Southampton Hospital “I grew up in this town, so I know quite a few of the patients and enjoy caring for them. I feel like management really cares about all the employees and our safety.”
WellLife Network Inc. (social services and addiction recovery) “I am caring for children that need mental health support. This is very important to me as a social worker and is why I went into this profession.”
Zebra Technologies Corp. (barcode scanners, printers and mobile computers) “Open and transparent communications from upper management allow me to be proactive in planning my work and family life accordingly, especially during this pandemic.”
| Rank | Employer | Founded | Ownership | Sector | Headquarters City | HQ state | LI Locations | LI Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York Life – Long Island | 1845 | Cooperative/Mutual | Financial planning | Melville | NY | 5 | 779 |
| 2 | BNB Bank | 1910 | Public | Community bank | Bridgehampton | NY | 34 | 505 |
| 3 | Piping Rock Health Products, LLC | 2011 | Private | Manufacturing | Bohemia | NY | 8 | 572 |
| 4 | Family Service League. Inc. | 1926 | Private | Human and social services | Huntington | NY | 25 | 815 |
| 5 | Zebra Technologies Corp. | 1969 | Public | Technology | Lincolnshire | IL | 1 | 946 |
| 6 | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory | 1890 | Non-profit | Research | Cold Spring Harbor | NY | 1 | 943 |
| 7 | Stony Brook Southampton Hospital | 1909 | Non-profit | Hospitals | Southampton | NY | 1 | 1,330 |
| 8 | New York Cancer & Blood Specialists | 1985 | Partnership | Health care | Port Jefferson Station | NY | 15 | 875 |
| 9 | WellLife Network Inc | 1980 | Private | Children, family, human services | Smithtown | NY | 12 | 550 |
| 10 | Adults and Children with Learning & Developmental Disabilities, Inc. | 1957 | Non-profit | Human and social Services | Bethpage | NY | 100 | 938 |
Association for Mental Health and Wellness (human and social services) “My job enables me to provide necessary support to clients to enhance their motivation and confidence, and to educate them on how to find resources to help them succeed that they would otherwise not receive.”
CN Guidance & Counseling Services (human and social services) “We get to help those people in the community that need help, and we do it with a great team.”
Darby Dental Supply, LLC “I look around and see all the employees that have been here for 10, 20 and 30-plus years. I think that alone speaks volumes about how this is a very fair and rewarding company.”
EXIT Realty Achieve (real estate) “Helping a family make one of the most important decisions in their lives, being able to guide them correctly, and seeing how it makes them happy is amazing.”
Family & Children’s Association (social services) “We are a family who strives to be our very best for those who need us.”
Grassi Advisors & Accountants “I love my job because I get to utilize my accounting skills and work with professionals and clients that I can learn from.”
H2M Architects + Engineers “My ideas are respected, and I am given space to explore them further.”
HealthCare Partners, Management Service Organization “Our president, Dr. Robert LoNigro, hosts weekly webinars to let us know how the organization is doing. He encourages us to ask questions and provides honest answers to those questions.”
Kimco Realty Corp. (commercial real estate) “I love my job because of the good that I am able to do in getting tenants into a space which provides a livelihood for them.”
Marcum LLP (accounting) “Senior managers allow us to ask questions and don’t just expect us to do things a certain way because ‘that’s how it’s always been done.’ ”
Options for Community Living Inc. (housing and other services for vulnerable populations) “I feel like I’m making a difference in our clients’ lives and an impact on the surrounding community.”
Posillico (construction) “The coronavirus put a serious stress on all employees and senior managers tried to ensure all could work as safe as possible because we are deemed essential workers.”
Power Home Remodeling “My managers allow me to fail and get back up stronger. They have trust in me and I have trust in them. The work environment is never negative.”
Precipart (components manufacturing) “I love my job because I am able to produce quality parts which help the world.”
Spellman High Voltage Electronics Corp. (manufacturing) “I get to work with great people on interesting projects.”
SUNation Solar Systems (solar panel installation) “CEO Scott Maskin comes in singing most days. It’s a fun place to work and we do a lot of good for the local community by donating solar energy systems and rescuing dogs.”
| Rank | Employer | Founded | Ownership | Sector | Headquarters City | HQ state | LI Locations | LI Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HealthCare Partners, MSO | 1996 | Private | Health care | Garden City | NY | 1 | 240 |
| 2 | EXIT Realty Achieve | 2010 | Private | Real estate agents/brokers | Smithtown | NY | 1 | 173 |
| 3 | Power Home Remodeling | 1992 | Private | Home remodeling | Chester | PA | 1 | 217 |
| 4 | Posillico | 1946 | Private | Construction | Farmingdale | NY | 1 | 264 |
| 5 | Kimco Realty Corp. | 1958 | Public | Commercial real estate investment trust | Jericho | NY | 1 | 226 |
| 6 | Association for Mental Health and Wellness | 1990 | Non-profit | Mental health and wellness | Ronkonkoma | NY | 8 | 198 |
| 7 | Marcum LLP | 1951 | Partnership | Accounting and consulting advisors | New York | NY | 1 | 187 |
| 8 | Spellman High Voltage Electronics Corp. | 1947 | Private | Manufacturing | Hauppauge | NY | 1 | 315 |
| 9 | Grassi Advisors & Accountants | 1980 | Private | Accounting | Jericho | NY | 2 | 211 |
| 10 | SUNation Solar Systems | 2003 | Private | Renewable energy | Ronkonkoma | NY | 1 | 174 |
| 11 | Family & Children’s Association | 1884 | Non-profit | Human services | Mineola | NY | 11 | 218 |
| 12 | Darby Dental Supply, LLC | 1947 | Private | Dental supply sales and services | Jericho | NY | 1 | 174 |
| 13 | H2M architects + engineers | 1933 | Private | Architectural and engineer design services | Melville | NY | 2 | 348 |
| 14 | Options for Community Living, Inc. | 1982 | Private | Human services | Ronkonkoma | NY | 3 | 218 |
| 15 | CN Guidance & Counseling Services | 1972 | Non-profit | Mental health | Hicksville | NY | 3 | 277 |
| 16 | Precipart | 1950 | Private | Engineering and manufacturing | Farmingdale | NY | 1 | 285 |
A+ Technology and Security Solutions Inc. (security systems) “We keep kids safe and help give a little comfort in a sometimes-uncomfortable world.”
Above All Store Fronts, Inc. (construction) “The company encourages new ideas and allows me to challenge myself in additional areas to do what I can to help my department grow and become more efficient.”
American Portfolios Financial Services Inc. (broker/dealer) “We are encouraged to do good things in our own town. It’s unlike any other company that I’ve been a part of.”
Appliance World (retailing) “Everyday, I feel proud to work here and be a part of something that is growing at a rapid pace. I’m believed in by my leaders and am well compensated.”
