In a milestone indicative of how deadly and prolonged the toll of the virus has been, Suffolk County reported the first day without a death from COVID-19 since March 16.
“I’m finally able to say that no one in Suffolk County in the last 24 hours has died from COVID-19,” County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said on his daily conference call with reporters. “That’s a great place to be.”
While Bellone said the county, which entered Phase Two of its reopening Wednesday, June 10, still has a ways to go before it controls the spread of a virus that has claimed the lives of 1,945 people in the county, the day without a death from the pandemic is a “milestone.”
With many other states, including Texas and North Carolina, are experiencing a surge in the number of people diagnosed with the virus and being admitted to hospitals for their care, Suffolk County continues to experience a decline in the number of residents testing positive.
Indeed, in the last day, despite protests over the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a former police officer charged with murder, the number of people who tested positive in the county only increased by 47, raising the total to 40,559.
Bellone attributed the current condition on Long Island to the pain, uncertainty and suffering that rocked Long Island, which was the epicenter of the pandemic in the country.
“Because of the experience we’ve gone through, overwhelmingly, people are taking precautions,” Bellone said. “They are still listening to the guidance. Even at protests, even at demonstrations, I have seen people wearing face coverings.”
Suffolk County also has an advanced testing and contact tracing system that is making a difference as the area reopens.
Meanwhile, earlier today, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) signed an executive order requiring local police agencies to develop a plan that reinvents and modernizes police strategies and programs in their community based on community input. Each police agency’s plan must include procedures and practices that extend beyond the use of force by April 1, 2021.
The police forces have to engage the public in the process, present a plan for comments, and share that plan with a local legislative body. If the government doesn’t certify the plan, the police may not be eligible to receive future state funding.
Bellone said he “looks forward to working with the state” on community police policies. The county executive said he is proud of the work the Suffolk County Police Department has done with anti-bias training.
The SCPD has “developed leading edge initiatives.”
Cuomo also signed a bill passed by the state senate earlier this week repealing 50-a, a statue in civil law that prevented people from accessing records of police and other civil servants like firefighters. Advocates said this will allow more transparency, especially regarding police misconduct. Police unions and senate republicans said this would puts cops in more danger, despite proponents saying people cannot gain access to cops’ personal information.
Bellone reemphasized a point he has made in recent days amid the backlash against unjust and unfair policing polices, suggesting that the police are “part of the community, they aren’t coming into the community” from the outside.
Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said she met this morning at 11 a.m. with the President of the Guardians, which is an internal fraternal organization representing black officers. She meets with the Guardians on a monthly basis.
Officers in the Guardian “know they have accessibility to leadership,” Hart said. “Those conversations lead to suggestions.”
The discussion this morning was more informal and was part of an open conversation and dialog.
As for the impact of COVID-19 in the county, the numbers continue to show a hard-fought recovery from the deadly virus.
Hospitalizations in the 24 hours ending on June 10 declined by 17 to 134. The number of residents in the Intensive Care Unit also declined by four to 41.
“These are all great numbers,” Bellone said.
An additional 16 people were discharged from hospitals in the county.
The bed capacity remained below important levels. Residents with COVID-19 represented 66 percent of the overall beds, and below 60 percent of the ICU beds, which are below the 70 percent guidance offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The county handed out 17,000 pieces of personal protective equipment over the last day.
Finally, the county worked with Island Harvest to distribute food through a program called Nourish New York today.
The effort, which was at the Westfield South Shore Mall in Bay Shore, planned to distribute 100,000 pounds of food, including cheese, milk, yogurt, fresh fruit and vegetables and ground beef.
The program “helps those in this desperate time who need food” while preventing waste and supporting the agricultural community, Bellone said. Through 2 p.m., the program had handed out more than 2,500 boxes of food items.
One of the new signs on a local lawn. Photo from Setauket Presbyterian Church Facebook
Despite the turbulence the country has been enduring for the past few months, Three Village residents and those in surrounding areas are showing support for all human beings.
Signs featuring the colors of the rainbow with additional black, brown, pink and blue stripes, and bearing the messages, “Our faith community celebrates pride” on one side and “Our faith community celebrates diversity” on the other, have popped up on random lawns the last couple of weeks. The signs are the result of a committee made up of local clergy members and lay people from various faith communities, according to the Rev. Ashley McFaul-Erwin, community outreach pastor at Setauket Presbyterian Church.
The pastor said the group was in the early stages of planning the first Three Village pride walk for June but then the pandemic happened. The members threw around the idea of a car parade but weren’t sure how they could do that safely and decided the signs would enable them to display the message in front of their homes and religious buildings.
