"US unseals charge against Jordanian woman in 2001 Jerusalem Sbarro bombing" by Spencer S. Hsu The Washington Post News Service March 16, 2017
WASHINGTON — US authorities have added a Jordanian woman to the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists and unsealed charges against her in a 2001 suicide bombing attack at a crowded Jerusalem pizzeria that killed 15 people, including two Americans.
An American official indicated that the Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed a July 2013 complaint against Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi because law enforcement officials no longer thought that keeping it secret would aid US efforts to obtain her custody.
Tamimi pleaded guilty in Israel in 2003 and was sentenced to 16 life terms for assisting the bomber in the Aug. 9, 2001, attack on a Sbarro restaurant, according to charging documents.
Among the 15 dead were a pregnant American, Judith Shoshana Greenbaum, 31, and US citizen Malka Roth, 15. Four US citizens were among more than 120 injured.
A former student working part time as a television journalist, Tamimi met with and drove the bomber to the target after pledging to carry out attacks on behalf of the military wing of the Palestinian organization Hamas, according to an FBI affidavit included with the complaint.
She served eight years before being released in October 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, and returned to Jordan, which forbids extradition of its nationals, Justice Department officials said.
--more--"
Related: Jihad in Jordan?
Showing posts with label Times Square. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Times Square. Show all posts
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Times Square to Explode Tonight
In just less than a couple of hours, in fact:
"William J. Perry, the 88-year-old former defense secretary, is on a mission to warn of a ‘‘real and growing danger’’ of nuclear doom. Perry outlines a nuclear terror scenario, which he calls ‘‘my nuclear nightmare, born of long and deep experience.’’ In his scenario, a small group gets enough uranium for a crude nuclear bomb, flies it undetected to Washington’s Dulles International Airport and slips it into a warehouse in the District of Columbia. From there it is loaded onto a delivery truck and a suicide bomber drives it onto Pennsylvania Avenue midway between the Capitol and the White House. When detonated, it kills 80,000 people instantly, including the president. The news media report a message claiming that five more bombs are hidden in five different US cities, and one will be set off each week. The US plans to spend hundreds of billions to update its nuclear arsenal."
Such a thing occurring as the ball drops will certainly provide an opening for more agenda-pushing and mind-manipulation from a searing event seen live on television. At least the U.S. is ready to respond.
It's been a long time since I raised the alarm regarding a nuclear explosion in an American city, and I have always thought it would be in Chicago (to send Obama a message and to tell the American people that the terrorists could hit Middle America). And yet I'm told security is tighter than ever:
Times Square end-of-year preparations in full swing
"N.Y. police gear up for New Year’s Eve in Times Square" Associated Press December 30, 2015
NEW YORK — With the nation still jittery over shooting massacres in California and Paris, New York City officials sought to assure revelers Tuesday that the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square will be the safest place in the world.
The square will be heavily secured by thousands of New York Police Department officers, including a new specialized counterterrorism unit.
‘‘Leave the worrying to the NYPD,’’ said James O'Neill, chief of the department. ‘‘People should feel safest this New Year’s Eve because we’re there.’’
Police Commissioner William Bratton said there were no credible threats to the city ahead of the holiday. Yet officials also acknowledged that there were limits to what they could do to ensure security, especially outside the tightly controlled blocks at the heart of the celebration.
They didn't see Paris or San Bernardino coming, either!
In much of the city, the focus will be on fast responses to any emergency rather than preventive measures like security checkpoints.
Uh-oh!
Revelers trying to get close enough to see and hear the musical acts that perform throughout the evening will be screened with hand-held metal detectors twice — once when they enter one of the 14 access points to the secure zone and once when they enter pens where they must stay lest they lose their spots.
Sure smells like freedom to me!
Outside that zone, revelers and vehicles can come and go as they please.
‘‘On New Year’s Eve, the department will be out in force,’’ Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday in Times Square. ‘‘There will be a tremendous number of officers you will see and many you won’t see.’’
Let's pray they don't work for Craft International.
--more--"
Oh, no smoking and watch where you step.
"N.Y. mayor’s supporters voice frustration over his failure to promote policies" New York Times December 29, 2015
NEW YORK — In the last month, Bill de Blasio, Democrat mayor of New York, has blamed public relations for his problems with homelessness (“I have not communicated sufficiently”) and the backlash to his affordable housing plan (“We’re not explaining it well enough”).
See:
NYC announces $2.6 billion investment to fight homelessness
Middle class wins in NYC housing deal
Coming to $ave BoSton, too.
Facing the lowest approval ratings of his tenure, de Blasio has said the problem is packaging, not substance. He has stood fast on his liberal policies, saying he is convinced that he is changing New Yorkers’ lives for the better.
PFFFFT!
But in interviews, numerous supporters of de Blasio say they remain concerned about the mayor’s messaging instincts, saying he has failed to capitalize on his accomplishments.
“It’s not enough to do the work,” said Sid Davidoff, a lobbyist and one of de Blasio’s close friends in government. “You also have to tell the story.”
Several supporters said they were dismayed on Tuesday when de Blasio, just a day after pledging to better explain himself, unveiled a major workers’ rights policy and did little to promote it personally.
In a week when politicians try to bury news amid the Christmas rush, de Blasio said that he would grant six weeks of paid parental leave to 20,000 city employees, one of the most generous policies of its kind.
But he held no rally or news conference for the occasion....
Yeah, he “needs to communicate better.”
--more--"
Related:
‘‘This is really a monumental day for the city,’’ Mayor Bill de Blasio told hundreds of guests at the inauguration for the gleaming No. 7 station that’s part of the transformation of a once-desolate industrial area. The mayor called the neighborhood ‘‘a whole new city being created within our city, connected with thousands of jobs.’’ The $2.4 billion extension was funded by the city under de Blasio’s predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg."
That better? (Explains the low poll numbers)
Also see: 3 brothers to become N.Y. police officers, following dad
Real-life Blue Bloods?
Time to start the festivities:
"Ex-tennis star hurt in false N.Y. arrest" New York Times September 11, 2015
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department commissioner apologized Thursday for the mistaken arrest of James Blake, a retired top-10 professional tennis player, who said he was slammed to the ground outside his hotel in Midtown Manhattan after being confused for a suspect in a credit card fraud investigation.
The commissioner, William J. Bratton, said he had been trying to contact Blake, “to extend my apologies for the incident which he found himself involved in yesterday.”
The undercover detective who detained Blake has been stripped of his gun and badge and placed on desk duty, a tacit acknowledgment that video of the arrest raised serious questions about his actions.
Bratton, speaking at a news conference Thursday, said he had concerns about “the inappropriateness of the amount of force that was used during the arrest.” An initial review of video evidence of the arrest, he said, led him to believe that it may have been excessive.
Blake must be white.
Bratton said the team of six undercover detectives involved in detaining Blake failed to report the incident, a breach of department practices.
The detectives who approached Blake were relying in part on an Instagram photo of someone believed to be involved in a credit card fraud ring that Bratton said looked like “the twin brother” of the former tennis star. That person turned out to have nothing to do with the scheme, police officials said, and they refused to make the photo public.
Blake, who was in New York to make appearances for corporate sponsors at the US Open, was leaving the Grand Hyatt New York around noon Wednesday when an undercover detective ran toward him. He said the detective never identified himself and did not answer his questions. He was detained for 15 minutes, Blake said, and the encounter left him with cuts and bruises.
Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives, told reporters that the operation was part of an investigation into credit card fraud. Detectives set up a controlled delivery of designer shoes Wednesday to the concierge desk of the Grand Hyatt.
See: White Collar Gangs
A British man, James Short, 27, staying in New York on a student visa, met the courier to get the delivery of shoes and was arrested, police said. Then the courier pointed to Blake from 8 feet away, Boyce said, identifying the former tennis star as someone who had previously bought items from him.