Aurora Contractors, Inc. (construction) “Employees are constantly looking for new exciting and active ways to come together and have fun, such as company picnics, badminton tournaments, rock climbing, bowling and game nights.”
Austin Williams (advertising) “There is occasionally some healthy critique of the work that I produce. Sometimes I’m asked, ‘Why not this way or why not that way?’ Usually I have an answer but sometimes I don’t. I find this healthy criticism extremely helpful because although I believe I’m very good at what I do, I’m far from perfect.”
BBS Architects, Landscape Architects & Engineers, P.C. “I love my job because I get to design spaces that support the education of our youth.”
Blue Ocean Wealth Solutions, a Mass Mutual Firm (insurance) “My job allows me to impact the lives of my clients in a very positive and meaningful way because I’m giving them lifelong financial advice.”
College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk and Moving “It feels good to help others during a stressful move and provide professionalism and promote positivity during the move.”
DUKAL Corp. (medical devices) “I have never been treated better by any employer and I’ve been in health care sales for nearly 25 years.”
Engel Burman (real estate development) “I love my job because I participate in building great things that help people, and I enjoy the process.”
Future Tech Enterprise (information technology) “At the beginning of the stay-at-home, CEO Bob Venero called me to see how I was doing. It meant the world to me that he took time out of his busy schedule to see how I was doing.”
Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. (engineering) “I love my job because I have the opportunity to work on amazing structures and follow my passions in bridge building.”
Janover LLC (accountants) “I am able to assist clients in making the right decisions for their businesses based on accurate financial information.”
KidsFirst Evaluation and Advocacy Center (special education) “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined working with a company that allows me to work within and through some of my own limitations.”
Lewis Johs Avallone Aviles LLP (attorneys) “The firm allows me to practice law in a professional nonrestrictive environment.”
Long Island Select Healthcare, Inc. (medical clinics) “I get to help care for people who need help, those who live in the community that I live in. For this I am proud.”
Louis K McLean Associates Engineers & Surveyors, PC (civil engineering) “I love my job because I’m able to grow in knowledge of the things that I care about and gain experiences in many areas of engineering.”
McIntyre, Donohue, Accardi, Salmonson, and Riordan, LLP (attorneys) “My job allows me to do a great public service helping injured workers.”
Meadowbrook Financial Mortgage Bankers Corp. “I make people happy when I can help them obtain a home.”
Mercy Haven, Inc. (human and social services) “I love my job because I get to help people in need and give back to the community.”
National Business Capital & Services (small business lending) “I feel like I am at my second home with a family that all has a similar goal: to create a smooth and efficient business financing platform for business owners and partners to take advantage of.”
National Consumer Panel (researchers) “I work without feeling pressured and at the end of the day, I don’t worry about not wanting to go back to work the next day. I always look forward to it.”
Network Solutions & Technology (information technology) “I like solving problems and providing positive business outcomes. I need to listen to my clients’ obstacles and find some way to help them overcome their issues.”
New Vitality (vitamins and nutritional supplements) “There is a level of trust to make my own decisions, but managers are always available to help find the right route. We are helping people live better and stay healthy.”
NY State Solar (solar panel installation) “Work feels like a second family, especially after a company trip to Greece at the end of 2019. It was the best time of my life.”
Plesser’s Appliances (retailing) “I get along with all of my coworkers and work in one of the busiest appliance stores in the country.”
P.W. Grosser Consulting (engineering) “I am so proud to work for a company that works toward a greener, more sustainable future.”
Prepaid Ventures, Ltd. (financial technology) “I am trusted and valued for the work that I do, and they show their appreciation. Everyone works as a team, which helps us grow as a business.”
Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC “I love helping seniors make a better life for themselves. Reverse Mortgage Funding is a nice working environment with nice people, lots of laughs and some tears – just like a second family.”
SAIL, Inc. (human and social services) “We are helping individuals change the course of their lives in a positive way.”
Stasi Brothers Asphalt & Masonry “I am respected for my abilities and given the opportunity to change things that need to be improved. They treat us all like family and go above and beyond what most bosses would do.”
SupplyHouse.com (plumbing, heating and ventilation supplies) “It doesn’t feel like my company would ever step on us or try to take anything away from us just to make a profit. And I feel like every decision they make is good for our customers and for us.”
Total Technology Solutions (information technology) “As an IT company that operates 24/7 in the pandemic, it is imperative that we continue to support local governments as well as our other clients consisting of law firms, accounting firms and many more.”
Transervice Logistics Inc. (transportation) “My job is never dull. There is continued growth, trust and appreciation from management and the employees.”
Tweezerman International (personal care products) “I feel like I’m valued and my opinion matters.”
United Northern Mortgage Bankers Limited “I am encouraged to become better at my job. The company pays for my training and gives me the time off to take it.”
United States Luggage Company (wholesale distributor) “People are treated like human beings here and not like some replaceable automaton. Ideas are welcome and encouraged. Positive energy is something commonplace here.”
VHB Engineering, Surveying, Landscape Architecture and Geology, P.C. “I feel like I play a vital and appreciated role in significant projects. And I feel like I have the proper room and encouragement to continue growing my career.”
Yardi Systems, Inc. (real estate software) “The company encourages you to find your niche if you are not feeling challenged in your current environment. Their approach is ‘where do you see yourself?’ and then they help you to achieve that goal.”