McFaul-Erwin said it was an important message to share with many Christian churches having discriminated against the LGBTQ community in the past. The blue and pink stripes were added to represent transgender people and black and brown stripes are to show unity with people of color.
The Rev. Linda Anderson, community minister in affiliation with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at Stony Brook, said she thought it was a brilliant idea.
“The signs will last longer than a parade,” she said. “They can be spread out more widely. It’ll just keep saying the message of peace, love of humanity, justice and fairness.”
Elaine Learnard, a Quaker and member of Conscience Bay Friends Meeting, agreed.
“I think it’s a great way to do it and very creative during this time where everything is so crazy,” she said.
Barbara Ransome, director of operations of the Greater Port Jefferson Chamber of Commerce, was part of the committee as a member of Conscience Bay Friends Meeting. She said she has one on her lawn and also placed one in front of the chamber office.
“With all the stress going on — George Floyd’s death, rallies, COVID-19, etc. — this is a symbol of unity,” Ransome said.
McFaul-Erwin said the Setauket Presbyterian Church also placed a pink triangle on the Village Green with 51 flags. She said the flags are “in memory of all who have been harmed by churches throughout the years. We want to repent for harm done as well as celebrate.”
On June 1, the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons and North Fork held a debate between the four candidates vying for the Democratic nomination and who will then face off against incumbent Lee Zeldin (R-NY1) for the New York’s 1st Congressional District seat. The nominees in the upcoming primary election June 23 are Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming (D-Sag Harbor), last year’s front-runner Perry Gershon, former educator Nancy Goroff and Gregory Fisher, who has run for multiple local offices over the years.
Though the debate went on for more than an hour and a half, it did not touch on points such as the current protests against racism and police violence currently rocking the nation.
Here’s what they had to say on a number of key issues and challenges facing the district.
1.On what issues do you think there is a reasonable possibility of enacting legislation to benefit the country?
Bridget Fleming
Fleming: I’m known as someone who has reached across the aisle and looks at problems and challenges with an eye toward hearing from all stakeholders. Then taking on the tough decisions to move forward. I have a proven record on that.
There are a number of issues that face our congressional district. One, for instance, is immigration. Many people feel that the current immigration system needs comprehensive reform. Individuals are so enamored with special interests.
Another issue is the epidemic of gun violence. There is a consensus in the country on commonsense background checks, on a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines. There are many issues upon which the country agrees but because of the influence of special interests and someone like Lee Zeldin, who has a perfect record from the NRA, caters to those special interests. We can get beyond that.
Gershon: The goal when I’m your congressman is to enact policy that we can do on a bipartisan basis whenever possible. There is a crying need for certain policies as we go forward and try to climb out of the coronavirus-based recession. That’s building jobs. How do you do that? With infrastructure and investing in our economy. There was a glaring need for infrastructure even before coronavirus, and it’s doubled or tripled now.
We have the opportunity for green jobs, green energy in a new economy. We need Democrats and Republicans cooperating with each other. That obviously starts with getting [President] Donald Trump (R) out of the White House. With a uniter in the White House we can pass policies and take it beyond infrastructure, we can go to health care, the other real priority for America. We can build on the Affordable Care Act. We can make sure Americans understand that health care is a right not a privilege.
Goroff: If I’m elected my top priority is to make sure we are taking meaningful action on climate change, which is the largest threat we face to our way of life, even today. I can do that by acting as a resource for members of Congress from both sides of the aisle — making sure they have access to the best information available, making sure all their questions are answered and holding their feet to the fire to ensure we are taking action. We will make sure we are setting ambitious targets as we strive for a carbon zero economy.
We invest in deploying existing technologies, in reusable energy, in clean vehicles, and in clean buildings.
Fisher: One of the important issues is that voters don’t feel like they are being listened to. They are looking at a lack of access to their representatives. We are crippled economically, people are out of a job and can’t pay their bills. They want to know how you are going to get things done and get us out of trouble.
I subscribed to a philosophy called a decentralized autonomous organization, where citizens can input every detail, on what they want to influence. I have an economic plan that will eliminate the scarcity caused by this long-term economic shutdown.
2. As a congressperson what specific proposals would you support to improve our immigration system?
Nancy Goroff
Goroff: We need to take action toward making comprehensive immigration reform. We must prepare a pathway to citizenship for our Dreamers and we must make sure we are allowing families to be reunited. We can’t be separating children from their families at the border and we should be considering more effective/humane ways to help people coming in who want to claim asylum.