The detective was not wearing a visible badge because he was undercover.
--more--"
At least the rape kits came in.
N.Y. governor’s aide ruled brain dead
Labor Day shooting.
"Police are investigating a series of shootings across the city that left six people dead Saturday evening and Sunday morning."
Prison worker who helped inmates escape gets up to 7 years
He made us Sweat out Jade Helm, remember?!
Another gay group to march in N.Y. St. Patrick’s parade
"A woman believed to have given birth in the bathroom of her boyfriend’s apartment before tossing her newborn daughter to her death from a seventh-story window was being held without bail Wednesday on a murder charge, police and prosecutors said."
Baby girl dies after being tossed from sixth-floor window in New York City
That was the third child killed that way in the city in three months.
"NYC police expanding program to document use of force by officers" by Tom Hays Associated Press October 02, 2015
NEW YORK — Amid concerns about excessive force, the New York Police Department unveiled a program on Thursday to document physical encounters officers have with the public and to discourage using force in the first place.
Tell it to Blake.
The 35,000-officer department, the nation’s largest, touted the initiative as a way to track and analyze all instances when force is used and said it will use the data to adjust training and identify problem officers. Police officials conceded that under current procedures, instances of force sometimes go unreported.
Under the new policy, the department will not wait for a death or serious injury or an allegation of abuse to initiate an inquiry, Assistant Chief Kevin Ward said at a news conference.
‘‘If we use force, we will document it,’’ said Ward, who is spearheading the effort. ‘‘We will investigate it.’’
Police officials likened the approach to one they credit with dramatically reducing instances of when officers fire their guns. Those shootings totaled 79 in 2014, a record low.
According to a summary, the new guidelines will emphasize ‘‘the duty of all members to protect human life, including people in their custody’’ and promote the use of verbal techniques to head off a physical encounter.
The overhaul ‘‘sends a message to all New Yorkers that we’re going to enforce the law, but we’re going to do it in a way that only uses that force which is necessary,’’ Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which represents officers, criticized the guidelines, saying that adding paperwork and second-guessing to an overworked, understaffed police force was a ‘‘formula for disaster.’’
‘‘No amount of new training or additional paperwork will make necessary force that is lawful and properly used by police officers acceptable to those who want to return to the hands-off, reactive policing strategies that sent crime soaring in the past,’’ association president Patrick Lynch said in a statement.
The measures were announced the same day the city’s inspector general, Philip Eure, released a report faulting the NYPD for not doing more to combat excessive force. At a separate press briefing, Eure told reporters that compared to some other big-city police departments, the NYPD ‘‘was living a little bit in the Dark Ages with respect to its use-of-force policies.’’
Asked about Eure’s comment, Police Commissioner William Bratton insisted the department has been aggressively revamping its policies for well over a year.
--more--"
I just hope you can make bail:
"New York judge takes action to revamp bail rules" by James C. McKinley Jr. New York Times October 02, 2015
NEW YORK — The New York state chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, who retires at the end of the year, said the human cost of the bail system was brought into focus by the suicide in June of Kalief Browder, a teen who could not pay his $3,000 bail and spent three years at Rikers Island, much of it in solitary confinement, awaiting trial on a stolen a backpack.
Bronx prosecutors dismissed the case because the victim had left the country. But in the meantime Browder’s schooling and social life were derailed; he slipped into a deep depression and killed himself.
--more--"
Related: "New York agrees to overhaul solitary confinement in prisons, but ‘‘massive culture change is a challenge.’’
It starts in the schools.
Also see: New York City to pay $3.8 million settlement in death of inmate
Got treated better than the elderly:
"N.Y. bills for costs of care after alleged cases of abuse" Associated Press November 24, 2015
ALBANY, N.Y. — At least three times in recent years, New York has pursued Medicaid reimbursement of $1 million or more from those who allegedly suffered devastating, even deadly, mistreatment while in state care. In two of those cases, the state eventually dropped its claims after the families contested them.
National experts say New York’s pursuit of such claims appears to be highly unusual and is a misapplication of the 1993 federal law that requires states to recover, or “claw back,” certain Medicaid costs from people’s estates after their death.
“It’s serious overreaching to attempt to recoup funding from people who have been abused in the system,” said Susan Dooha, executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, a nonprofit group in New York. “It’s very cynical, to say the least.”
--more--"
Time to make a frisk stop.
"Judge dismisses conviction in 1990 NYC tourist killing" Associated Press October 06, 2015
NEW YORK — A man imprisoned for a quarter-century in a notorious tourist killing was granted a new trial Tuesday when a judge overturned his conviction in a case that helped crystallize an era of crime and fear in the nation’s biggest city.
State Supreme Court Justice Eduardo Padro cited new evidence, including testimony from two witnesses and a codefendant saying Johnny Hincapie wasn’t involved in the crime. Padro stopped short of declaring Hincapie innocent, as he and his lawyers had hoped the judge might but agreed to release him on $1 bail while awaiting a retrial.
‘‘After 25 years of suffering, after 25 years of injustice, after 25 years of sleepless nights, God just revealed his justice,’’ said Hincapie’s father, Carlos. His son couldn’t immediately be freed because of an immigration complication, which his lawyers are working to resolve.
Prosecutors said they were committed to retrying the case, if necessary.
Hincapie said he was a bystander who was wrongfully swept up in the case and then was coerced into a false confession. Prosecutors said his claims aren’t credible.
The killing became a symbol of random violence in a city that was reeling from it, after the 1989 rape and beating of a woman known as the Central Park jogger and a spate of bloodshed in the summer of 1990.
Utah tourist Brian Watkins’s death — one of a record-setting 2,245 in 1990, compared to 333 last year — brought a public plea from his family for better subway safety and helped prompt former Mayor David Dinkins to propose a program designed to increase police presence.
Print ended there.
Watkins, 22, and his parents were in town from Provo, Utah, for the US Open tennis tournament.
Someone tell Blake.
They were heading to dinner when they were jumped by a group of youths looking to rob people to get money to go to a dance hall, police said. After his father was slashed and robbed of $200 and his mother was punched and kicked, Watkins was stabbed in the chest yet chased the attackers up two stairways before collapsing under a turnstile.
“Why did they do this to me?’’ he said, according to his father’s testimony at the trial of Hincapie and several co-defendants. ‘‘We’re just here to have a good time.’’
Hincapie, a Colombian immigrant, was one of seven young men convicted in the case. Another defendant was accused of actually stabbing Watkins, but authorities said the whole group bore responsibility for his death.
Hincapie, now 43, has long maintained he was in a different part of the subway station when the stabbing happened.
‘‘I had nothing to do with this,’’ he wrote in a 1990 letter to his lawyer at the time. ‘‘I am innocent.’’
After unsuccessfully appealing his conviction, Hincapie brought another challenge in 2013. It relied partly on a sworn statement from an exonerated co-defendant saying Hincapie played no part in the attack. A man who was convicted, and a witness who came forward only in the last two years, also said during the hearing that Hincapie wasn’t involved.
Meanwhile, Hincapie testified that a detective beat him to get him to sign a confession.
Prosecutors said there was ‘‘no credible newly discovered evidence’’ in the case.
But Padro wrote that the new evidence would ‘‘create a probability that had such evidence been received at trial the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendant’’ — a legal standard for tossing out a conviction.
Hincapie has finished high school and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees while serving 25 years to life in prison. He has never despaired of being cleared, said his lawyer, Ron Kuby.
‘‘He always maintained an optimism and a certain hope that this day was going to come for him.’’
Like a New Year beginning.