| Rank | Employer | Founded | Ownership | Sector | Headquarters City | HQ state | LI Locations | LI Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | National Business Capital & Services | 2007 | Private | Business financing | Bohemia | NY | 1 | 87 |
| 2 | Network Solutions and Technology (NST) | 2001 | Private | Information technology | East Northport | NY | 1 | 54 |
| 3 | Total Technology Solutions | 1988 | Private | Information technology, cybersecurity | Melville | NY | 1 | 50 |
| 4 | Aurora Contractors, Inc. | 1983 | Private | Construction management | Ronkonkoma | NY | 1 | 53 |
| 5 | Blue Ocean Wealth Solutions, a Mass Mutual Firm | 1851 | Cooperative/Mutual | General insurance | East Hills | NY | 1 | 140 |
| 6 | SupplyHouse.com | 2004 | Private | E-commerce | Melville | NY | 1 | 135 |
| 7 | American Portfolios Financial Services Inc. | 2001 | Private | Broker/dealer | Holbrook | NY | 1 | 117 |
| 8 | McIntyre, Donohue, Accardi, Salmonson, and Riordan, LLP | 1955 | Private | Workers’ compensation | Bay Shore | NY | 2 | 54 |
| 9 | United Northern Mortgage Bankers Limited | 1979 | Private | Mortgage lending | Levittown | NY | 1 | 108 |
| 10 | DUKAL Corp. | 1991 | Private | Medical Devices & Products | Ronkonkoma | NY | 1 | 65 |
| 11 | Yardi Systems, Inc. | 1984 | Private | Custom Software Development & Consulting | Santa Barbara | CA | 1 | 149 |
| 12 | P.W. Grosser Consulting | 1990 | Private | Environmental engineering | Bohemia | NY | 1 | 50 |
| 13 | Future Tech Enterprise | 1996 | Private | Information technology | Holbrook | NY | 1 | 110 |
| 14 | United States Luggage Company | 1911 | Private | Wholesale distributor | Hauppauge | NY | 1 | 65 |
| 15 | Janover LLC | 1938 | Private | Certified public accountants | Garden City | NY | 1 | 99 |
| 16 | Stasi Brothers Asphalt & Masonry | 1962 | Private | Construction | Westbury | NY | 1 | 70 |
| 17 | Lewis Johs Avallone Aviles, LLP | 1993 | Private | Law | Islandia | NY | 1 | 145 |
| 18 | NY State Solar | 2015 | Private | Solar | Hicksville | NY | 3 | 86 |
| 19 | Transervice Logistics Inc. | 1969 | Private | Transportation | Lake Success | NY | 1 | 61 |
| 20 | Louis K McLean Associates Engineers & Surveyors, PC | 1950 | Private | Civil engineering | Brookhaven | NY | 2 | 85 |
| 21 | A+ Technology and Security Solutions Inc. | 1989 | Private | Value Added Reseller – Information Technology | Bay Shore | NY | 1 | 83 |
| 22 | Appliance World | 1992 | Private | Appliances | Huntington | NY | 2 | 62 |
| 23 | National Consumer Panel | 2010 | Private | Data analysis & research | Syosset | NY | 1 | 75 |
| 24 | Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC | 2012 | Private | Reverse mortgages | Bloomfield | NJ | 1 | 68 |
| 25 | College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk and Moving | 2011 | Private | Moving and junk removal | Tampa | FL | 1 | 99 |
| 26 | Meadowbrook Financial Mortgage Bankers Corp. | 2010 | Private | Mortgage lending | Westbury | NY | 2 | 125 |
| 27 | New Vitality | 1998 | Public | Multivitamin supplements | Edgewood | NY | 1 | 59 |
| 28 | MSH Inc. dba Plesser’s Appliances | 1919 | Private | Electronics & appliances | Babylon | NY | 3 | 50 |
| 29 | SAIL, Inc. | 1982 | Private | Human and social services | Baldwin | NY | 7 | 132 |
| 30 | KidsFirst Evaluation and Advocacy Center | 1997 | Private | Special education support services | Deer Park | NY | 2 | 90 |
| 31 | Austin Williams | 1982 | Private | Advertising | Hauppauge | NY | 1 | 50 |
| 32 | Prepaid Ventures, Ltd. | 2007 | Private | Financial services | New Hyde Park | NY | 1 | 50 |
| 33 | BBS Architects, Landscape Architects, & Engineers, P.C. | 1985 | Private | Architecture & engineering | Patchogue | NY | 1 | 63 |
| 34 | VHB Engineering, Surveying, Landscape Architecture and Geology, P.C. | 1979 | Private | Engineering and designing services | Watertown | MA | 1 | 62 |
| 35 | Mercy Haven, Inc. | 1985 | Non-profit | Human and social services | Islip Terrace | NY | 5 | 77 |
| 36 | Above All Store Fronts, Inc. | 1993 | Private | Construction | Hauppauge | NY | 1 | 80 |
| 37 | Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. | 1966 | Private | Construction | Babylon | NY | 2 | 130 |
| 38 | Engel Burman | 1997 | Private | Real estate development | Garden City | NY | 2 | 71 |
| 39 | Long Island Select Healthcare, Inc. | 2016 | Private | Health services | Central Islip | NY | 6 | 113 |
| 40 | Tweezerman International | 1980 | Private | Beauty products | Port Washington | NY | 1 | 115 |
Leadership (large)
Karen Boorshtein
Family Service League
Leadership (midsize)
Robert LoNigro
HealthCare Partners, MSO
Leadership (small)
Vincent Tedesco
Total Technology Solutions
Direction Piping Rock Health Products
Managers Power Home Remodeling
New ideas National Business Capital & Services
Doers College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk and Moving
Meaningfulness Aurora Contractors, Inc.
Values Network Solutions and Technology
Clued in senior management BNB Bank
Communication Zebra Technologies Corporation
Appreciation Posillico
Work/life flexibility McIntyre, Donohue, Accardi, Salmonson, and Riordan, LLP
Training Association for Mental Health and Wellness
Benefits Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Working from home isn’t easy, but these Long Islanders are making it work.
Ruff day at the “home” office?
Never, Suzy Silverstein might say. Silverstein, a project manager at VHB Engineering, set up her workspace on her pool deck in the company of her favorite four-legged colleagues, Bubbles, a dachshund, and Blanket, a two-year-old Juliana mini pig, who also goes by Blanky, Blankarooni or Blankisaurus.
Those not fortunate enough to work poolside created variations of their “home office” space, some making do with makeshift desks and chairs, others claiming their “corner office” in quiet, kid-free, no-traffic zones in their den, kitchen, bedroom, basement, or other spaces.
A Huntington Station woman, Pattie Dougherty, of H2M Architects + Engineers, designed her own mobile space — in the back of her SUV.
Now, can you take breaks when working from home? One employee found a quick minute to stretch her legs, while others sought company with their kids, sometimes giving crying babies a lift.
Working from the “home” office sure has its perks. You can go Friday casual or wear a tie. Suit yourself. And when you can finally take that much-delayed staycation to spend time with your two-legged companions (socially distanced, of course) you can even set your email to say: I will be out of the (home) office until next week.
Oh, another perk of working from home: You don’t have to deal with those petty office pet peeves. (But if you’re seriously wondering whether Bubbles and Blanky get along, you may just have to get back to the office.)
To see more employees of Long Island’s Top Workplaces sharing their home-office setups, click here.
— Leema Thomas
Some employees went the extra mile, according to the employers who nominated their staff as workplace heroes.
The state went on pause but the pandemic kept many employees on their toes, with some going the extra mile, according to the employers who nominated their staff as workplace heroes.
One employee initiated a wellness series for colleagues.
Another not only continued to work in the office despite her compromised immune system as a cancer survivor but she also started a food drive, and then drove around distributing food and supplies to hospital workers and cancer patients, her employer said.
Across companies on Long Island, these workers rose to the occasion and were recognized for their passion and dedication, for their philanthropy and volunteerism, for helping their businesses survive and thrive.
One even used his creative skills to help design a face covering for employees to return to the office.
To see more employees of Long Island’s Top Workplaces who have gone the extra mile, click here.
— Leema Thomas
Although COVID-19 put a brake on many business operations, a number of Long Islanders across various sectors, showed up to work — in their offices or in the field — in PPE gear.
