By Alexander Dworkowitz
College Point is fed up with development, fed up with the lack of parking and fed up with lawbreakers, angry residents told the College Point Civic Taxpayers Association at a boisterous meeting last Thursday.
Moreover, some of its citizens want to take matters into their own hands.
“At 6:30 tonight, I had a man come up to me,” said Rocco Cardali, president of the College Point Security Patrol. “He said, ‘I have 20 men, and I want to go out and bust some heads.’”
While most of the residents who turned out did not embrace such drastic measures, the 100 or so who gathered for the first meeting of the civic group in more than a year expressed frustration at what they described as a deteriorating community.
Tensions at the meeting ran high. Some spoke with impatience, others in outright fury. One shouting match escalated to the point that Community Affairs Police Officer Ki-Soo Kim of the 109th Precinct radioed in another police officer to escort a man out of the VFW Hall.
Many complained of lax zoning laws. Attendees expressed anger at a recent Community Board 7 recommendation to allow residential use of the six-story Waterview Plaza on the site of the former EDO seaplane base.
“I see all this new housing going in, but I don’t see any more new sewer lines,” noted one man. “We can only absorb so much.”
Sabina Cardali, president of the civic group and the wife of Rocco, said illegal conversions were common in the community.
“You have a one-family house and all of a sudden you have a three-family house,” she said.
“What you are talking about is happening all over the city,” responded state Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn (D-Fresh Meadows). “There just isn’t enough housing.”
Many also worried that College Point, which can be accessed by only four roads, was not receiving its fair share of police officers.
Kim admitted that oftentimes the 109th Precinct does not have an officer in College Point.
Kim attributed the problem to a manpower shortage. He said the precinct, which should have 240 officers, has only 198 because many officers recently have retired.
“Some of these officers have 50 jobs a night and don’t have a chance to eat,” he said. “The complaints come in and the phone never stops ringing.”
The 109th Precinct is one of the largest precincts in New York City, several times the size of many precincts in Lower Manhattan. Kim said police officials at the department’s 1 Police Plaza headquarters could easily cut the 109th Precinct in two.
“I don’t think anyone downtown ever looked at our map,” he said.
To make up for the lack of a police presence, Michael Simanowitz, Mayersohn’s chief of staff and commanding officer of the 107th Precinct’s Auxiliary Unit, recommended College Point residents work to establish an auxiliary unit for their neighborhood in addition to Cardali’s patrol, which operates Friday and Saturday evenings.
College Point resident Sondra Auerbach said she had experienced the lack of policing firsthand.
Auerbach, who lives on 18th Avenue off 119th Street, said her building had become a destination of drug users and criminals.
She told the crowd that she could not afford to leave the building, but was so sick of conditions that she would not mind if the building burned down.
Auerbach said that police summons had not worked in solving the building’s problems.
“Tickets don’t do it,” she said. “Arrests do it.”
Mayersohn told Auerbach she could work to solve the problem.
“You should be organizing the tenants,” she said. “I can get someone in there to help you organize.”
Tyler Cassell, president of the North Flushing Civic Association, came to the meeting to help College Point work out it zoning problems.
“I hear such tremendous frustration tonight,” he said. “I see you people don’t know what to do.”
Cassell told the attendees to familiarize themselves with the neighborhood’s zoning and learn the zoning laws so that they can learn to draw a distinction between legal and illegal developments.
“Everyone here should have a zoning map,” he said.
But few found hope in the solutions proposed at the meeting.
“College Point is an endangered species,” said Millie Auletta, a resident of College Point.
Reach reporter Alexander Dworkowitz by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 141.