--more--"
Time to get back to the security:
"Federal appeals court says lawsuit over NYPD surveillance of Muslims can proceed; Muslims were allegedly targeted" by Mark Berman Washington Post October 14, 2015
A US court said Tuesday that a civil rights lawsuit accusing New York City police of improperly singling out Muslims for surveillance could proceed, reversing a lower court’s decision last year to dismiss the case.
In its opinion, a three-judge US Court of Appeals panel rejected the city’s call to have the case dismissed and brushed aside any suggestion that media reports about the surveillance, rather than the surveillance itself, caused any harm.
Judge Thomas Ambro, who wrote the 59-page opinion for the panel, also cited dark chapters in American history — such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, for which the United States later apologized — as times when national security issues, civil liberties, and wartime fears inexorably collided.
Or torture?
‘‘We have learned from experience that it is often where the asserted interest appears most compelling that we must be most vigilant in protecting constitutional rights,’’ Ambro wrote.
The lawsuit contends that surveillance of Muslim people in New Jersey discriminated against them due to their religion. It was filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and later joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, another legal organization, on behalf of several Muslims who say they were unconstitutionally monitored by the New York Police Department.
‘‘I am so pleased the court recognized our claim that the NYPD is violating our basic rights as Americans and were wrong to do so,’’ Farhaj Hassan, lead plaintiff of the lawsuit, said in a statement released by the Center for Constitutional Rights. ‘‘No one should ever be spied on and treated like a suspect simply because of his or her faith, and today’s ruling paves the path to holding the NYPD accountable for ripping up the Constitution.’’
The New York City Law Department said it was reviewing the circuit court’s decision.
Last year, the NYPD disbanded the unit involved in the surveillance activities, a move that Mayor Bill de Blasio praised at the time as ‘‘a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve.’’
So we are told. What did they do, change the name?
--more--"
Did you know the NYPD was now a national force?
They create then capture the terrorists.
"Republican campaign rhetoric angers Muslims in US; GOP talk leaves a scar, they say" by Josh Cornfield Associated Press November 25, 2015
Why worry?
Obama Has Destroyed the Democratic Party
A Globe Thanksgiving
It's a 1% voting block.
TRENTON, N.J. — Muslim-Americans who sued the New York Police Department over a surveillance program launched after 9/11 say calls from the Republican presidential campaign to put them under more scrutiny are recklessly seizing on public fears and distressing Muslims in the United States as national security has become a focus in the 2016 race after the Paris attacks.
The Associated Press revealed in 2011 how New York police, in a since-disbanded demographics unit, infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, and otherwise spied on Muslims as part of a broad effort to prevent terrorist attacks. A federal appeals court last month reinstated the lawsuit challenging the surveillance, comparing the spying to other instances of heightened scrutiny of religious and ethnic groups, including Japanese-Americans during World War II.
A lower court last year had concluded the police could not keep watch ‘‘on Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself.’’ That came after New York City argued that any harm suffered by Muslims was ‘‘self-imposed, based on subjective fears’’ that may have dissuaded them from gathering with other Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The city called the intelligence-gathering an appropriate and legal antiterrorism tactic and said it never spied on people or businesses solely because they were Muslim.
Imagine if they said that about Jews. What an uproar there would be.
Wahy-ud Deen Shareef, president of the Council of Imams in New Jersey, said news of the demographics unit made some reluctant to gather at places that had been under surveillance, including mosques and businesses. He said it also hurt the trust that Muslims had developed with law enforcement after 9/11, something they’re still working to rebuild.
Now, he said, comments in the 2016 campaign are playing on people’s ignorance both of Islam and of what Muslim communities have done to cooperate with law enforcement.
‘‘When you trample upon the rights that are entitled to all just because you have suspicions of a group, then you are trampling on the rights of all of the citizens,’’ Shareef said.
In addition to pushing for monitoring and a registry, Trump has alleged that ‘‘thousands and thousands’’ of Muslims in Jersey City across the river from Manhattan celebrated from rooftops in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a scene at odds with the recollections of local officials and for which he has offered no proof. Carson made a similar allegation, then retracted it.
Didn't happen at all, but Jewish war press leaves impression that it did.
Someone was doing some dancing, though.
--more--"
"N.Y. emergency responders go through active shooter drill" Associated Press November 23, 2015
NEW YORK — Hundreds of New York emergency responders simulated a coordinated terror attack Sunday, days before one of the city’s biggest public events: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The long-planned drill at a Manhattan subway station got a last-minute update in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris. Officials added an ‘‘attacker’’ wearing a suicide vest.
‘‘In New York City, we are, at this time, very well-prepared and continually improving that preparedness,’’ Commissioner William Bratton said outside the abandoned Bowery station in Lower Manhattan.
The three-hour active-shooter exercise took place in the pricey Soho neighborhood populated by art galleries and boutiques. Members of the police, fire, and federal Homeland Security departments went into action after a mock call reporting a gunman on the station platform.
Yes, if there were drills going on the propaganda pre$$ would surely tell us.
Of about 30 simulated straphangers in the station, a dozen suffered ‘‘critical wounds’’ from weapons firing blanks. Firefighters removed them on thick yellow plastic sheets and law enforcement personnel took on the threat.
First responders from various emergency departments worked as a team, with communication and coordination between agencies an important goal.
‘‘There have been very significant improvements in that capacity since 9/11, also the coordination with the fire department,’’ Bratton said.
What?
The Department of Homeland Security used the exercise to test technologies including GoPro-like cameras worn by first responders and acoustic gunshot detection systems designed to give police and firefighters information to coordinate their responses. Such systems are being developed for surveillance of the subway system, the commissioner said.
Sunday’s drill was funded by Homeland Security.
Bratton said New York law enforcement authorities, together with Homeland Security, are working closely with Paris investigators studying details of the Nov. 13 attacks there, aiming to prepare for similar suicide-bomber terrorism that New York has never experienced.
Is that what we are going to get tonight?
--more--"
Also see:
Suspect in officer’s killing should have been in prison, NYC chief says
Police divers find gun in Harlem River, connect it to slaying of officer
"Court says officer committed no crime" Associated Press December 04, 2015
NEW YORK — A former New York City police officer committed no crime when he fantasized online about committing horrific acts of sexual violence against his wife and others, including bizarre exchanges about kidnapping and eating women, a divided federal appeals court said Thursday.
See: Sick Cops and Their Sex Games
The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said in its 2-to-1 ruling that a lower-court Manhattan judge correctly reversed a 2013 jury’s guilty verdict on a kidnapping conspiracy charge against Gilberto Valle, 31, that could have sent him to prison for life.
‘‘We are loath to give the government the power to punish us for our thoughts and not our actions,’’ wrote Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker for the majority.
‘‘That includes the power to criminalize an individual’s expression of sexual fantasies, no matter how perverse or disturbing. Fantasizing about committing a crime, even a crime of violence against a real person whom you know, is not a crime.’’
The decision acknowledged that fantasies of violence against women ‘‘contribute to a culture of exploitation, a massive social harm that demeans women,’’ but the court added that ‘‘not every harm is meant to be addressed with the federal criminal law.’’
The ruling upheld US District Judge Paul Gardephe’s decision to reverse the jury verdict after finding no genuine agreement to kidnap.
--more--"
So what would you like to eat tonight?
Time to stop toying around:
"Explosion in Brooklyn home kills.... Councilman Brad Lander said the woman who died was in her 60s and was from the Dominican Republic. He said she lived in a third-floor apartment with her daughter, who was away at the time."
At least Bo$ton is safe.
So have you found a place to flop for the night?