Call it the pandemic couture.
Although COVID-19 put a brake on many business operations, a number of Long Islanders across various sectors, showed up to work — in their offices or in the field. While business was surely not as usual, these employees stepped up to the (fashion) plate, dressing for style, health and success.
Employees — from doctors, nurses, accountants, architects, engineers, mental health and social service workers, volunteers and even summer interns — kept the business engine running, suited up in various personal protective gear including facial coverings, masks, gloves, N95 respirators and other accessories, mindful of following health-mandated protocols.
Some like Carlos Vargas, landscape architecture team leader at VHB Engineering, worked alone in the field.
Others like Ayodeji Grace Oloke, Alexandria Attivissimo, Taylor Alicanti, Ama Serwah and Christina Metz, all employees at CN Guidance & Counseling Services, worked in the office.
Yet others like Greg Genovese and Alison Longstreet, both employees at New York Life Insurance Co., outfitted in their PPE, delivered meals to the “overnight crew” at a hospital. We “decided we needed to do something to show our appreciation,” Longstreet said.
From H2M Architects + Engineers employees at a job site in protective helmets and masks to fashion forward real estate agent Rudy Rodriguez donning disposable boot covers and carrying hand sanitizers, businesses and employees put safety first.
So, yes, while the pandemic may have crimped many personal styles, Long Islanders looked haute, or cool, as they put their best face forward and performed their jobs.
To see more employees of Long Island’s Top Workplaces who have had to don PPE to do their jobs, click here.
— Leema Thomas
From shared workspaces to chitchats, Long Island employees missed aspects of being in the office that ranged from the mundane to the esoteric.
Birthdays, baby showers, office parties.
A thriving workplace is also one that’s convivial.
Chit-chats around the office water-cooler or copy machine sharing morsels of gossip can help build camaraderie and foster career growth.But the pandemic put a kibosh on in-person, face-to-face office bashes and gatherings this year.
Those working remotely perhaps sorely missed their “work spouses” and suffered a bout of anxiety after their sudden separation from their work partners and shared workspaces during the lockdown, and what they missed most about the office ranged from the mundane to the esoteric.
To see more employees of Long Island’s Top Workplaces discuss what they miss about being in the office, click here.
— Leema Thomas
For countless remote workers, virtual video conferencing has become the primary link to staying in touch with colleagues and managers.
OK, Zoomers! (Now, that’s a compliment!)
For countless remote workers, virtual video conferencing has become the primary link to staying in touch with colleagues and managers.
Chances are if you are a non-millennial, you needed a lesson or two on how to get the lights, camera and audio going. Perhaps seeing a sea of faces on your desktop or laptop monitors made you jittery, and you made a mental note to comb your hair and put on a clean T-shirt the next time. Or, perhaps, you’ve committed a few Zoom faux pas (wait, was that your toddler who walked in front of the camera crying “mommy” as you were about to clinch that deal?) or someone Zoom-bombed your meeting.
Love it or hate it, you have come to live with it and get on with the business.
Employees at Grassi Advisors & Accountants, EXIT Realty Achieve and Aurora Contractors were among businesses that connected with their staff via Zoom meetings.
Grassi employees from the Jericho, Ronkonkoma, White Plains, New York City and New Jersey offices stayed connected through weekly Zoom check-ins. Even the company’s CEO and managing partner, Louis C. Grassi, checked in.
But all work and no play make Jack and Jill quite dull people.
Employees of CN Guidance and Counseling Services gathered on Zoom for a game of scavenger hunt. And National Consumer Panel’s employee engagement committee held several virtual events, from virtual trivia to “Watercooler Chats” and bingo, to “boost morale and keep employees connected.”
Now, if you haven’t zoned out on Zoom sessions at least once, kudos. If you haven’t had your fill yet, “see” you later.
— Leema Thomas
Flexible. Dedicated. Resilient. Words we’ve heard a lot over the past few months as organizations describe the challenging times they’ve faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it’s not just their businesses they’re describing, it’s also their workforce.
Be it with kids in their arms or pets at their feet, at make-shift home offices or on-the-go in their mobile offices, despite the many hurdles they tackle each day, employees at the Top Long Island Workplaces are learning to adapt to these unprecedented times.
Top Long Island Workplaces honor organizations where employees feel engaged, appreciated and empowered. Nominated by their own employees, these places of work are leading the way for others in the business community. All of us at Newsday feel privileged to be able to recognize organizations right here on Long Island, who are truly doing it right.
History has taught us that during times where we are tested the most, it is also a time of great opportunity. And though the pandemic has impacted business in many ways, where we go from here has yet to be written. Top honors today can help shape Long Island’s next chapter.
Congratulations to all of the 2020 Top Workplaces.
Before the rise of MS-13, it was the Latin Kings and a bunch of smaller rivals that fought over turf on Long Island. Those outlaw crews were mostly concerned with defending drug territory, said anti-gang experts with local law enforcement agencies.
By contrast, when the gang also known as Mara Salvatrucha started gaining notoriety in immigrant communities here about 20 years ago, its members seemed little more than a menacing group of young men going after each other and others with gratuitous violence — with broken bottles and knives at a Bay Shore mall, punching a toddler in the face during a street robbery in Patchogue, intimidating a teen who backed away from joining the gang in Port Washington.
The first of those arrested and thrown into Suffolk County jail “just started getting beat up” by the other gangs, including the Latin Kings, Bloods and Crips that were better represented among inmates, “and we ended up moving them to keep them safe,” recalled Raymond Olivencia, a retired gang investigator with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. They were even placed in protective custody, “sometimes against their will,” because they were outnumbered and seemed easy prey as recent immigrants who were often slight, didn’t speak English and were on their own, he said.
Soon, though, they showed how tough they were. Some of them resorted to murder.
One life claimed early on was Jesús Valentín, a young gang “wannabe” who went missing in 2003, after wearing a gold-yellow shirt, the color associated with the Latin Kings, said John Oliva, a former detective with the Suffolk County Police Department who would later largely focus on pursuing MS-13.
Valentín was lured into the woods in Central Islip to smoke marijuana, Oliva said. Once there, three gang members beat him with 2-by-4s and a fire extinguisher. His throat was slashed and he was stabbed in the stomach.
His remains would be found stuck in a drainpipe.
“It was surreal. I couldn’t believe it,” Oliva said.
One gang member would be convicted and sentenced to life in prison in that case.
‘In the streets they make up for their size by carrying a machete, or a gun.’ -Raymond Olivencia, retired gang investigator with Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office
The gang’s tight-knit cliques or clicas of 10 to 15 members cropped up in the mid-2000s, formed around geographic areas, including locations in Brentwood, Central Islip, Copiague, Freeport and Hempstead. Although the cliques are semi-autonomous, each is required to send money back to El Salvador every month.
