New sex offender trailer draws outrage in Hamptons

May 4, 2010
By MITCHELL FREEDMAN

An angry group of East End officials gathered for a hasty protest at the county police property on Old Country Road in Westhampton Tuesday morning to complain that Suffolk County had brought in a new, improved trailer for homeless sex offenders like a thief in the night.

By the end of the day, the town had gotten County Court Judge Ralph Gazzillo to issue a temporary restraining order to keep the county from completing the installation.

"It [the trailer] wasn't there yesterday," said Southampton Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst. "It was there when the sun came up."

The elected officials seemed as angry about the way the trailer was moved onto the county property - just outside the fence that marks off the county police impound yard and a shooting range - as with the fact that it was there at all.

They said they hadn't learned of the new trailer, which has a shower and toilet and can hold 10 men, until Monday afternoon.

"I didn't know they ordered it, and I'm the head of the public works committee," said Suffolk Legis. Jay Schneiderman (I-Montauk).

Greg Blass, Suffolk's Commissioner of Social Services, said in a prepared statement: "It has been our intention for months to phase out use of the trailers, but the Legislature has blocked our efforts to fully utilize a voucher system, forcing us to keep the trailers open."

Blass said the new trailer would not increase the county's ability to house homeless sex offenders, but would only provide the showers and hot water that a judge has mandated.The county has been using trailers as a last resort to house 10 to 20 homeless sex offenders each night, either at the Westhampton site or just outside the Suffolk County Jail, in the Riverside area of Southampton.

The town has been fighting for close to three years to get the trailers moved, saying that few, if any, of the offenders actually come from the East End.

In court, town officials argued that the county had shown bad faith in negotiations because no local officials were told about the change. Throne-Holst said that the new trailer " . . . certainly suggests a more permanent arrangement."

Suffolk has nearly 1,000 registered sex offenders, and very few of them are homeless. Town and county laws restrict where they can live, ruling out housing near schools, parks or places where children gather.

But, by law, Suffolk County must also provide housing for all homeless people who request it, including sex offenders. For three years, a number of proposals have been made about how to do it, all of which generated so much opposition they failed to be enacted.

Because the homeless sex offenders have already served their jail time, they cannot be held in preventive detention, or housed inside a jail or other police facility. They are legally free to leave the trailers at any time.

By By MITCHELL FREEDMAN
Posted Wednesday, May 5, 2010

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