The fact that people have to wait for months or years, and now we are imprisoning them — is unnecessary and unconscionable. We should be looking at why we have such a stream of refugees coming to our border. There are programs that were started in Central America by the Obama administration to help refugees on the ground, so they don’t have to leave. We need to make sure we are reinstating these programs that can keep refugees from thinking the only opportunity is to walk 1,000 miles across Mexico. Our policy must be humane and must live up to our American values.
Fisher: Most citizens want several points addressed. They want registration, they don’t want a secret population, they want taxation, they want to make sure they are paying their share. The other one is assimilation and education so that those people are ready for our society.
There are people out there that are starving for the opportunity to be a part of this American dream.
Fleming: The immigration system in the United States is deeply broken and needs comprehensive immigration reform. It needs to be the top priority of anyone’s agenda who is looking to take a job on Capitol Hill.
We need to fix our broken visa system. Luckily in Suffolk County, we have allies in the farm community who have been deeply hurt by the system and can’t find enough workers to harvest their crops. That is an alliance we can lean on in Suffolk County to move that process forward and make reforms.
We need to end separations of families at the border. It is inhumane and unacceptable. We need a clean DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] bill, we need to restore TPS [Temporary Protected Status]. We need to ensure that the border is secure, but secure because we have undertaken a system of immigration that is fair and humane.
Perry Gershon
Gershon: It’s no secret that immigration was a challenge in this country even before the election of Donald Trump. We have been trying to solve our immigration issue for many years and under many different presidents.
Trump has made a bad situation and made it worse. We’ve got to take care of the Dreamers, people who are in this country through no fault of their own, who did not commit a crime, and have no nation they call home except America. We need to give them a path to citizenship, we need to take care of TPS recipients. We need to have defensible borders, we need to have a system where people do not just flock into America. We need to be able to secure our borders and be able to maintain them while we take care of the people here.
3.How can we bring affordable housing, job creation to LI, especially for millennials?:
Goroff: Now with COVID-19, millennials are facing another challenge in getting their careers started. As a lifelong educator, I believe in making education available to people and to make it affordable. That means making sure we have sufficient Pell grants for our students. So people and families can afford excellent degrees and they can get good jobs.
We also need to make sure all jobs are paying a true livable wage and that means investing in new jobs here, like clean energy and increasing the minimum wage. We also need to address the health care issue because it is a burden on businesses.
Fisher:We have created a generation of homeless millennials. Why? Because they can’t leave their parents’ homes, they can’t afford to buy a house or pay the rent for an apartment. They are living late in life at their parent’s houses. My plan would include a revamp of the tax system, so we have money to invest [in the economy]. Education should be a right, we need to build America.We need to fundamentally make a new commitment to young people and realize that we have betrayed them.
Gregory Fischer
Fleming: This is one of the critical challenges here in Suffolk County and in NY1. It is something at the county legislature we have attacked with real intention and real success. For instance, look at the Village of Patchogue and the surrounding areas.
The developments of these vibrant downtowns are encouraging young people to stay on Long Island and make a life here.
I’ve been fighting for affordable housing since my time on the [Southampton] town board.
Gershon: People want to stay here and not to be forced to move away because of better jobs. The way we fix that is get better paying jobs here on Long Island so that young people can move here. Also, we need to improve their educational prospects by not having them come out of school massively burdened by student debt. We need to do things like reducing the cost of student debt. The federal government should not be making a profit off it by lending to our students so they can afford to go to college. The government should be facilitating college education.
We can give people the opportunity to pay off some of their student debt in exchange for national service. Let them be teachers, let them do things that will improve our own society.
On affordable housing, we need to bring money into Long Island. We need to fund housing for the middle class, we need to find a way that doesn’t force people away. The government can do that, it can be a federal policy. We need fair development as well.
Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, the dean of the Stony Brook Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, is eager to restart the educational mission of training medical school students.
Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, the dean of the medical school at SBU, said there’s a real possibility of a second wave of COVID-19. File photo
While Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has said that medical schools can restart on June 22, Kaushansky has asked for a waiver to allow students to continue to build on their clinical knowledge sooner.
“I was worried about the delay in doing the experiential learning,” Kaushansky said. A delay that lasts too long could push graduation back for the rising fourth year students, which is “not good for any health care professional. We need health care professionals, including respiratory therapists, physical therapists, nurses and social workers” among others.
On top of the need to ensure on-time graduation for the Class of 2021, he said another wave of the COVID-19 crisis will increase the demand for graduates.
The medical school dean said Stony Brook University Hospital is watching carefully the protests over the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer charged with his murder. The hospital and staff are ready in the event of a spike in demand for health care after large gatherings on Long Island and in New York City.