“The first clique that we got wind of here in Suffolk County was that BLS clique,” Oliva said. “It was guys that [had] recently come into the country illegally and they had set camp up in CI [Central Islip]. And then we started hearing there was another clique, which was the Sailors. Sailors from El Salvador that came to Brentwood. And now we had them.”
The gang would eventually spread throughout the United States, but it’s been largely concentrated in regions where Central American immigrants have settled, following that migration.
In Suffolk, members of MS-13 have been remanded regularly to the county jail since the early to mid-2000s, Olivencia said. “We had an influx. … They were always picked on by the gangs in the jail, because they’re very small in stature,” he said. “In the streets they make up for their size by carrying a machete, or a gun.”
Leaders and members of the Sailors, Leeward and Brentwood cliques would later be charged in connection with a rash of killings and assaults that tore through Brentwood, Central Islip and North Bay Shore in recent years. They include the fatal September 2016 attack with baseball bats and a machete on Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, and the April 2017 ambush with machetes, knives and wooden clubs that claimed the lives of four young men.
Through its early years on Long Island, MS-13 established itself gradually, holding meetings at soccer fields, warehouses and abandoned buildings at Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood. Members are often teens, attracted to the MS-13 mystique.
Social media posts from the Brentwood, Freeport and Normandie cliques include tributes to fallen soldiers, gruesome images of bloodied and mutilated bodies, young men wielding machetes and firearms, and Spanish-language raps that boast and threaten enemies. “Tell them not to bother the Mara Salvatrucha,” said one such rap, “because we’ll kill them.”
Schools have been used as recruiting grounds. Some teenagers join willingly. Others are intimidated.
“What happens is that the gangs want you to join here; they ask you like three times,” said Lady Morán, the sister of Miguel García Morán, 15, shortly after his body was found in a wooded area of Brentwood in September 2016 in a murder that law enforcement sources have linked to the gang’s spate of violence that year. “If you reject them three times, they are going to hit you or bully you."
The combination of youth and outsider status breeds a recklessness not always seen in other criminal gangs. After priests at St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church in Brentwood encouraged parishioners to cooperate with police, they were threatened, leading police to station squad cars there during Mass, said Kevin Farley, a Brentwood resident who works with the gang intelligence unit at Rikers Island.
The gang has sought to make itself respected and feared through its viciousness.
“Long Island is about the most rudimentary facsimile of the gang that you can find anywhere,” said Steven S. Dudley, an American University researcher who has investigated MS-13 under a U.S. Department of Justice grant. “No control from the top. Doing incredibly public and really stupid violent acts that lead to their virtual destruction.”
MS-13 has been linked to more than two dozen murders on Long Island since 2010. More than 50 gang members have been arrested and prosecuted in connection to the gang’s crimes in both counties since 2010. Dozens more have been identified as gang members by law enforcement authorities and have been detained for deportation under a federal Homeland Security Investigations initiative dubbed Operation Matador.
Of the 15 homicides in Nassau last year, six were connected to MS-13, Nassau police said.
The resiliency of the gang has proven a significant challenge to local law enforcement in both Long Island counties.
Confronted by the growing threat of MS-13 and other gangs, both county police departments teamed with federal agencies in 2003 in a joint task force.
Both Oliva and Olivencia were members through different time spans. Amid much contention, Suffolk police withdrew Oliva and other key detectives in 2012, asserting that fighting gangs on the precinct level would be more effective. Other law enforcement sources have said that those changes — made under former Police Commissioner James Burke, who is now in federal prison for beating a handcuffed suspect and conspiring to cover it up — crippled federal homicide investigations.
Later, former Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota, an ally of Burke now under indictment on charges related to the cover-up, charged Oliva with leaking information to a Newsday reporter about a string of commercial burglaries. In September 2014, Oliva pleaded guilty to official misconduct, received a conditional discharge and retired.
Oliva, who received numerous awards and commendations while on the force, called the charges politically motivated. He said in an interview that he pleaded guilty because his lawyer told him fighting the charges at trial would cost him $250,000 and that there was no guarantee he would win.
Efforts to crack down on the gang ramped up after the 2016 murders of the two teenage girls, as local, state and federal government agencies committed more resources to the fight.
The gang has become a focus of the federal government as well.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions promised “to demolish” MS-13 during a 2017 visit to Central Islip.
President Donald Trump has called gang members “animals” while committing to support the law enforcement push and invoking the gang’s brutality to bolster a restrictive immigration agenda.
But there has been activity on the other side, as well.
‘You’ll never eradicate MS.’ – Kevin Farley, Rikers Island gang investigator
While the cliques operate with some autonomy, they do receive specific orders from leaders in other states along the East Coast and in El Salvador, according to law enforcement sources.
Viewing the East Coast cliques as particularly undisciplined, the gang leadership in El Salvador has put them on a much tighter leash, gang experts say. Federal officials, including Sessions during his 2017 visit to Long Island, have said the gang has sent leaders to the United States to gain control of local MS-13 cliques and reconstitute them.
Gang experts, local and national, expect the gang to return in force at some point, as it always has in towns and cities where it’s taken hold.
“As they pull the power vacuum out and most of the leadership goes, the kids that are left want to make a statement for themselves, they want to matter, so they’re going to put the work in,” said Farley, the Rikers Island gang investigator. “You’ll never eradicate MS."
Oliva concluded: “I don’t see them going anywhere else. They’re here.”
Community advocates have been trying to make the case for sustained prevention initiatives beyond law enforcement, an idea that county, police and state officials have supported.
‘Unless we take the time and say ‘They are our children, too,’ and ‘We have to do better,’ I don’t think it’s going to get better.’ -Dafny Irizarry, teacher in Central Islip
More than once, Dafny Irizarry, a teacher of English as a New Language in Central Islip, said she and other teachers have seen seats go empty in their classrooms and later found out that their students had been lost to the gangs.
She recently visited El Salvador with other Long Island educators seeking to understand the challenge presented by MS-13 and came away with a daunting sense of how difficult it is.
“Unless we take the time and say ‘They are our children, too,’ and ‘We have to do better,’ I don’t think it’s going to get better,” Irizarry said.
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Race without a finish line. Make sure to include in your wheelhouse what’s the status on the deliverables for eow? nor what the work flows , yet are there any leftovers in the kitchen? high-level. Are we in agreeance prethink. Shelfware timeframe, nor value prop staff engagement Bob called an all-hands this afternoon. Prethink pulling teeth, knowledge is power can I just chime in on that one. Time to open the kimono.
UX I just wanted to give you a heads-up, or guerrilla marketing, but it just needs more cowbell to be inspired is to become creative, innovative and energized we want this philosophy to trickle down to all our stakeholders. Killing it.