"William J. Perry, the 88-year-old former defense secretary, is on a mission to warn of a ‘‘real and growing danger’’ of nuclear doom. Perry outlines a nuclear terror scenario, which he calls ‘‘my nuclear nightmare, born of long and deep experience.’’ In his scenario, a small group gets enough uranium for a crude nuclear bomb, flies it undetected to Washington’s Dulles International Airport and slips it into a warehouse in the District of Columbia. From there it is loaded onto a delivery truck and a suicide bomber drives it onto Pennsylvania Avenue midway between the Capitol and the White House. When detonated, it kills 80,000 people instantly, including the president. The news media report a message claiming that five more bombs are hidden in five different US cities, and one will be set off each week. The US plans to spend hundreds of billions to update its nuclear arsenal."
Such a thing occurring as the ball drops will certainly provide an opening for more agenda-pushing and mind-manipulation from a searing event seen live on television. At least the U.S. is ready to respond.
It's been a long time since I raised the alarm regarding a nuclear explosion in an American city, and I have always thought it would be in Chicago (to send Obama a message and to tell the American people that the terrorists could hit Middle America). And yet I'm told security is tighter than ever:
Times Square end-of-year preparations in full swing
"N.Y. police gear up for New Year’s Eve in Times Square" Associated Press December 30, 2015
NEW YORK — With the nation still jittery over shooting massacres in California and Paris, New York City officials sought to assure revelers Tuesday that the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square will be the safest place in the world.
The square will be heavily secured by thousands of New York Police Department officers, including a new specialized counterterrorism unit.
‘‘Leave the worrying to the NYPD,’’ said James O'Neill, chief of the department. ‘‘People should feel safest this New Year’s Eve because we’re there.’’
Police Commissioner William Bratton said there were no credible threats to the city ahead of the holiday. Yet officials also acknowledged that there were limits to what they could do to ensure security, especially outside the tightly controlled blocks at the heart of the celebration.
They didn't see Paris or San Bernardino coming, either!
In much of the city, the focus will be on fast responses to any emergency rather than preventive measures like security checkpoints.
Uh-oh!
Revelers trying to get close enough to see and hear the musical acts that perform throughout the evening will be screened with hand-held metal detectors twice — once when they enter one of the 14 access points to the secure zone and once when they enter pens where they must stay lest they lose their spots.
Sure smells like freedom to me!
Outside that zone, revelers and vehicles can come and go as they please.
‘‘On New Year’s Eve, the department will be out in force,’’ Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday in Times Square. ‘‘There will be a tremendous number of officers you will see and many you won’t see.’’
Let's pray they don't work for Craft International.
--more--"
Oh, no smoking and watch where you step.
"N.Y. mayor’s supporters voice frustration over his failure to promote policies" New York Times December 29, 2015
NEW YORK — In the last month, Bill de Blasio, Democrat mayor of New York, has blamed public relations for his problems with homelessness (“I have not communicated sufficiently”) and the backlash to his affordable housing plan (“We’re not explaining it well enough”).
See:
NYC announces $2.6 billion investment to fight homelessness
Middle class wins in NYC housing deal
Coming to $ave BoSton, too.
Facing the lowest approval ratings of his tenure, de Blasio has said the problem is packaging, not substance. He has stood fast on his liberal policies, saying he is convinced that he is changing New Yorkers’ lives for the better.
PFFFFT!
But in interviews, numerous supporters of de Blasio say they remain concerned about the mayor’s messaging instincts, saying he has failed to capitalize on his accomplishments.
“It’s not enough to do the work,” said Sid Davidoff, a lobbyist and one of de Blasio’s close friends in government. “You also have to tell the story.”
Several supporters said they were dismayed on Tuesday when de Blasio, just a day after pledging to better explain himself, unveiled a major workers’ rights policy and did little to promote it personally.
In a week when politicians try to bury news amid the Christmas rush, de Blasio said that he would grant six weeks of paid parental leave to 20,000 city employees, one of the most generous policies of its kind.
But he held no rally or news conference for the occasion....
Yeah, he “needs to communicate better.”
--more--"
Related:
‘‘This is really a monumental day for the city,’’ Mayor Bill de Blasio told hundreds of guests at the inauguration for the gleaming No. 7 station that’s part of the transformation of a once-desolate industrial area. The mayor called the neighborhood ‘‘a whole new city being created within our city, connected with thousands of jobs.’’ The $2.4 billion extension was funded by the city under de Blasio’s predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg."
That better? (Explains the low poll numbers)
Also see: 3 brothers to become N.Y. police officers, following dad
Real-life Blue Bloods?
Time to start the festivities:
"Ex-tennis star hurt in false N.Y. arrest" New York Times September 11, 2015
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department commissioner apologized Thursday for the mistaken arrest of James Blake, a retired top-10 professional tennis player, who said he was slammed to the ground outside his hotel in Midtown Manhattan after being confused for a suspect in a credit card fraud investigation.
The commissioner, William J. Bratton, said he had been trying to contact Blake, “to extend my apologies for the incident which he found himself involved in yesterday.”
The undercover detective who detained Blake has been stripped of his gun and badge and placed on desk duty, a tacit acknowledgment that video of the arrest raised serious questions about his actions.
Bratton, speaking at a news conference Thursday, said he had concerns about “the inappropriateness of the amount of force that was used during the arrest.” An initial review of video evidence of the arrest, he said, led him to believe that it may have been excessive.
Blake must be white.
Bratton said the team of six undercover detectives involved in detaining Blake failed to report the incident, a breach of department practices.
The detectives who approached Blake were relying in part on an Instagram photo of someone believed to be involved in a credit card fraud ring that Bratton said looked like “the twin brother” of the former tennis star. That person turned out to have nothing to do with the scheme, police officials said, and they refused to make the photo public.
Blake, who was in New York to make appearances for corporate sponsors at the US Open, was leaving the Grand Hyatt New York around noon Wednesday when an undercover detective ran toward him. He said the detective never identified himself and did not answer his questions. He was detained for 15 minutes, Blake said, and the encounter left him with cuts and bruises.
Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives, told reporters that the operation was part of an investigation into credit card fraud. Detectives set up a controlled delivery of designer shoes Wednesday to the concierge desk of the Grand Hyatt.
See: White Collar Gangs
A British man, James Short, 27, staying in New York on a student visa, met the courier to get the delivery of shoes and was arrested, police said. Then the courier pointed to Blake from 8 feet away, Boyce said, identifying the former tennis star as someone who had previously bought items from him.
The detective was not wearing a visible badge because he was undercover.
--more--"
At least the rape kits came in.
N.Y. governor’s aide ruled brain dead
Labor Day shooting.
"Police are investigating a series of shootings across the city that left six people dead Saturday evening and Sunday morning."
Prison worker who helped inmates escape gets up to 7 years
He made us Sweat out Jade Helm, remember?!
Another gay group to march in N.Y. St. Patrick’s parade
"A woman believed to have given birth in the bathroom of her boyfriend’s apartment before tossing her newborn daughter to her death from a seventh-story window was being held without bail Wednesday on a murder charge, police and prosecutors said."
Baby girl dies after being tossed from sixth-floor window in New York City
That was the third child killed that way in the city in three months.
"NYC police expanding program to document use of force by officers" by Tom Hays Associated Press October 02, 2015
NEW YORK — Amid concerns about excessive force, the New York Police Department unveiled a program on Thursday to document physical encounters officers have with the public and to discourage using force in the first place.
Tell it to Blake.
The 35,000-officer department, the nation’s largest, touted the initiative as a way to track and analyze all instances when force is used and said it will use the data to adjust training and identify problem officers. Police officials conceded that under current procedures, instances of force sometimes go unreported.
Under the new policy, the department will not wait for a death or serious injury or an allegation of abuse to initiate an inquiry, Assistant Chief Kevin Ward said at a news conference.
‘‘If we use force, we will document it,’’ said Ward, who is spearheading the effort. ‘‘We will investigate it.’’
Police officials likened the approach to one they credit with dramatically reducing instances of when officers fire their guns. Those shootings totaled 79 in 2014, a record low.