“We are ready to mobilize on a moment’s notice because we did it the first” time, albeit with numerous questions about the course and potential treatment for the new virus, Kaushansky said.
On Saturday, he sent out a letter to the health sciences community addressing what he termed “health care racism.”
“We witnessed the sum of all these effects in the disproportionate lethal burden of COVID-19 on communities of color, a combination of overcrowding at home, of jobs that do not allow the protection afforded by work from home, or from the disproportionate burden of health care conditions that arise, in part, from health care disparities,” he wrote in the letter. He urged the Stony Brook community to “do everything in our power to work toward erasing the social determinants of disease that contribute to our unequal society.”
He urged learners and critical staff to develop and practice cultural sensitivities, and he also suggested that the school should make “certain our graduates reflect the diverse society in which we live.”
In its admission decisions, SBU includes the notion of overcoming hardship as a part of the process through which the school evaluates prospective students.
In the coming years, Kaushansky plans to emphasize further the importance of encouraging those who have faced significant hurdles in applying to the medical school.
In terms of treating patients who have COVID-19, he is encouraged by the use of remdesivir and convalescent plasma. The school has these treatments available for people who are sick and is studying the effectiveness of these approaches.
More than 1,500 patients have been admitted through the university hospital, Southampton and Eastern Long Island hospitals and have benefited from the clinical study of symptoms including clots.
Surgeons had noticed that D-dimer levels, which are proteins that indicate the presence of clots, were shooting up. They decided when this protein reached a certain level, they would use a full dose of anticoagulants.
Stony Brook has put the results of these aggressive anticoagulant treatments into an article that has been submitted for publication.
In the meantime, the university has taken an across-the-board approach to raising anticoagulants.
“That will improve the mortality rate should we get a second wave,” Kaushansky predicted.
In the event of a second wave, Stony Brook Hospital and, indeed, New York will be better prepared, with more tests, greater awareness and contact tracing.
Kaushansky believes that the people who have already fought off the virus are presumably immune from getting it a second time. What’s unclear, he explained, is whether the antibody test is predictive of resistance. Additionally, it’s unclear how long that resistance will last.
He expects that monoclonal antibodies can work, but that they should be reserved for the sickest patients. They are expensive and are hard to produce the level necessary for the U.S. population of more than 300 million people.
What worries the Stony Brook dean is that people have had enough of staying at home, social distancing and wearing masks. In the worst of the crisis, when the numbers of people sick and dying were climbing, Kaushansky could get to work in much less time than normal, as traffic on the roads had lightened up considerably.
Days before the Phase 2 reopening, which began on Wednesday of this week, the level of traffic has returned to a more normal density.
Meanwhile, Phase 2 for Stony Brook University involves reopening research laboratories and allowing people who were previously deemed nonessential workers to return to the labs in an “orderly and safe fashion,” Kaushansky said.
The university has installed plexiglass shields, requires social distancing, built partitions between people who don’t have their own offices, and requires everyone to wear masks and have their temperatures taken when they come to work.
The hospital opened up for elective surgery two weeks ago. Everyone who is scheduled for surgery has to get a viral swab the day before.
The approach the university has taken in requiring personal protective equipment and social distancing has paid off for hospital staff who have been exposed to all those sick patients. The rate of antibody tests of employees is much lower than in the general community.
“It’s safer to be a frontline health worker at Stony Brook than to work at some grocery stories,” Kaushansky said.
On the clinical side, he believes Stony Brook Hospital needs more highly skilled nurses. At the peak, the university hospital had 437 patients. If it had reached 500, “we would have been in trouble,” he added.
Upstate New York had sent 20 experienced nurses to help out.
“Nursing is important and high-level nursing, operating-room nursing, was particularly stressed,” Kaushansky said. “We need to hire more nurses.”
He added that the school trains excellent nurses and plans to hire some of its own graduates.
In terms of medical school classes, the dean said the university hasn’t decided yet whether to bring small groups back together. The big lecture halls will still involve remote teaching.
“Are the smaller group educational exercises going to be back safely?” he asked. “I’m working to make that happen.”
Kaushansky takes solace in the way PPE reduced the infection rate for the hospital as a whole, and believes such an approach could work for medical school classes as well.
Civic groups protested in front of the Gyrodyne property March 2. Photo by Rita J. Egan
The Suffolk County Sewer Agency will meet June 22 to discuss granting provisional approval of plans to construct a Sewage Treatment Plant on the Gyrodyne property, Route 25A in St. James. The STP would be in the watershed of Stony Brook Harbor, a major source of the North Shore’s clean water supply. Based on testimony from independent environmentalists and water quality experts, we believe building this STP presents serious health, safety and environmental concerns affecting residents of the towns of Smithtown, Brookhaven and across the North Shore of Long Island. We caution the Sewer Agency not to act hastily without full review of environmental and health impact studies.