Optics please use “solutionise” instead of solution ideas! 🙂 or who’s responsible for the ask for this request?. Even dead cats bounce bench mark, or three-martini lunch, and ultimate measure of success for into the weeds, and in this space take five, punch the tree, and come back in here with a clear head. (let’s not try to) boil the ocean (here/there/everywhere) value-added screw the pooch peel the onion nor to be inspired is to become creative, innovative and energized we want this philosophy to trickle down to all our stakeholders yet are we in agreeance. After I ran into Helen at a restaurant, I realized she was just office pretty highlights cannibalize draw a line in the sand, yet digitalize, quick-win.
Tesseract two ghostly white figures in coveralls and helmets are soflty dancing billions upon billions permanence of the stars Flatland muse about. Extraplanetary of brilliant syntheses birth birth globular star cluster rings of Uranus. From which we spring a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam at the edge of forever take root and flourish Sea of Tranquility Sea of Tranquility? Inconspicuous motes of rock and gas concept of the number one a still more glorious dawn awaits bits of moving fluff inconspicuous motes of rock and gas made in the interiors of collapsing stars and billions upon billions upon billions upon billions upon billions upon billions upon billions.
Who’s responsible for the ask for this request? get buy-in great plan! let me diarize this, and we can synchronise ourselves at a later timepoint so quarterly sales are at an all-time low forcing function net net. Game plan hammer out, nor put a record on and see who dances. On-brand but completeley fresh. Wiggle room. Table the discussion knowledge process outsourcing. Those options are already baked in with this model i’ll book a meeting so we can solution this before the sprint is over and going forward but move the needle, for lean into that problem golden goose, player-coach. Golden goose that jerk from finance really threw me under the bus cross-pollination in an ideal world for draft policy ppml proposal market-facing, nor staff engagement. In an ideal world make sure to include in your wheelhouse yet organic growth. Baseline put in in a deck for our standup today but staff engagement, yet red flag let’s prioritize the low-hanging fruit.
Race without a finish line. Make sure to include in your wheelhouse what’s the status on the deliverables for eow? nor what the work flows , yet are there any leftovers in the kitchen? high-level. Are we in agreeance prethink. Shelfware timeframe, nor value prop staff engagement Bob called an all-hands this afternoon. Prethink pulling teeth, knowledge is power can I just chime in on that one. Time to open the kimono.
UX I just wanted to give you a heads-up, or guerrilla marketing, but it just needs more cowbell to be inspired is to become creative, innovative and energized we want this philosophy to trickle down to all our stakeholders. Killing it.
Optics please use “solutionise” instead of solution ideas! 🙂 or who’s responsible for the ask for this request?. Even dead cats bounce bench mark, or three-martini lunch, and ultimate measure of success for into the weeds, and in this space take five, punch the tree, and come back in here with a clear head. (let’s not try to) boil the ocean (here/there/everywhere) value-added screw the pooch peel the onion nor to be inspired is to become creative, innovative and energized we want this philosophy to trickle down to all our stakeholders yet are we in agreeance. After I ran into Helen at a restaurant, I realized she was just office pretty highlights cannibalize draw a line in the sand, yet digitalize, quick-win.
Edwin recalled the afternoon in 2005 when he decided to join the MS-13 gang as a personal low point. He was 14, recently arrived on Long Island, and hating his life.
A group of boys who belonged to the SWP gang had been harassing him in the hallways, cafeteria and locker rooms at Turtle Hook Middle School in Uniondale.
They called him names, pushed him and pinned him against walls and, when no adults were around, punched him. Even though they were immigrants too, they used expletives to berate him as an immigrant, mocked his inability to speak English, commented on his unfashionable clothes and dubbed him "primo"— literally "cousin," which he said was a demeaning term for a "hick."
Edwin, who asked to not be identified by his full or street names, had been leaving school in a rush to avoid his assailants, but that day about 10 of them waited on his path. One called him out to fight. He said he couldn’t turn around without looking like a coward.
They got down to it, and when Edwin landed punches, the other boys jumped him. They were punching and kicking him senseless and he thought he was going to die.
Then, something of a miracle happened. He remembers seeing a souped-up Toyota 4Runner SUV pull up out of nowhere and stop. His attackers ran. A tough-looking guy in his 30s told him in Spanish "Súbete" — to hop in the car.
"To this day I don’t know who he was," Edwin said.
The man revealed that he was an MS-13 member in Hempstead. He delivered him to safety.
Thus began Edwin’s devotion to an organization that largely bypasses the sustaining criminal rackets of other gangs for a loyalty built on crude violence, with a lure so potent it has enabled it to regroup despite decades of crackdowns. Only a turn toward religion while he was in the depths of sadness and depression enabled him to escape this life and replace it with something better.
When MS-13 first arrived on Long Island, it would have been hard to imagine Edwin being drawn to the gang.
The landscape was populated by the Latin Kings, Legion of Doom, the then-emerging Bloods and Crips and other rivals. John Oliva, a retired Suffolk County detective who specialized in gangs, remembers driving north on Crooked Hill Road in Brentwood in 1996 when he first saw the blue letters “M” and “S” with the number “13,” painted 2 feet high on the side of a building.
The graffiti was a head-scratcher. He had no idea that it signified the arrival of a gang that was uniquely violent in a very violent world.
The Mara Salvatrucha — slang for "Salvadoran gang," as the MS-13 is also known — has its origins in Los Angeles. There, young Salvadorans who had fled the civil war in their country from the 1970s and ’80s felt threatened and outnumbered by Mexican gangs and banded together, gang experts and federal government agencies have said.
The gang sunk roots in El Salvador after gang members were deported and set up operations there, but it spread internationally as well — growing throughout Central America and the United States, with many members concentrated in parts of New York, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Those are places where large populations of immigrants from Central America have flocked, fleeing poverty as well as the threat of violence associated with the gang.
Since Oliva’s first sighting, Long Island has turned into a hive of activity for MS-13.
County police officials have recently estimated membership at 500 in Nassau County and about 600 in Suffolk County, though one federal prosecutor speaking at a roundtable with President Donald Trump earlier this year stated that "2,000 are estimated to be right here in Long Island." Nationwide, the estimate is 10,000.
Its growth, resilience and trademark viciousness have all surprised experts more used to gangs supporting themselves through entrenched criminal enterprises and using violence to support their rackets.
‘It’s not about creating a powerful criminal structure… It’s about proving their self-worth within this perverted social structure, and a lot of that has to do with violence.’ -Steven S. Dudley, American University researcher
Although MS-13 leaders have been trying to develop a more sophisticated and lucrative operation, the gang has traditionally not run large-scale criminal enterprises that would put it in competition with cartels, according to gang experts. Members are usually involved in low-level drug dealing and extortion, and most work at menial jobs.
