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Testimony ends in Mamaroneck day laborers suit
By LIZ SADLER
esadler@lohud.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: September 16, 2006)

A co-president of the Hispanic Resource Center of Larchmont and Mamaroneck painted a picture yesterday of growing tensions between day laborers who gathered at a hiring site at Columbus Park in Mamaroneck and village police officers who aggressively patrolled the area.

"For over a year and half, the function of the site had been highly impeded by a police presence that hindered the function of the workers," John Gitlitz said yesterday during the final day of testimony in a case accusing the village of harassing Hispanic day laborers because of their ethnicity.

Gitlitz, a social science professor at Purchase College, SUNY, also portrayed a Hispanic day laborer population that wanted "to be good citizens of the village" and who appealed to village leaders for help learning English and developing other skills that would make it easier to assimilate.

But Gitlitz also acknowledged that Columbus Park was not an ideal hiring site and he could not give examples of complaints by day laborers against specific police officers, when pressed by the village's attorney, Kevin Plunkett, of Thatcher, Profitt and Wood.

Gitlitz was the last person to testify in a five-day federal trial before U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon that may affect the interaction of local police and day laborers in suburbs across the country. Village Mayor Philip Trifiletti and Debra West, a former New York Times freelance writer who is now an editorial writer for The Journal News, also took the witness stand.

West testified about an April 2 Times article in which she paraphrased Trifiletti as saying that a strong police presence along Mamaroneck Avenue and frequent ticketing of day laborers and contractors had driven the laborers out of the village.

Plunkett asked West whether she could verify her conversations with the mayor or provide her notes from their telephone exchanges. West said they were thrown in the garbage in June.

The lawsuit centers on the village's closing of a longtime day laborer hiring site at Columbus Park in February and police monitoring of groups of laborers, some of them in this country illegally, who gather in hope that contractors will hire them for the day.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national advocacy organization filed the suit. It asserts the village's actions — increasing police presence in the area where laborers stand and making comments that might single them out as a group — constituted harassment that violated the 14th Amendment.

Earlier this week, the plaintiffs in the case, men selected from a large pool of day laborers and identified only as John Doe Nos. 1 through 4 and 6 through 8, testified that they had been victims of selective enforcement by the police, resulting in intimidation and harassment.

The laborers' names and whether they are in the country legally have been withheld from the court for fear of retaliation by the police.

McMahon has said their names and immigration status are irrelevant because the laborers are seeking protection under the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Constitution offers equal protection to all individuals in this country, regardless of their status.

Yesterday, Gitlitz said a growing police presence had forced the day laborers to relocate from Van Ranst Place to the parking lot at Columbus Park in August 2004.

The laborers moved back to Van Ranst and then to Mamaroneck Avenue after the village shut down the parking lot as a hiring site. Police followed the laborers to Mamaroneck Avenue until they filed the lawsuit in April, Gitlitz testified. Officers have recently begun to reappear near Jefferson Avenue, he said.

"The workers aren't comfortable again," he said.

At the end of the testimony yesterday, McMahon said she would decide the case after reviewing the post-trial briefs, which are due in two weeks.