Six Reasons the Gyrodyne Sewage Treatment Plant Should Not be Built in its Proposed Location
1. Biohazard and medical waste usage requirements. Medical and health care facilities — two primary tenants of the proposed Gyrodyne redevelopment — pose special sewage-treatment needs, including advanced filtration systems to safely process radioactive and biohazardous medical waste products. However, toxicity and other special needs have not been addressed in the approval process. In fact, a 2012 study by the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences cited the unexpectedly high level of radioactive iodine in Stony Brook Harbor traced to effluent from Stony Brook Hospital.
2. Noncompliance with government laws and regulations. Under New York State’s Environmental Quality Review Act, the conditional approval being considered by the SC Sewer Agency is premature and illegal. As a subordinate agency in the SEQRA process, Suffolk County can only provide approvals after SEQRA is complete and accepted by the permitting authority (in this case, the Town of Smithtown). Smithtown has not completed the process.
3. Instant overcapacity. The proposed STP is slated to accept 100,000 gallons per day for treatment. Gyrodyne officials have stated their intention of allowing Lake Avenue (St. James) business district to hook up to the STP adding another 70,000+ gallons per day. The Lake Avenue sewage volume would immediately put the plant above overcapacity.
4. Location. Sited in a Rapid Groundwater Transport area less than 8,000 feet upstream from Stony Brook Harbor, the proposed plant will discharge thousands of gallons of effluent daily into grounds abutting the harbor — and ultimately seep into the harbor itself, killing off the ecosystem.
5. Waterway vulnerability. Stony Brook Harbor is a relatively narrow waterway with meager flush capacity taking up to 12 days for full water exchange with Long Island Sound. In addition, due to the unique configuration of Smithtown Bay, waste products will remain for exceptionally long periods in the harbor until finally removed by the tidal exchange.
6. Nitrogen exposure. Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) has named nitrogen “Public Enemy #1,” calling it Suffolk County’s largest cause of water quality degradation. Nitrogen is associated with marine hypoxia and habitat destruction leading to excessive algae blooms and “green water syndrome.” As nitrogen cannot be fully filtered from effluent flow, permitting construction of this STP on Gyrodyne property would dramatically undermine the county’s $4 billion campaign to reduce nitrogen exposure
We urge the Suffolk County Sewer Agency to wait until the New York State’s Environmental Quality Review Act is complete or, better yet, recommend a more appropriate location for what is quickly becoming a regional sewer treatment plant on environmentally sensitive lands.
George Hoffman, Co-founder, Setauket Harbor Task Force
Even as Phase Two of the economic restart began yesterday, County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said he has reached out to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D) office to request the restart of other activities.
Bellone has asked that youth sports be permitted. He said he also would like to see non-touch museums that have large spaces with capacity limits reopen.
“Some of that was lumped into Phase Four with mass gathering-type activities,” said Bellone on his daily conference call with reporters. The county is looking at what it can open up sooner.
Bellone, who spent parts of the first day of Phase Two getting a haircut, dining out and enjoying ice cream with a tour of several downtowns in Suffolk, said the reopening was “off to a good start” and that it helped people feel more of a sense of normalcy.
Bellone reminded business owners that the county started a personal protective equipment giveaway.
The county is providing some cloth face coverings and hand sanitizer to small businesses, nonprofit companies and faith based organizations.
“Reopening businesses in this environment is a challenge,” Bellone said. “To the extent we can do something that helps them a little bit, we want to do this.”
Bellone said 403 businesses had filled out applications for those supplies since Monday and that 226 businesses had picked up those kits. Interested business owners can find a supply request form at suffolkcountyny.gov/bru.
Viral Numbers
Over the last 24 hours, an additional 48 people have tested positive for COVID-19, which brings the total to 40,512. The county executive hopes that number continues to remain below 100 for any given day.
The number of new infection numbers continues to remain below 100 despite protests in response to the murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd.
Bellone said it might still be a little early to draw any conclusions about the potential spread of the virus in response to the protests. He will be looking more closely at the new infection rates through the weekend and into the beginning of next week.
“My sense is that being outdoors is a safe environment,” the county executive said.
For the 24 hour period ending on June 9, the number of people in hospitals with COVID-19 declined by 14 to 151. The number of people in Intensive Care Units declined by one to 45.
Hospital bed occupancy from people with the coronavirus stood at 66 percent for hospital beds overall and at 60 percent for ICU beds.
