BY ROSE ADAMS
Brighton Beach business
owners praised recent efforts
to steer high schoolers away
from their stores, saying that
an increased police presence
has successfully deterred the
truants who’ve harassed them
for years.
“The police have been coming
here every single school
day. They’re like security
guards,” said Sam, a barista
at the Dunkin’ Donuts on
Neptune Avenue by Brighton
Third Street. “Most of the
time the kids don’t even bother
coming here now.”
Students have long tormented
businesses along Neptune
Avenue in the hours before
and after school, blocking
storefronts and cursing out
employees, Bklyner fi rst reported.
The teenagers, who
hail from schools including
Abraham Lincoln High
School, William E. Grady
High School, and John Dewey
High School, converge on Neptune
COURIER L 12 IFE, DEC. 13-19, 2019
Avenue several times
per day, typically around 8
am and 3 pm, harassing businesses
and residents, destroying
property, and assaulting
passersby, according to one
civic leader.
“I don’t know anybody that
lives in this area that will
come home coming that way,”
said Joann Weiss, the chair of
the local community board, at
a meeting on Thursday about
the issue. “They will go blocks
out of the way so they don’t
have to come down there because
they jump on cars. It’s
impossible.”
The students primarily
hang out in the parking lot of
the Dunkin’ Donuts, where
between 30 and 40 kids gather
regularly, according to store’s
district manager.
“They’re killing our business,”
said Muhammad Rashad.
“Since we opened the
store, it’s the same story … At
least three of four times we
call the cops — every day!”
But since police upped
their presence around the corridor
in the past week, students
have stopped fl ocking
to the Dunkin’ Donuts and no
longer harass passersby, locals
said. Police aim to implement
a program called “Paid
Detail” that would station an
offi cer at stores during peak
hours, and plan to more fi rmly
establish their presence on the
corridor.
School leaders have also
offered up solutions, such as
staggering dismissal times
and reaching out to repeat offenders.
According to the principal
of Lincoln High School
— where most of the truants
are enrolled — programs that
engage students and give them
mentors often curb misbehavior.
“We’re talking about having
assemblies with the at-risk
students,” Ari Hoogenboom
said. “We have all kinds of programs
at Lincoln … last year
we had a very effective lunchtime
STOPPED: Increased police presence has stopped Brighton Beach high
schoolers from harassing local businesses and homes, where they often
gather.
weight-lifting class with
a social worker, who was very
good at working with these atrisk
students.”
Hoogenboom added that
meetings with local police offi
cers had a positive effect
on students, and he hoped to
strengthen Lincoln’s “buddy
system” that pairs students
with an adult faculty or staff
member of their choice.
And other civic leaders reminded
locals that not all the
students acted out, and those
that do are often dealing with
troubles at home.
“If these students are menacing
people, I think something
should be done, but I
don’t want these young people
to be criminalized,” said Ronald
Stewart, the co-chair of
Community Board 13’s Youth
Committee during the Dec.
5 meeting. “I don’t hear anybody
talking to these students
to hear how they feel.”
Teen terror averted!
Cops crack down on after-school harassment
of Coney Island businesses and residents