According to a summary, the new guidelines will emphasize ‘‘the duty of all members to protect human life, including people in their custody’’ and promote the use of verbal techniques to head off a physical encounter.
The overhaul ‘‘sends a message to all New Yorkers that we’re going to enforce the law, but we’re going to do it in a way that only uses that force which is necessary,’’ Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which represents officers, criticized the guidelines, saying that adding paperwork and second-guessing to an overworked, understaffed police force was a ‘‘formula for disaster.’’
‘‘No amount of new training or additional paperwork will make necessary force that is lawful and properly used by police officers acceptable to those who want to return to the hands-off, reactive policing strategies that sent crime soaring in the past,’’ association president Patrick Lynch said in a statement.
The measures were announced the same day the city’s inspector general, Philip Eure, released a report faulting the NYPD for not doing more to combat excessive force. At a separate press briefing, Eure told reporters that compared to some other big-city police departments, the NYPD ‘‘was living a little bit in the Dark Ages with respect to its use-of-force policies.’’
Asked about Eure’s comment, Police Commissioner William Bratton insisted the department has been aggressively revamping its policies for well over a year.
--more--"
I just hope you can make bail:
"New York judge takes action to revamp bail rules" by James C. McKinley Jr. New York Times October 02, 2015
NEW YORK — The New York state chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, who retires at the end of the year, said the human cost of the bail system was brought into focus by the suicide in June of Kalief Browder, a teen who could not pay his $3,000 bail and spent three years at Rikers Island, much of it in solitary confinement, awaiting trial on a stolen a backpack.
Bronx prosecutors dismissed the case because the victim had left the country. But in the meantime Browder’s schooling and social life were derailed; he slipped into a deep depression and killed himself.
--more--"
Related: "New York agrees to overhaul solitary confinement in prisons, but ‘‘massive culture change is a challenge.’’
It starts in the schools.
Also see: New York City to pay $3.8 million settlement in death of inmate
Got treated better than the elderly:
"N.Y. bills for costs of care after alleged cases of abuse" Associated Press November 24, 2015
ALBANY, N.Y. — At least three times in recent years, New York has pursued Medicaid reimbursement of $1 million or more from those who allegedly suffered devastating, even deadly, mistreatment while in state care. In two of those cases, the state eventually dropped its claims after the families contested them.
National experts say New York’s pursuit of such claims appears to be highly unusual and is a misapplication of the 1993 federal law that requires states to recover, or “claw back,” certain Medicaid costs from people’s estates after their death.
“It’s serious overreaching to attempt to recoup funding from people who have been abused in the system,” said Susan Dooha, executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, a nonprofit group in New York. “It’s very cynical, to say the least.”
--more--"
Time to make a frisk stop.
"Judge dismisses conviction in 1990 NYC tourist killing" Associated Press October 06, 2015
NEW YORK — A man imprisoned for a quarter-century in a notorious tourist killing was granted a new trial Tuesday when a judge overturned his conviction in a case that helped crystallize an era of crime and fear in the nation’s biggest city.
State Supreme Court Justice Eduardo Padro cited new evidence, including testimony from two witnesses and a codefendant saying Johnny Hincapie wasn’t involved in the crime. Padro stopped short of declaring Hincapie innocent, as he and his lawyers had hoped the judge might but agreed to release him on $1 bail while awaiting a retrial.
‘‘After 25 years of suffering, after 25 years of injustice, after 25 years of sleepless nights, God just revealed his justice,’’ said Hincapie’s father, Carlos. His son couldn’t immediately be freed because of an immigration complication, which his lawyers are working to resolve.
Prosecutors said they were committed to retrying the case, if necessary.
Hincapie said he was a bystander who was wrongfully swept up in the case and then was coerced into a false confession. Prosecutors said his claims aren’t credible.
The killing became a symbol of random violence in a city that was reeling from it, after the 1989 rape and beating of a woman known as the Central Park jogger and a spate of bloodshed in the summer of 1990.
Utah tourist Brian Watkins’s death — one of a record-setting 2,245 in 1990, compared to 333 last year — brought a public plea from his family for better subway safety and helped prompt former Mayor David Dinkins to propose a program designed to increase police presence.
Print ended there.
Watkins, 22, and his parents were in town from Provo, Utah, for the US Open tennis tournament.
Someone tell Blake.
They were heading to dinner when they were jumped by a group of youths looking to rob people to get money to go to a dance hall, police said. After his father was slashed and robbed of $200 and his mother was punched and kicked, Watkins was stabbed in the chest yet chased the attackers up two stairways before collapsing under a turnstile.
“Why did they do this to me?’’ he said, according to his father’s testimony at the trial of Hincapie and several co-defendants. ‘‘We’re just here to have a good time.’’
Hincapie, a Colombian immigrant, was one of seven young men convicted in the case. Another defendant was accused of actually stabbing Watkins, but authorities said the whole group bore responsibility for his death.
Hincapie, now 43, has long maintained he was in a different part of the subway station when the stabbing happened.
‘‘I had nothing to do with this,’’ he wrote in a 1990 letter to his lawyer at the time. ‘‘I am innocent.’’
After unsuccessfully appealing his conviction, Hincapie brought another challenge in 2013. It relied partly on a sworn statement from an exonerated co-defendant saying Hincapie played no part in the attack. A man who was convicted, and a witness who came forward only in the last two years, also said during the hearing that Hincapie wasn’t involved.
Meanwhile, Hincapie testified that a detective beat him to get him to sign a confession.
Prosecutors said there was ‘‘no credible newly discovered evidence’’ in the case.
But Padro wrote that the new evidence would ‘‘create a probability that had such evidence been received at trial the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendant’’ — a legal standard for tossing out a conviction.
Hincapie has finished high school and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees while serving 25 years to life in prison. He has never despaired of being cleared, said his lawyer, Ron Kuby.
‘‘He always maintained an optimism and a certain hope that this day was going to come for him.’’
Like a New Year beginning.
--more--"
Time to get back to the security:
"Federal appeals court says lawsuit over NYPD surveillance of Muslims can proceed; Muslims were allegedly targeted" by Mark Berman Washington Post October 14, 2015
A US court said Tuesday that a civil rights lawsuit accusing New York City police of improperly singling out Muslims for surveillance could proceed, reversing a lower court’s decision last year to dismiss the case.
In its opinion, a three-judge US Court of Appeals panel rejected the city’s call to have the case dismissed and brushed aside any suggestion that media reports about the surveillance, rather than the surveillance itself, caused any harm.
Judge Thomas Ambro, who wrote the 59-page opinion for the panel, also cited dark chapters in American history — such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, for which the United States later apologized — as times when national security issues, civil liberties, and wartime fears inexorably collided.
Or torture?
‘‘We have learned from experience that it is often where the asserted interest appears most compelling that we must be most vigilant in protecting constitutional rights,’’ Ambro wrote.
The lawsuit contends that surveillance of Muslim people in New Jersey discriminated against them due to their religion. It was filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and later joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, another legal organization, on behalf of several Muslims who say they were unconstitutionally monitored by the New York Police Department.
‘‘I am so pleased the court recognized our claim that the NYPD is violating our basic rights as Americans and were wrong to do so,’’ Farhaj Hassan, lead plaintiff of the lawsuit, said in a statement released by the Center for Constitutional Rights. ‘‘No one should ever be spied on and treated like a suspect simply because of his or her faith, and today’s ruling paves the path to holding the NYPD accountable for ripping up the Constitution.’’
The New York City Law Department said it was reviewing the circuit court’s decision.
Last year, the NYPD disbanded the unit involved in the surveillance activities, a move that Mayor Bill de Blasio praised at the time as ‘‘a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve.’’
So we are told. What did they do, change the name?
--more--"
Did you know the NYPD was now a national force?
