DA Investigating Guns at Long Beach Polling Site

The Nassau County District Attorney's office is looking into allegations that a Long Beach detective "brandished and waved" firearms outside a polling place at City Hall last week.

Ruth Bernstein, a Long Beach attorney who monitored the polling site for Democrats late on Election Day, filed a complaint with the D.A. of attempted voter intimidation based on Det. Sgt. Howard Domitz holding a long gun in each hand, which she contends was an effort to drive away voters from the North Park community, a mostly Democrat neighborhood, according to a Newsday article.

Said Bernstein:

"The guns were clearly a huge political intimidation of people coming in to vote in this heavily minority area of North Park."

But City Manager Charles Theofan said the firearms display had nothing to do with politics, but rather police were working at a police room organizing evidence seized the day before in a loan sharking and drug raid at a home in the West End, Newsday reports. 

Said Theofan:

"It was probably not a good idea to do that on a busy day with people around. But he only briefly brought these nonfunctioning replicas out to ask what to do with them."