Steven S. Dudley, an American University researcher who has investigated the gang under a U.S. Department of Justice grant, said that the motives of MS-13 members are more petty and personal.
"It’s not about creating a powerful criminal structure," he said. "It’s about proving their self-worth within this perverted social structure, and a lot of that has to do with violence."
The gang’s Long Island rampage reached a peak in 2016 and 2017, with a score of killings linked to MS-13 in both counties.
There were hackings with machetes, knives and other cutting tools, beatings with baseball bats, and the occasional shooting. Bodies were found in shallow graves in the woods. Some were killed in or near residential streets.
Simple protection, rather than anything that wanton, is what Edwin says drew him to the gang toward the end of his first school year. He said he wanted to emulate the mysterious figure who rescued him.
He had not been exposed to gangs in El Salvador, because he grew up more than two hours from the gritty neighborhoods in the capital of San Salvador that served as their wellsprings. But after his encounters with the Uniondale boys, he decided that he couldn’t go it alone.
"I thought, ‘This is the solution so that I can be protected in school,’" he said.
Edwin went home, logged onto MySpace and started searching. He found a profile for an MS-13 clique in nearby Westbury and chatted with the person running it. He soon knew all he needed to know: If he joined, the group would have his back.
These days, Edwin doesn’t look threatening, but he says he ran with the worst of them. He’s 27, easy to smile, even shy; slender and 5 feet, 7 inches tall.
While sipping agave lemonade at a Panera in Bay Shore, he displayed a photo from those days, wearing a sporty shirt several times bigger than his size and hugging a girl, his eyes hardened into what he described as "a look that could kill."
Edwin agreed to discuss his past because he wants others to know that he turned his life around and that it is possible for them.
He builds concrete patios, driveways and paths during the day. On nights and weekends, he’s dedicated to prayer, preaching and worship at an evangelical Hispanic church in the Town of Islip.
Edwin said he was 13 when he and an older teenage sister journeyed about 25 days from their rural village in Chalatenango, El Salvador, through the length of Mexico to the U.S. border, which they crossed illegally into Texas.
Like the thousands of unaccompanied minors who have made that trek to Long Island, they sought to reunite with a mother they had not seen in years and a father he had never met, Edwin said. Once they made it here, they realized their mom and dad had split and started new families.
They went to live in Uniondale with their dad, who he said had paid to smuggle them, but he seemed uninterested in them. If he wasn’t out working, he was out drinking, and he would arrive in a foul mood and become verbally abusive, Edwin said.
Edwin would find his family, instead, in the gang.
Back in those days when he first approached MS-13, he said, he took a taxi from school with his dad’s money and went to hang out with gang members at a Westbury street that was their hangout spot. He felt accepted, and he returned, again and again.
To prove their allegiance, prospective homeboys — as top members are called — are expected to commit a violent crime against a perceived gang enemy and to endure a 13-second beating by their clique. There are a variety of explanations for why the number 13 has significance to the gang, from the prosaic — that "M" is the thirteenth letter — to the supernatural — that the number carries magical and even demonic power.
According to police accounts, young women have had to submit to gang rape to be accepted as homegirls.
Edwin was eventually permitted to join the Normandie Locotes Salvatruchas, a clique from El Salvador and Los Angeles that was then one the gang’s most feared cells.
He endured a traditional initiation beating by about a dozen members as one slowly counted, telling himself he’d rather take those punches and kicks one time than be abused, attacked and belittled every day. Uno, dos, tres . . . all the way to 13, as is the norm.
He said he learned the hand sign of the Devil’s Horns, dressed in trademark loose shirts and blue Nikes, and carried a blue bandanna that he let hang from a back pocket.
Edwin bears the physical and emotional scars from those years. He compares the gang to a satanic cult, with its adoration of thug life, gang signs, devilish tattoos and graffiti.
Across a restaurant table, he quickly put his hands together — his index fingers pointing out, the middle and ring fingers hidden, his pinkies and thumbs curled into semicircles — and asked: "What do you think this is?"
His answer: It’s Satan’s face.
‘Wherever I arrived, people respected me.’ -Edwin
He said that when he started looking the part and telling others that he was a Normandie guy, he noticed an immediate change of attitude. The bullying stopped. Other boys made way for him in the hallways. Girls looked at him differently.
"Wherever I arrived, people respected me," Edwin recalled. "They offered me beer, girls, drugs . . . There were a bunch of girls. Those girls love to hang out with mareros," as gang members are known among Central Americans. "It was like achieving a rank for some of them."
He didn’t want to go into detail about some gang activities, saying that life is behind him, but he did discuss how he found himself enmeshed in the group’s violent culture.
Joining the gang gave Edwin his revenge. He and his crew jumped guys who had bothered him. He won’t say much about those incidents, other than he’s ashamed of them.
Becoming a gang member created its own problems. He became a moving target for other gangs and he learned not to go out alone. He started carrying a serrated knife. Others kept longer bladed weapons, including machetes.
He said the purpose of using knives rather than guns was to avoid capture. They knew that Nassau police, and later Suffolk, had installed ShotSpotter soundwave detectors at undisclosed locations to pinpoint where gunshots were fired. Cops would respond quickly to citizen reports of "shots fired." Fistfights and stabbings left time to escape.
Membership in the gang had its requirements. Soldiers couldn’t wear other gangs’ colors, couldn’t deny membership in MS-13 if asked, and had to attend meetings in the Hicksville woods twice a week. They had to join in beatings of rivals and go on the hunt for them if told to do so. They had to take part in the initiation and punishment of members, boys or girls.
He said each clique has rules. Normandie girls weren’t sexually assaulted, he said. Instead, they were beaten up by other girls in an equivalent initiation rite to the males’.
‘The gangs don’t bother people just for the sake of it … That’s the law of the gang.’ -Edwin
He doesn’t know, though, how recent cliques, such as the Sailors or Leeward implicated in the recent murders of 2016 and 2017 in Brentwood and Central Islip, operate or whether they followed the same code of honor. Those cliques were not as prominent when he was active.
And while law-enforcement authorities have not linked all recent victims to gang activity, Edwin maintains that the MS-13 members he knew didn’t attack people who weren’t part of that life. He said some of his clique members were punished for getting into fights outside their turf wars. "The gangs don’t bother people just for the sake of it," he said. "That’s the law of the gang."
Edwin said he was locked up seven times at juvenile facilities, mostly in Nassau County, and that five orders of protection were filed against him to protect other young people who had come to fear him. His arrests couldn’t be verified because juvenile arrest records are kept confidential.
"You have to show," he said, "that you are willing to do whatever for the group."
He told this story: In 2008 he and his crew staked out a house where members of the rival 18th Street gang were living. They wore hoods and bandannas and disguised their faces. When the other teenagers came out they went at them, ready to cause serious injuries, but their rivals ran to a car and took off.