They create then capture the terrorists.
"Republican campaign rhetoric angers Muslims in US; GOP talk leaves a scar, they say" by Josh Cornfield Associated Press November 25, 2015
Why worry?
Obama Has Destroyed the Democratic Party
A Globe Thanksgiving
It's a 1% voting block.
TRENTON, N.J. — Muslim-Americans who sued the New York Police Department over a surveillance program launched after 9/11 say calls from the Republican presidential campaign to put them under more scrutiny are recklessly seizing on public fears and distressing Muslims in the United States as national security has become a focus in the 2016 race after the Paris attacks.
The Associated Press revealed in 2011 how New York police, in a since-disbanded demographics unit, infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, and otherwise spied on Muslims as part of a broad effort to prevent terrorist attacks. A federal appeals court last month reinstated the lawsuit challenging the surveillance, comparing the spying to other instances of heightened scrutiny of religious and ethnic groups, including Japanese-Americans during World War II.
A lower court last year had concluded the police could not keep watch ‘‘on Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself.’’ That came after New York City argued that any harm suffered by Muslims was ‘‘self-imposed, based on subjective fears’’ that may have dissuaded them from gathering with other Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The city called the intelligence-gathering an appropriate and legal antiterrorism tactic and said it never spied on people or businesses solely because they were Muslim.
Imagine if they said that about Jews. What an uproar there would be.
Wahy-ud Deen Shareef, president of the Council of Imams in New Jersey, said news of the demographics unit made some reluctant to gather at places that had been under surveillance, including mosques and businesses. He said it also hurt the trust that Muslims had developed with law enforcement after 9/11, something they’re still working to rebuild.
Now, he said, comments in the 2016 campaign are playing on people’s ignorance both of Islam and of what Muslim communities have done to cooperate with law enforcement.
‘‘When you trample upon the rights that are entitled to all just because you have suspicions of a group, then you are trampling on the rights of all of the citizens,’’ Shareef said.
In addition to pushing for monitoring and a registry, Trump has alleged that ‘‘thousands and thousands’’ of Muslims in Jersey City across the river from Manhattan celebrated from rooftops in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a scene at odds with the recollections of local officials and for which he has offered no proof. Carson made a similar allegation, then retracted it.
Didn't happen at all, but Jewish war press leaves impression that it did.
Someone was doing some dancing, though.
--more--"
"N.Y. emergency responders go through active shooter drill" Associated Press November 23, 2015
NEW YORK — Hundreds of New York emergency responders simulated a coordinated terror attack Sunday, days before one of the city’s biggest public events: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
The long-planned drill at a Manhattan subway station got a last-minute update in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris. Officials added an ‘‘attacker’’ wearing a suicide vest.
‘‘In New York City, we are, at this time, very well-prepared and continually improving that preparedness,’’ Commissioner William Bratton said outside the abandoned Bowery station in Lower Manhattan.
The three-hour active-shooter exercise took place in the pricey Soho neighborhood populated by art galleries and boutiques. Members of the police, fire, and federal Homeland Security departments went into action after a mock call reporting a gunman on the station platform.
Yes, if there were drills going on the propaganda pre$$ would surely tell us.
Of about 30 simulated straphangers in the station, a dozen suffered ‘‘critical wounds’’ from weapons firing blanks. Firefighters removed them on thick yellow plastic sheets and law enforcement personnel took on the threat.
First responders from various emergency departments worked as a team, with communication and coordination between agencies an important goal.
‘‘There have been very significant improvements in that capacity since 9/11, also the coordination with the fire department,’’ Bratton said.
What?
The Department of Homeland Security used the exercise to test technologies including GoPro-like cameras worn by first responders and acoustic gunshot detection systems designed to give police and firefighters information to coordinate their responses. Such systems are being developed for surveillance of the subway system, the commissioner said.
Sunday’s drill was funded by Homeland Security.
Bratton said New York law enforcement authorities, together with Homeland Security, are working closely with Paris investigators studying details of the Nov. 13 attacks there, aiming to prepare for similar suicide-bomber terrorism that New York has never experienced.
Is that what we are going to get tonight?
--more--"
Also see:
Suspect in officer’s killing should have been in prison, NYC chief says
Police divers find gun in Harlem River, connect it to slaying of officer
"Court says officer committed no crime" Associated Press December 04, 2015
NEW YORK — A former New York City police officer committed no crime when he fantasized online about committing horrific acts of sexual violence against his wife and others, including bizarre exchanges about kidnapping and eating women, a divided federal appeals court said Thursday.
See: Sick Cops and Their Sex Games
The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said in its 2-to-1 ruling that a lower-court Manhattan judge correctly reversed a 2013 jury’s guilty verdict on a kidnapping conspiracy charge against Gilberto Valle, 31, that could have sent him to prison for life.
‘‘We are loath to give the government the power to punish us for our thoughts and not our actions,’’ wrote Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker for the majority.
‘‘That includes the power to criminalize an individual’s expression of sexual fantasies, no matter how perverse or disturbing. Fantasizing about committing a crime, even a crime of violence against a real person whom you know, is not a crime.’’
The decision acknowledged that fantasies of violence against women ‘‘contribute to a culture of exploitation, a massive social harm that demeans women,’’ but the court added that ‘‘not every harm is meant to be addressed with the federal criminal law.’’
The ruling upheld US District Judge Paul Gardephe’s decision to reverse the jury verdict after finding no genuine agreement to kidnap.
--more--"
So what would you like to eat tonight?
Time to stop toying around:
"Explosion in Brooklyn home kills.... Councilman Brad Lander said the woman who died was in her 60s and was from the Dominican Republic. He said she lived in a third-floor apartment with her daughter, who was away at the time."
At least Bo$ton is safe.
So have you found a place to flop for the night?
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Panhandling to Purchase the Boston Globe For Breakfast
It may well come to that, but for now we cover the costs for you here at the Propaganda Pre$$ Monitor:
"New York police create Times Square unit" Associated Press August 27, 2015
NEW YORK — Police have announced a new unit dedicated to patrolling Times Square following weeks of complaints about the panhandling tactics of costumed characters such as Elmo and Batman and topless women covered in body paint.
Where is this?
The area, one of the busiest and most crowded in the nation, eventually was going to receive new officers who would work regular shifts and be assigned to the same posts every day, but the past few weeks of attention accelerated the decision to recruit, the New York Police Department said.
‘‘It just seemed natural,’’ Chief of Department James O’Neill said Wednesday.
Yes, and there are ancestral tribes and peoples to prove it all across the planet.
The news came a week after Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio assigned a multiagency task force to figure out how to deal with costumed characters and so-called desnudas — women wearing thongs and covering themselves only with body paint — seeking tips in exchange for photos at the Manhattan tourist attraction.
Let me see what I have in my pocket.
In New York, toplessness and panhandling are legal. But that hasn’t stopped the city’s tabloids and some elected officials from calling for action.
That was where I said leave 'em be, simply because of the source of complaint.
Among the women who accept tips for photos, Saira Nicole said she doesn’t think the practice should be an issue.
‘‘People are having fun,’’ she said. ‘‘There’s no problem.’’
Apparently there is for the uptight moral degenerates lecturing to us all form on high under the banner of public $ervice.
--more--"
I'm glad New York doesn't have serious crimes like rapes, robberies, murders, or illegal drugs.
What's next in New York, the removal of park benches?
As for that bag you are carrying (if homeless) or tossing out (if not)....
"Trash offers peek into New Yorkers’ lives; Garbage trucks now research lab for anthropologist" by Verena Dobnik Associated Press August 31, 2015
NEW YORK — New York’s sanitation department has its very own anthropologist-in-residence, a garbage guru who studies the refuse along the curbs of the nation’s biggest city as a mirror into the lives of its 8.5 million residents.