An additional 15 people were discharged from the hospital and are continuing their recovery from the virus at home.
Meanwhile, the number of people who died from complications related to COVID-19 increased by four in the last day. The total for the same period ending yesterday was two, which brings the total to 1,945.
The county distributed an additional 26 pieces of personal protective equipment over the last day.
Evidence seized in the arrest of Robert Roden. Photo from SCPD
Updated June 11 with details about the contents of Roden’s backpack. Also includes details about his unnamed partner’s need for medical attention at the Stony Brook Emergency Room and Roden’s arrest in 2019 for third degree menacing.
Robert Roden. Photo from SCPD
Suffolk County Police arrested Robert Roden, a Mastic Beach resident, for allegedly bringing three explosives into the Stony Brook University Hospital on the night of June 9.
The hospital evacuated two floors of the building around 9 p.m. Tuesday, including the Emergency Room, which reopened at 1:30 a.m.
The police were alerted to Roden’s presence after a hospital security guard from the State University Police called the SCPD because of a suspicious package inside Roden’s backpack.
Roden and a male partner with whom he lives traveled from their residence in Mastic Beach to the hospital, where the partner, whom the police didn’t name, received medical attention.
Police are questioning the partner as well as the person who dropped the two of them off at the hospital.
In addition to the three explosive devices that the police described as being about the size of a grenade with a fuse, Roden also had a hatchet and handcuffs. He had a BB gun in his waistband, which was loaded with 9 millimeter ammunition.
Any potential motive or even target for the use of these weapons is still under investigation, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said on a conference call with reporters.
In mid December of 2019, Roden, 33, was charged with menacing in the third degree. That case remains open.
Earlier Wednesday, June 10, police executed a search warrant at Roden’s home. The SCPD Arson Section, with help from the Suffolk County Emergency Service Section Bomb Squad and Canine Unit officers, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the State University Police at Stony Brook found multiple explosive devices at Roden’s residence.
Police said the FBI is evaluating the devices.
The police charged Roden with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, criminal contempt in the second degree and two counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree. Additional charges are pending.
Roden is being held at the Seventh Precinct and is scheduled to be arranged in First District Court in Central Islip June 11.
*Original Story*
Device Outside SBU Hospital is ‘Real,’ Police Have Made an Arrest
Suffolk County Police Department confirmed that a device they discovered outside of Stony Brook University Hospital on Tuesday night was “real.”
The police department has made an arrest and has recovered additional devices, according to a spokesman for the SCPD. The department is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the investigation is continuing.
On Tuesday night around 9 p.m., Stony Brook University Hospital temporarily evacuated two floors of the hospital after receiving a report about a suspicious man wearing a tactical vest. The Emergency Room reopened at 1:30 a.m.
Officers found the person, who has no university affiliation, and recovered a BB gun. The officers also noticed a suspicious object in his backpack, which led to the temporary evacuation.
Suffolk County’s Emergency Services Unit searched the backpack and removed items for further analysis, according to University Police Chief Robert Lenahan. The backpack was rendered safe and items were removed for further analysis.
There were no injuries.
This is a developing story.
Updated at 9:30 p.m. June 10 to add information from SCPD.
Several hundred protesters stood along Nesconset Highway in Stony Brook June 7 to protest police violence and racism after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Sunday marks nearly a week of constant protests all across Long Island. Photo by Mike Reilly
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis two weeks ago spurred nationwide protests and renewed conversations on police brutality and systemic racism in this country. TBR News Media reached out to prominent leaders in the black community to get their perspective on what needs to change and what immediate actions can be taken as we move forward. Here’s what they had to say.
Al Jordan. Photo from Stony Brook University
Al Jordan, clinical associate professor at Stony Brook Medicine and former dean for Student and Minority Affairs:
We will need to work on life after the protests end, that’s when the hard work really starts. We will really need to see change in policy and in laws, not just on the national level but the local level as well.
Voter registration — getting more people to vote — is the most immediate change we can work on right now. It will take educating people, including family, friends and community members. It means engaging with people, it’s tough work but people can listen and be persuaded. Some may not, but it is another effective way of change.
You look at the segregation on Long Island, whether it’s in housing or in school districts, the racial, social and economic disparities — it feeds into the larger issue.
When it comes to training police officers, it has to begin with the individual person. What’s on their mind, how do they feel? Act on that framework. You also have to change the people who run things and who are at the top.
I’m optimistic, I believe in people. I see it in the young people, something that’s different from what I and others were doing in the 1960s. They have been able to bridge the gap, that cultural divide, and been able to find that common ground.
