Set aside ten minutes today (or a half hour this weekend) to watch this 3-part video from Tuesday night's Gerritsen Beach property owners' meeting; it's riveting theater! The locals are infuriated that GerritsenBeach.net blogger Daniel Cavanagh published photos (and incriminating Facebook comments) of teens throwing eggs, potatoes and (allegedly) rocks at drivers on Halloween. What really burns is that their kids' conduct in public and on the Internet is now exposed to people outside their tight-knit community. And it's all the fault of Cavanagh, whom they call a pedophile drop-out who needs to get "a real job." Their precious children, who broke a bus window and allegedly targeted Jews, were just being a little mischievous.
One local mom says she's spoken "to a lawyer and the cyber police," and Cavanagh is repeatedly threatened with legal action for taking photos of people in public, which is not a crime in New York, but Gerritsen Beach seems to have its own justice system. Act III begins with a chilling moment when the crowd discovers a reporter from The Bay News in the room, prompting an aborted motion to close the meeting. The property owners demand to know if the reporter was invited, and guess how that weaselly muckraker found out about it? Yep, Danny Cavanagh strikes again, tipping off the media about a public meeting!
Our favorite part comes at the five minute mark of Act III, when irate Joe over on the left finally loses his shit completely and accuses George, who's presiding over the meeting, of setting everyone up by having the meeting with the media present. As he storms out, Joe shouts: "I won't forget! I won't forget, George! He set it up, him and that little smurf over there! He set it up nice! He's been a dirt bag from the get-go! Piece of shit! Kiss off baby!" [Exeunt Joe stage right.]
Cavanagh shrewdly declined to take any of the bait thrown at him, but he tells us that he and a family member have been approached by outraged people. "Gerritsen Beach is small and we generally know each other or at least have an understanding of who each other are," says Cavanagh. "Everyone is talking about this, everywhere." He added, "I love my community, and only sought to bring to attention the lack of an acceptable police response. The evidence collected through photographs and snippets of Facebook profiles was intended to show legitimate proof of the presence of a problem, not to bring attention to specific individuals."
