http://www.recordonline.com/archive/200 ... 03-23.html

March 23, 2006

Newburgh man links Latinos, city

By John Doherty
Times Herald-Record
jdoherty@th-record.com
Newburgh - The kids would swarm in packs, yelling and beating their intended victims until they hit the ground.

Then they'd rob them of cash, cell phones or anything else valuable. In most of the cases, the victims were Mexicans or other members of Newburgh's large Spanish-speaking population.

Since September, police say, three or four gangs of city teenagers have committed dozens of street robberies.

And the crimes were tough to solve.

"A lot of times, the victims, if they were illegal (immigrants), didn't want to come in," Lt. Detective Santo Centamore said. "They were afraid if they came in, something would happen to them.

"We think there's lots of these kinds of robberies going unreported," he said.

But in the last month, detectives have arrested 16 teenagers in the knock-down robberies. The last three were taken into custody Monday and Tuesday.

The difference has been a growing willingness among the city's Latino residents to report crimes to police, Centamore said.

That's due, in part, to Leo Poldo Moreno, a city man who recently opened an office on Liberty Street. Moreno is looking to be a bridge between city Latinos and officials, linking Spanish-speaking workers with contractors and shepherding nervous new arrivals through police and court procedures.

Moreno has brought several of the recent victims in to police to report the crimes.

He agrees with detectives that Latino residents have been wary of reporting crimes, at times because of their immigration status.

And many of the city's Latinos live in an off-the-books world, he said, using check-cashing services instead of banks and carrying sizable chunks of cash.

He believes the young city gangs target Hispanics.

"I hear they had some older guy in charge of them, like a manager," Moreno said.