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VANDALISM: Spree in Farmingville angers
residents
Feb 1, 2006
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| A fence that has been damaged
before was vandalized again this weekend � one of some 30
cases in the Farmingville are. �Locker McCarthy
photo |
Police
received many calls last weekend
from residents complaining about attacks on their property.
The Farmingville area was badly hit, with houses losing mailboxes
and lights, among other outdoor accouterments.
�Yes, it
was more than usual,� said Capt. Stephen Brown of the Ridgefield
Police. �More than 30 would be accurate.�
The Harris family of
Limekiln Road sent a strongly worded letter to First Selectman Rudy
Marconi after their streetfront property was smashed up.
In
Ridgefield, they said, �The quality of life is deteriorating
because the crime rate is increasing.�
�The wake up call may be a
class action suit against the town selectmen and the police
department.�
Farmingville fence
Kathryn
Minckler Lloyd-Williams wrote The Press this week, noting that her
family�s front fence had been damaged for the third time in three
weeks.
�At about 3:30 last Sunday morning I heard this bang � I
thought it was a gunshot a first � then I saw this car backing out
of the driveway and I heard these kids laughing,� she
said.�
About an hour later, Ms. Lloyd-Williams, who has two young
daughters living at home and was unable to go back to sleep, was
letting her dog out and heard a nearby crash, at which time she
called the police a second time. �And I was told they already had
the report.�
The Harrises, writing Mr. Marconi, said, �This
weekend has served as a tipping point towards a more severe degree
of criminal mischief. It�s time the curtain was pulled back on
Ridgefield�s crime epidemic.�
Jordan Harris pointed to the 1982
�Broken Windows� study by criminologists James Wilson and George
Kelling, in which the two theorized that small disorderly incidents
that go unpunished become the underpinning of a larger culture of
crime and decay.
�Just like winning the battle against graffiti,
we need to win the battle against personal property destruction,� he
stated.
Petition drive
The
Harrises plan to start a petition drive, demanding:
- a �greater police presence� in the evenings;
- a midnight curfew for those under 18;
- arrests with extended stays in holding cells;
- permanent documentation on high school records;
- very vandal�s name listed in The Ridgefield Press. (Under then
state�s new youthful offender statute, young people between the
ages of 17 and 18 no longer have their names listed in the police
log.)
Outing the problem
Near
the end of the Harris letter to Mr. Marconi, it says: �I for one am
prepared to spend my money on full page as in The Ridgefield Press,
Connecticut Magazine and the New York Times regarding the
crime epidemic that is spreading in this town.
Ridgefield is sitting with a record home inventory, how do you think
those ads will affect the housing market? I am willing to take the
risk of losing value on my new home by outing our crime
problem.�
Showing a reporter the damage as she drove around her
neighborhood on Tuesday, Noel Harris said she was disappointed to
find that Ridgefield is not the quiet, clean town she and her
husband had perceived it to be.
�We moved here from White
Plains, N.Y., which is a city,� she said. �But it�s got clean
neighborhoods and never were mailboxes destroyed. Here we have this,
and along the sides of the roads there is litter and bottles and
beer cans.�
Ms. Harris said she was awakened in the early hours
of Sunday by a loud noise outside and looked out to see a young man
climbing into the passenger seat of a �dark colored, four-door
compact car.�
The next morning she and her husband found their
battered mailbox lying on the ground, its pole standing but damaged.
Lights atop stone pillars on either side of the driveway were
wrecked, perhaps by rocks that were part of a stone wall in front of
the house they bought a year-and-a-half ago.
�We�re really
worried about all this,� she said. �It�s like they�re trying to
terrorize us and the police don�t care. Maybe now they�ll do
something.�
Ms. Harris acknowledged that she did not call police
until the family saw the damage in daylight.
�That was a
mistake,� she said.
� Copyright by Hersam Acorn
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