She must work for the FBI. Hoover had agents doing that.
‘‘What does trash tell you about us?’’ asks New York University professor Robin Nagle, who frequently goes out on trucks with garbage-collection crews in search of an answer.
So, what’s her take on the nearly 3.5 million-ton annual trash pile collected by New York’s Department of Sanitation?
‘‘We’re a throwaway culture that’s going too fast,’’ she says. Modern Gotham, she adds, tends to treat just about everything — from furniture to electronics to clothing — like so many paper coffee cups.
‘‘We assume that we don’t need to waste time taking care of mundane, useful objects when we can, with no responsibility, get rid of them,’’ she says.
Well, who $et that tone for the last 50+ years?
Factor in a city of mostly small apartments, where residents are constantly tossing out stuff to make more space, and you get what Nagle considers a gold mine for garbage pickers.
Here we go again! When the economy is bad the propaganda pre$$ promotes poverty as a good thing!
See what I'm dining on every morning?
So when do the Wall Street bankers head down and start digging through it?
Many residents furnish their homes with other people’s refuse.
I wouldn't expect (sniff, sniff) lots of visitors.
Some forage for edible food that’s never been cooked, such as bagels, rice, and pasta.
Yes, it is a veritable buffet and feast going through the garbage!
And a private wardrobe could be filled with rejected clothing, shoes, and jewelry, along with sofas, beds, domestic appliances, even paintings.
Poverty in AmeriKa? What poverty? Look at what people are throwing out.
‘‘The quantities of trash that New Yorkers throw out are dazzling,’’ Nagle says. ‘‘And the quality of goods they put on the street because they’re done with it and discardable is also very impressive.’’
I wish I had some worthwhile garbage to put out on the street because then I'd sell it.
Is it just me, or is the swirling steamer of a breakfast from the corporate pre$$ offensive?
On a micro level, Nagle says, sanitation workers get to know the rhythms of the people on their route from the refuse, which she calls ‘‘the physical record of our daily lives.’’
Oh, she's working for the NSA! Isn't all the electronic data enough?
If there’s a divorce, they might find photos of the former spouse thrown out. Or if someone has had a drinking problem, it’s reflected in the bottles. When babies arrive, so do disposable diapers.
Nagle, 54, lobbied sanitation officials for two years before being named to the unpaid position of anthropologist-in-residence in 2006.
Been going through your garbage that long?
Her research has led to several books, a New York University course she teaches titled ‘‘Garbage in Gotham,’’ and a personal campaign to get manufacturers to use more recyclable materials.
You know where those are going.
(Sorry for extrapolating a certain someone coming across them and laughing to myself. I'd try and sell 'em, but....)
But Nagle has not been merely an ivory-tower scholar. She’s gotten her hands dirty, literally, by going through the training, learning to drive the trucks, and working for almost a year as a regular, salaried sanitation worker.
So when are the war-mongering politicians going to be the point of the spear on a special forces operation and become heroes like the garbage-picker here?
Her biggest contribution is in raising morale for a job that is often overlooked.
Ah!
Did you guys get paid? Health and pension benefits okay?
***************
Elliot Belnavis, a 27-year-old newcomer, notes that while members of the police and fire departments are treated as heroes, ‘‘we’re invisible.’’ Nagle’s introduction to his new job left him with a greater appreciation of his role, he says.
No offense, but I think, sniff, sniff, there may be a reason, sniff, for that.
‘‘I now definitely feel like sanitation workers are the most important workers that we have in this city,’’ Belnavis says. ‘‘If we don’t pick up the garbage off the streets, if we don’t take care of the snow, nobody can move. It starts with us, and when we do our job, everybody else can do their job.’’
He is 100% right there, which is why I want those guys (like nurses) kept happy.
--more--"
Nice looking girl, but.... she stinks!
What is one man's trash is another treasure, right?
"Harvard’s glass pavilion plan for plaza meets resistance; Fans of Forbes Plaza’s footloose style balk at project" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff August 27, 2015
Gregory Daugherty — a homeless man also known as the Spare Change Guy of Harvard Square — has been working the same stretch of sidewalk for so long that when Matt Damon and Minnie Driver filmed a scene at the plaza in front of Au Bon Pain for 1997’s “Good Will Hunting,” there he was in the background, energetically greeting the public just as he does today.
Those are the breaks in Bo$ton.
But Daugherty’s outdoor office alongside the plaza on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Dunster Street may be getting a makeover, courtesy of property owner Harvard University, and not everyone is happy about it.
He's not wearing a thong and covered in body paint is he?
Harvard wants to build a glass pavilion that would simultaneously encroach on the spot formally known as Forbes Plaza and add indoor space that would be open to the public, including areas on the second floor, offering views toward Harvard Yard and ambience from a couple of fireplaces.
Critics say the glass enclosure would intrude on the freewheeling culture of one of the square’s best-known public spaces, a gathering spot for professors and students, protesters and tourists, chess players and street performers, and homeless people who may not feel comfortable going inside.
Then go on over to the Inn (maybe you will be lucky enough to get a cookie, too).
Depending on who’s telling the story, the school is either a civic-minded neighbor interested in enhancing public space and adding much-needed restrooms, or a villain intent on turning Cambridge into a “Harvard theme park,” in the words of Harvey Silverglate, a well-known attorney and Harvard Law School graduate.
*********
The planned plaza renovation is part of a larger project that involves renovating the first, second and 10th floors of the Smith Campus Center (née Holyoke Center), a Brutalist-style, 1960s-era building that houses Harvard’s information center, the university health service, and administrative offices.
At its most basic, the fight centers on matters of square footage, and whether the public really would feel welcome in public space inside glass walls....
The university has already received a favorable recommendation from the city’s Planning Board and the Harvard Square Advisory Committee, and a certificate of appropriateness from the Cambridge Historical Commission. Charles Sullivan, the historical commission’s director, said his agency felt the loss of open space would be balanced by enhanced indoor facilities.
But opponents said that Harvard’s glossy proposed changes are more in keeping with the new Harvard Square than the square of the past, an intellectual and edgy place with offbeat characters part of the mix....
You "offbeat" characters stuck in the past.
What do they do, sit around reading newspapers?
Even as critics fight the potential loss of outdoor space, a Harvard urban-planning scholar who has studied public-private spaces — and said he has been approached by both Harvard and its critics — said that if done right, indoor public space can truly become a gathering spot.
Not an architect?
“Even if the public and the property owner have different goals and needs, thoughtful design and stewardship can accommodate both,” said Jerold Kayden, a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and author of “Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience.”
“I know it sounds bland,” he added, “but it’s true.”
He points to a Manhattan building, 590 Madison Avenue, where the developer built a glass-enclosed, tree-filled, covered pedestrian space that is so popular it has turned into the city’s “living room.”
For traditionalists of a certain viewpoint, the gripe about today’s Harvard Square is that it’s become a generic outdoor mall, filled with chain stores and banks.
Yeah? Then what is the problem?
--more--"
Do the Globe have no $hame?
Oddly enough, here come's the trash man now.
Sorry I didn't have enough for coffee.
UPDATE: Buskers push Cambridge to embrace street performing
"New York police create Times Square unit" Associated Press August 27, 2015
NEW YORK — Police have announced a new unit dedicated to patrolling Times Square following weeks of complaints about the panhandling tactics of costumed characters such as Elmo and Batman and topless women covered in body paint.
Where is this?
The area, one of the busiest and most crowded in the nation, eventually was going to receive new officers who would work regular shifts and be assigned to the same posts every day, but the past few weeks of attention accelerated the decision to recruit, the New York Police Department said.
‘‘It just seemed natural,’’ Chief of Department James O’Neill said Wednesday.
Yes, and there are ancestral tribes and peoples to prove it all across the planet.
