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June 28, 2006
Trial Is Set After Talks Collapse in Mamaroneck Day Laborers' Suit
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
WHITE PLAINS, June 27 — An effort to settle a lawsuit filed by a Latino civil rights group against Mamaroneck over the village's crackdown on day laborers fell apart on Tuesday after village officials refused to place restraints on the police or help set up a hiring site where laborers could congregate.

The collapse in talks prompted a federal judge to order a trial to go forward in September.

The civil rights group, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, filed the lawsuit in Federal District Court here two months ago on behalf of six unnamed laborers, saying that the mayor and the police chief of Mamaroneck were waging a hostile and illegal campaign to drive immigrant workers out of the village. After some initial tension, the two sides signed a contract last month agreeing to delay litigation, and officials began a series of meetings with the laborers that both sides at the time described as fruitful.

But those negotiations came to an abrupt end on Tuesday when village officials rejected all but one of the demands made by the six workers and the civil rights group. Village officials said they would not agree to scale back a strong police presence and aggressive ticketing near Columbus Park, where day laborers have congregated for years.

They also said they would not designate any public parks or places as a hiring site for the workers, or acknowledge that the village had done anything wrong in the months leading to the suit. In February, the village declared that the park could no longer be used as a hiring site and sought to prevent day laborers them from gathering there.

The village did agree to create a permanent committee of local officials and Hispanic advocates that would address day-laborer issues in Mamaroneck, but Alan Levine, a lawyer for the defense fund, said on Tuesday in a hearing before Judge Colleen McMahon here that the concession was not enough. Judge McMahon, who has repeatedly urged the sides to reach a settlement, cut off Mr. Levine to order that the case go to trial on Sept. 11.

"Hopes have been dashed; let's set a schedule," she said. "I really don't need to know what you all did in terms of settlement discussions."

Mr. Levine, in an interview after the hearing, called the decision to go to trial disappointing and said he believed the village had bowed to political pressure from residents and officials who opposed the presence of immigrant workers on the streets of Mamaroneck.

"I feel like we wasted the last six weeks," Mr. Levine said. "We did not bring this lawsuit charging constitutional violations just to set up a committee. I think the village has a political constituency that they have to account to, and they weren't prepared to offend that constituency."

But Mayor Philip J. Trifiletti said the breakdown in talks on Tuesday came as a shock. He said he believed the sides had been making progress and was holding out hope that talks would resume. But he also defended the police, called the charges in the lawsuit overblown and pointed to a recent study of Hispanic workers in the village.

He said that the study, commissioned by local clergy members and carried out from April to June, surveyed 128 immigrant workers in Mamaroneck about their needs and concerns. Not one of them said that police officers had done anything to prevent them from finding work and none thought they needed a hiring site, the mayor said.

Most of the men surveyed said that their biggest problem was contractors who hire the workers and refuse to let them use their bathrooms. They listed health insurance and access to conversational English courses as other concerns.

"They did not want a hiring site because they thought it would cause too much competition," Mr. Trifiletti said. "And none of them said anything about being dealt with in an adverse way by the police."

One plan announced in January called for a local Hispanic resource center and several clergy members to work together to find a hiring site on private land. Mr. Trifiletti said he would not object to that and was willing to assist in that effort by providing a grant; if a site is found, he said, he will also offer to "ensure safety and traffic control by making sure that there is a police presence."