By Emma Gutmann
Concerned community members joined representatives of the Suffolk County Police Department at Hauppauge’s main firehouse at 855 Wheeler Road on Thursday, Sept. 28, discussing the local impacts of street racing, sideshows and raucous partying at the Hauppauge Industrial Park.
David Regina, SCPD 4th Precinct inspector, presented numerous social media clips of the conditions caused by these sideshow events. Footage included 100-yard radius donuts, handcuffed drag racers fleeing from officers and men jumping on police vehicles.
Regina’s report also included statistics of tickets and arrests for reckless driving and 911 vehicle/noise complaints in the industrial park over the past two years.
Although two notable occurrences this September at HIP prompted the meeting, Regina said that this has been an issue across Long Island and even nationwide. He claimed the sideshows and large-scale music gatherings cropped up in February 2022, while others in the audience insisted that these disturbances have been going on even longer.
An attendee from Dix Hills said she has been enduring continuous unrest since her high schoolers were young children in 2015. She lives 2 miles from the Deer Park train station, where deafening parties occur every Friday and Sunday until midnight.
As the second largest industrial park in the country, open all night with no security cameras, HIP is also an easy target for sideshows. The perpetrators — typically males ages 18 to 25 — have been able to thwart police by posting coded alerts on social media, which warn the group to move to a predetermined backup location.
To initiate enforcement, Regina said officers must convince two business owners to fill out extensive paperwork in the middle of the night to sign an affidavit. Since the industrial park is not fenced in, residents and police officers at the scene cannot accomplish anything on their own.
Suffolk County Legislator Steven Flotteron (R-Brightwaters), who attended the meeting, assured residents that he is exploring potential changes to the law to avoid such loopholes.
“You need two residents to sign an affidavit,” he said. “In some cases, the people having the party might be in a gang, and neighbors do not want to sign an affidavit. How do we ever get it stopped?”
Flotteron added, “Before, we needed two people here to sign an affidavit, and the police officer couldn’t do anything. Now, it could be a police officer or a peace officer that can write the noise complaint.”
The community meeting became heated as community members began asking questions, sharing their experiences and offering suggestions to help. Given this crime phenomenon’s severity and ongoing nature, a fissure has developed between residents and law enforcement since the sideshows started.
Several attendees mentioned that they are told to call 911 when events break out but are made to feel dramatic and unimportant when they do. Citizens questioned how police have been unable to discover and break up such rowdy gatherings before they become townwide headaches.
Suffolk County Legislator Leslie Kennedy (R-Nesconset) advised those who report these sideshows to avoid putting themselves at risk and stay out of the line of harm.
911 operators “are not supposed to ask you to go find the place,” she said. “None of you should be putting yourself in a situation where you could be killed.”
Members of the audience agreed that the police department often does not have the resources to deal with these outbreaks, but that they would like to help them remedy that. With more resources and more effective laws and penalties, officers will not be so easily overpowered and endangered, restoring order to a dangerous situation locally.
Flotteron and Kennedy closed the discussion by promising to speak to state representatives and other officials in the morning to bring greater awareness to this issue, put legislative changes in motion and propose the crowd’s idea of adding cameras to the industrial park.
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