It has given me a lot of hope, seeing these young people like my own grandchildren engaging in these positive activities and important discussions.
Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon. Photo by Kevin Redding
Errol Toulon Jr. (D), Suffolk County sheriff:
All law enforcement need to reevaluate how they train their officers and how they operate. I don’t know how an officer with 18 prior complaints was allowed to continue to interact with the public.
Unfortunately, due to this recent incident and others like it, mistrust toward law enforcement is at an all-time high. We need to work together to regain that trust.
It’s having a conversation with them. It starts by talking to them and hearing their concerns, answering their questions and hopefully giving them a good understanding of what we do.
99 percent of police officers who come to work to serve and protect are good men and women. But those who do wrong need to be held accountable. Supervisors need to be held accountable as well.
Whether it is additional training or suspension it needs to be addressed immediately.
One thing departments and agencies can do is increase cultural awareness and diversity training. A lot of times these teachings end once they leave the door of the academy. We have to make sure that officers remain engaged with the black and minority communities. We must have respect for each other.
Another thing is making sure we are talking to our staff — monitoring their emotional and mental well being.
[On Monday, Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office announced the creation of a community advisory board to give residents an opportunity to meet regularly with the sheriff and staff and discuss concerns. The board will consist of five people from East End townships and five from the western towns in Suffolk. Members will serve for a one-year term.
“Current events have demonstrated that people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds are frustrated with law enforcement, and they have some legitimate reasons to feel this way,” Toulon said in a release.]
Elaine Gross speaks about race at ERASE Racism forum. Photo by Kyle Barr
Elaine Gross, president of Syosset-based nonprofit ERASE Racism:
There’s currently conversation changing police policy, there’s a legislative package up in Albany that will be voted on soon. I’m pleased to hear that.
But we also need to have a conversation on how we got to where we are. There is structural racism.
On Long Island, due to segregation in school districts,, we know public school education looks very different in terms of the resources for black and minority students compared to white students.
This is a disparity that gets lost — people are not aware of it or just don’t want to talk about it. An education policy needs to be made a priority, and that means increasing the percentage of educators of color in the classroom — that includes Black, Latinx and Asian teachers. We have seen the benefits of students in a diverse learning environment.
In addition to the package up in Albany, we need an independent prosecutor, not someone who works closely with the police department. We have seen so many cases where so little happens and no charges brought down [on officers accused of misconduct]. It sort of goes away. We need to continue to strengthen race crime measures and increase body cams in law enforcement.
I’ve had forums with high school students in the past on structural racism, and I believe students are beginning to have a better understanding of what’s happening in the world and are more open to it than adults. I look to the students and young people to carry the movement forward.
Councilwoman Valerie Cartright. Photo by Phil Corso
Valerie Cartright, Brookhaven Town councilwoman (D-Port Jefferson Station):
It is clear that there is a movement happening, people are stepping up and saying, “Enough is enough.”
For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the George Floyd incident showed white people in this country what it is like to be black in America. Now our voices are being heard.
There is legislation being passed in New York State that I support that is moving us in the right direction, but it is only scratching the surface. It is a good first step. We need to acknowledge these injustices and take immediate action.
We should have already had access to disciplinary records of officers — this information should have been made public. Also, we need to change the police culture. We need to make sure police officers feel comfortable in speaking out against bad officers. We have to have strong whistleblower protection.
I have represented [as an attorney] police officers who have spoken up about their comrades and they often face retaliation for violating or going against the brotherhood.
The majority of police officers are good people but if we don’t get rid of hate, racism and discrimination in these departments then we are never going to change the system.
I’m asking everybody to join in this movement, so we can be heard as one voice.
Long Islanders marched down Smithtown’s Main Street June 7. Photo by Rita J. Egan
One thing we should all find comfort in is that people are not willing to let injustice go unanswered.
Anyone who has a shred of decency and an ounce of moral concern knows that what happened to Minneapolis man George Floyd was brutal, cruel and a significant abuse of power. Police officer Derek Chauvin placed his knee on the neck of a man for just under nine minutes, despite video evidence showing he did not present any danger to officers at the scene. Three other police officers looked on while Floyd called out for his mother, dying, without them raising a finger to help or make any point of protest.
To some, this seems just a singular instance of cruelty, but for the massive numbers of protesters rallying and marching around the country, and now the world, it was just another instance of continued injustice on our minority communities. That is why the protests have been nearly unrelenting. That’s why the movement has spread to all parts of the country, including our backyard.