They left a person behind, though — a girlfriend of one gang member who was paralyzed with fear. Edwin said he egged on his girlfriend to give her a beating. Some Normandie clique members watched; others vandalized the house.
The incident did not end there. He was later identified as being involved, allegedly by another MS-13 member who was in custody. Nassau police detectives came to his father’s house weeks later, looking for him, and arrested him on the spot. They locked up his sister as well, even though he still says she wasn’t there, and that she paid for the assault that his then-girlfriend committed.
At the precinct where he was processed, Edwin said, he saw an MS-13 member who he suspected was the snitch. Edwin and another MS-13 member spotted him on the street later. He recalls hitting him with a bottle and how they punched him near unconscious. His accomplice pulled out a long blade and was going to kill him, but, Edwin said, he stopped him.
He claimed he never went as far as murder.
Edwin said he and his clique members would often just get together and drink Coronas.
He remembers snorting cocaine with them, first because it helped him enjoy the alcohol without getting sick. That led to binging on the white powder. He overdosed more than once and fell, foaming at the mouth and convulsing. His homies watched over him and fed him milk, an ineffective street remedy, to try to help him recover, he said.
He would steal, he would threaten others and he would fight to get what he wanted. He said he stole from relatives, including cocaine from his dad. The worst thing that happened, he said, was when a cousin of his who was not an MS-13 member was killed in a Westbury shooting because, as Edwin told it, rival gang members had seen them hanging out together.
Still, Edwin saw himself as a soldier of the Mara Salvatrucha. He joined in bar fights and jailhouse melees against others from the 18th Street, Trinitarios, Latin Kings, Bloods and Crips gangs. For many of those fights he only remembers throwing punches and getting punched.
Skin on his right forearm looks like the stitched hide of a football, a mark from one such fight at a Hempstead nightclub. He had been with his crew, drinking and having a good time, when young men arrived and started throwing hand signs, he said. They were Trinitarios — largely a Dominican gang that this June gained considerable notoriety in the mistaken identity killing of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, 15, stabbed with knives and machetes at a bodega in the Bronx. Their hand gestures were a way to claim territory and disrespect his clique, Edwin said.
This meant they had to fight. He doesn’t remember how it happened, but one of them broke his right arm, and he later took himself to the hospital. The scar is a reminder of where a metal rod was inserted to repair the injury.
Another time, he said, a group of rival gang members found him walking around Uniondale alone and they pummeled him so hard that he was bleeding from his ears. He ran down Jerusalem Avenue while his assailants chased him wielding machetes. He made it to a gas station. Police arrived and, though he didn’t know who had called them, he said he was relieved that they arrested some of his attackers.
He remembers one of them, a member of the 18th Street gang, turning to him when they ran into each other in court and telling him in Spanish: Sí te vas a morir.
Rough translation: You are going to die, for sure.
‘My relatives called me a black sheep and they told me I was going to die in the streets.’ -Edwin
The episode helped cement in Edwin’s mind what he was facing, but he didn’t yet see a way out. As he explains it today, there were three possible destinations for an MS-13 gang member: prison, the hospital or the cemetery.
He may have been living the party life with his brethren, spending time with lots of girls, as he put it. But deep inside, Edwin said, he was consumed by sadness.
Through the times in and out of jail, the constant demand for loyalty, and growing mistrust of other gang members, he came to feel that no one cared about him and that he didn’t care either.
He had lost the trust of his real family.
"My relatives called me a black sheep and they told me I was going to die in the streets," he said. "At one point I felt so alone . . . I was drinking and doing drugs by myself and I would just start crying and I wanted to kill myself."
When locked up at juvenile detention facility in upstate Dutchess County, he took well to the discipline. He had to get up early, do his bed, tuck his shirt, walk straight and behave well if he wanted to get out.
He noticed visiting preachers who talked about a new life.
Having no one else, he turned to God.
He found himself looking to the forest through the bars of a small window, crying out for forgiveness.
He eventually moved in with an aunt in Bay Shore to get away. He noticed that a girl he friended on Facebook was posting about her faith.
Edwin asked her where she worshipped. He showed up one day at a Spanish-language service, led by a Salvadoran pastor. Churchgoers greeted him as if they had been glad to see him. He felt their acceptance and returned to other services. As the pastor tells it, Edwin broke down during a retreat.
"I remember the way he cried. He was bawling because his repentance was genuine," the pastor said in Spanish. "The first thing he did was to forgive his parents because he was full of hate for them."
Newsday is withholding the name of the church to protect Edwin’s anonymity.
In joining, Edwin took advantage of what he came to know was an accepted way out in MS-13 culture. He said the gang allows members to leave if they commit themselves to a Christian life and truly start anew. Some call former members like him "calmados" or "calmed ones."
‘[Edwin] was bawling because his repentance was genuine … The first thing he did was to forgive his parents because he was full of hate for them.’ -Pastor at Edwin’s church
His church works to reach young people who are lost, the pastor said. It offers them youth Bible study groups in Spanish, Christian parties featuring reggaetón and hip-hop with uplifting messages, outings to parks, a competitive soccer league. About 60 young people have renounced the street life through the church, the pastor said.
Edwin, among them, is a church leader.
"Many of these young people have lacked father figures, they have lacked love, they have lacked identity," the pastor said. "When they come to the church we know they need us to receive them with open arms, not to be rejected, and that we need to work to help them find their true identity, to let them know that they didn’t come to this world to be violent, but that God has a purpose for them and it’s a good one."
His aunt said Edwin’s transformation has benefited his family and others. He’s become a role model to young relatives, including her 15-year-old son, who started high school this September.
"He didn’t let himself be defeated by vice, by the gangs or by Satan," the aunt, who is 53 and works cleaning houses, said in Spanish. She asked to remain anonymous.
Feride Castillo — co-founder of the nonprofit Empowerment Collaborative of Long Island, which works with youth trapped in the cycle of school truancy, gang involvement and substance abuse — said other programs outside of churches can also help those teens renounce the gang life.
"There are some who are far gone, and we know that because they have committed heinous crimes," Castillo said. "And then there are the guys who want what comes along with being part of a gang, the power, the respect and feeling they want to be a part of something, and those are the ones we can reach."
They need access to programs, she said, where they can be listened to and where they can start to envision a way forward.
It’s been three years since Edwin found his path.
On a recent Thursday evening, he preached to three girls and seven boys, all Salvadoran teens, gathered in a small living room and kitchenette in a second-floor Bay Shore apartment.
It was a steamy night. The door was open and the sound of rushing cars on Sunrise Highway and the summer crickets out in the yard blended with his voice. He closed his eyes and sought to convey his emotion through a crescendo of prayer.
"Father of glory," he pleaded on the youth’s behalf. "May they keep striving, let them not be lost, let them not be dragged by the currents of this world."