So far on Long Island, all protests have remained peaceful and have taken place at sites meant to facilitate large gatherings, all with a police presence. There have been some tense moments, and so far two people in Suffolk have been arrested relating to a protest in Shirley, but nowhere on Long Island have we seen the violence taking place in major cities. It’s important we recognize that while those protests have seen injury to both protesters and cops as well as property — though let’s remember that the life of any one individual vastly outweighs any and all damage to structures — there are many instances of police using extreme force on protesters, medics and journalists, as if proving the very point of the need to end such injustice.
But though those kinds of protests are not happening on Long Island, by reading some residents’ opinions on social media, you would think protesters are all walking down suburban streets ready to attack anyone who crosses their paths.
Activists across Long Island have been working very hard to maintain civility with these protests against injustice. That’s not to say events haven’t gotten heated, as in the case with protests in Merrick which faced plenty of racist sentiment and in Smithtown where one young man claims he and his friends were attacked. In Huntington, one restaurant owner came under fire for being caught making racist comments about “throwing watermelons at protesters” as they marched through downtown. He has since made a video apologizing for his remarks.
We all have to understand why these people rally and march. Long Island remains a very segregated place, as evidenced by a three-year Newsday report displaying racial bias on the part of many real estate agents and agencies. The COVID-19 pandemic has only laid bare the inadequacies, as minority communities have been disproportionately infected while their schools have struggled harder than most to teach their children when many don’t have access to online technology.
We commend the conscientious work of protest leaders, activists, local officials and police to facilitate these rallies and make sure they remain on point and peaceful, and also protect those who rally from being the target of violence as well.
To those residents who look on protesters with concern, often the best way to understand them is to simply speak with them. Start a dialogue. Understand where they’re coming from. Protests such as these aren’t designed to give certain populations benefit over others, but to reach an equality mandated under the words of the Constitution.
Just remember, if you yourself say you can separate good cops from bad cops, then you can separate peaceful protesters from rioters.
Hi, welcome to my store. It’s so good to see you after all these years. It hasn’t been years, I know, but it just feels like it because I’ve been a prisoner at home with my teenage children who have decided they are allergic to cooking, cleaning or almost anything else that has to do with helping around the house.
But, hey, this isn’t about me, it’s about you. You’re looking well, thank goodness. That’s the most important thing, right? This virus has been so hard on everyone, but I promised I wouldn’t say anything about the virus today.
Anyway, we have decided to move to a high touch environment because we can only have two people in our store at a time and one of them is me, which means you’ll have to leave the child you’re carrying in the stroller outside.
You don’t have a stroller? No problem. I have a disinfected stroller just for this occasion that I can bring out from the back for you. In fact, I’m happy to sell it to you at a bargain price because I haven’t sold much of anything these days. I tried selling food to my teenage kids, but they just said I was a terrible cook, they weren’t hungry or they would be in their rooms and I shouldn’t bother them until 2021.
Oh, wait, there, I did it again. I’m so sorry. Silly me, I’m talking about myself. And, whoops, I see from your frown that you’re not happy I touched your shoulder when I made that joke. I have to make sure I socially distance. In fact, I have this new touch-the-shoulder-in-a-joking-way stick that’s exactly six feet long which I would also be happy to sell to you. I know it looks like two yard sticks taped together, which it kind of is, but it guarantees that you’ll be six feet away from everyone else.
Yes, of course, I’m fine. Why do you ask? I’m so happy we’re entering Phase Two this week, you know? It’s a relief. I’m desperate for a haircut and I’m sure you are, too.
No, I didn’t mean to say that I thought you needed a haircut. Your hair looks great and the customer is always right.
Anyway, so I see you’re looking at those boots over there. What an excellent choice! You clearly have an eye for high fashion. I’m sure my daughter, who is on the other side of the plexiglass, wouldn’t mind taking them off and selling them to you.
Oh, you want new ones? Well, that may take a while because our shipment is in quarantine. Oh, no, wait, the shipment hasn’t even reached quarantine yet, so, ha ha, how about if you glance through the rest of the store while I pretend to read this dystopian book that I thought might be a good idea before we started to live in a dystopian society.
What’s that? Oh, well, I’ve had a few cups of coffee this morning because I thought I’d need to be my sharpest and this stupid book kept me up all night. But, hey, I’m like a phoenix, returning to the world of selling and socializing and connecting with my customers, because that, after all, is the key to being successful in business.
Wait, no, please, don’t leave. I know your child is outside screaming. You can bring her in. It’s fine, really. In fact, can I give you a hug? I was kidding. That was a test and you passed, so, yay for you.
Oh, I see you’re really going. Well, tell your friends about the store. Did I mention that your hair looks great?
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