The news came a week after Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio assigned a multiagency task force to figure out how to deal with costumed characters and so-called desnudas — women wearing thongs and covering themselves only with body paint — seeking tips in exchange for photos at the Manhattan tourist attraction.
Let me see what I have in my pocket.
In New York, toplessness and panhandling are legal. But that hasn’t stopped the city’s tabloids and some elected officials from calling for action.
That was where I said leave 'em be, simply because of the source of complaint.
Among the women who accept tips for photos, Saira Nicole said she doesn’t think the practice should be an issue.
‘‘People are having fun,’’ she said. ‘‘There’s no problem.’’
Apparently there is for the uptight moral degenerates lecturing to us all form on high under the banner of public $ervice.
--more--"
I'm glad New York doesn't have serious crimes like rapes, robberies, murders, or illegal drugs.
What's next in New York, the removal of park benches?
As for that bag you are carrying (if homeless) or tossing out (if not)....
"Trash offers peek into New Yorkers’ lives; Garbage trucks now research lab for anthropologist" by Verena Dobnik Associated Press August 31, 2015
NEW YORK — New York’s sanitation department has its very own anthropologist-in-residence, a garbage guru who studies the refuse along the curbs of the nation’s biggest city as a mirror into the lives of its 8.5 million residents.
She must work for the FBI. Hoover had agents doing that.
‘‘What does trash tell you about us?’’ asks New York University professor Robin Nagle, who frequently goes out on trucks with garbage-collection crews in search of an answer.
So, what’s her take on the nearly 3.5 million-ton annual trash pile collected by New York’s Department of Sanitation?
‘‘We’re a throwaway culture that’s going too fast,’’ she says. Modern Gotham, she adds, tends to treat just about everything — from furniture to electronics to clothing — like so many paper coffee cups.
‘‘We assume that we don’t need to waste time taking care of mundane, useful objects when we can, with no responsibility, get rid of them,’’ she says.
Well, who $et that tone for the last 50+ years?
Factor in a city of mostly small apartments, where residents are constantly tossing out stuff to make more space, and you get what Nagle considers a gold mine for garbage pickers.
Here we go again! When the economy is bad the propaganda pre$$ promotes poverty as a good thing!
See what I'm dining on every morning?
So when do the Wall Street bankers head down and start digging through it?
Many residents furnish their homes with other people’s refuse.
I wouldn't expect (sniff, sniff) lots of visitors.
Some forage for edible food that’s never been cooked, such as bagels, rice, and pasta.
Yes, it is a veritable buffet and feast going through the garbage!
And a private wardrobe could be filled with rejected clothing, shoes, and jewelry, along with sofas, beds, domestic appliances, even paintings.
Poverty in AmeriKa? What poverty? Look at what people are throwing out.
‘‘The quantities of trash that New Yorkers throw out are dazzling,’’ Nagle says. ‘‘And the quality of goods they put on the street because they’re done with it and discardable is also very impressive.’’
I wish I had some worthwhile garbage to put out on the street because then I'd sell it.
Is it just me, or is the swirling steamer of a breakfast from the corporate pre$$ offensive?
On a micro level, Nagle says, sanitation workers get to know the rhythms of the people on their route from the refuse, which she calls ‘‘the physical record of our daily lives.’’
Oh, she's working for the NSA! Isn't all the electronic data enough?
If there’s a divorce, they might find photos of the former spouse thrown out. Or if someone has had a drinking problem, it’s reflected in the bottles. When babies arrive, so do disposable diapers.
Nagle, 54, lobbied sanitation officials for two years before being named to the unpaid position of anthropologist-in-residence in 2006.
Been going through your garbage that long?
Her research has led to several books, a New York University course she teaches titled ‘‘Garbage in Gotham,’’ and a personal campaign to get manufacturers to use more recyclable materials.
You know where those are going.
(Sorry for extrapolating a certain someone coming across them and laughing to myself. I'd try and sell 'em, but....)
But Nagle has not been merely an ivory-tower scholar. She’s gotten her hands dirty, literally, by going through the training, learning to drive the trucks, and working for almost a year as a regular, salaried sanitation worker.
So when are the war-mongering politicians going to be the point of the spear on a special forces operation and become heroes like the garbage-picker here?
Her biggest contribution is in raising morale for a job that is often overlooked.
Ah!
Did you guys get paid? Health and pension benefits okay?
***************
Elliot Belnavis, a 27-year-old newcomer, notes that while members of the police and fire departments are treated as heroes, ‘‘we’re invisible.’’ Nagle’s introduction to his new job left him with a greater appreciation of his role, he says.
No offense, but I think, sniff, sniff, there may be a reason, sniff, for that.
‘‘I now definitely feel like sanitation workers are the most important workers that we have in this city,’’ Belnavis says. ‘‘If we don’t pick up the garbage off the streets, if we don’t take care of the snow, nobody can move. It starts with us, and when we do our job, everybody else can do their job.’’
He is 100% right there, which is why I want those guys (like nurses) kept happy.
--more--"
Nice looking girl, but.... she stinks!
What is one man's trash is another treasure, right?
"Harvard’s glass pavilion plan for plaza meets resistance; Fans of Forbes Plaza’s footloose style balk at project" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff August 27, 2015
Gregory Daugherty — a homeless man also known as the Spare Change Guy of Harvard Square — has been working the same stretch of sidewalk for so long that when Matt Damon and Minnie Driver filmed a scene at the plaza in front of Au Bon Pain for 1997’s “Good Will Hunting,” there he was in the background, energetically greeting the public just as he does today.
Those are the breaks in Bo$ton.
But Daugherty’s outdoor office alongside the plaza on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Dunster Street may be getting a makeover, courtesy of property owner Harvard University, and not everyone is happy about it.
He's not wearing a thong and covered in body paint is he?
Harvard wants to build a glass pavilion that would simultaneously encroach on the spot formally known as Forbes Plaza and add indoor space that would be open to the public, including areas on the second floor, offering views toward Harvard Yard and ambience from a couple of fireplaces.
Critics say the glass enclosure would intrude on the freewheeling culture of one of the square’s best-known public spaces, a gathering spot for professors and students, protesters and tourists, chess players and street performers, and homeless people who may not feel comfortable going inside.
Then go on over to the Inn (maybe you will be lucky enough to get a cookie, too).
Depending on who’s telling the story, the school is either a civic-minded neighbor interested in enhancing public space and adding much-needed restrooms, or a villain intent on turning Cambridge into a “Harvard theme park,” in the words of Harvey Silverglate, a well-known attorney and Harvard Law School graduate.
*********
The planned plaza renovation is part of a larger project that involves renovating the first, second and 10th floors of the Smith Campus Center (née Holyoke Center), a Brutalist-style, 1960s-era building that houses Harvard’s information center, the university health service, and administrative offices.
At its most basic, the fight centers on matters of square footage, and whether the public really would feel welcome in public space inside glass walls....
The university has already received a favorable recommendation from the city’s Planning Board and the Harvard Square Advisory Committee, and a certificate of appropriateness from the Cambridge Historical Commission. Charles Sullivan, the historical commission’s director, said his agency felt the loss of open space would be balanced by enhanced indoor facilities.
But opponents said that Harvard’s glossy proposed changes are more in keeping with the new Harvard Square than the square of the past, an intellectual and edgy place with offbeat characters part of the mix....
You "offbeat" characters stuck in the past.
What do they do, sit around reading newspapers?
Even as critics fight the potential loss of outdoor space, a Harvard urban-planning scholar who has studied public-private spaces — and said he has been approached by both Harvard and its critics — said that if done right, indoor public space can truly become a gathering spot.
Not an architect?
“Even if the public and the property owner have different goals and needs, thoughtful design and stewardship can accommodate both,” said Jerold Kayden, a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and author of “Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience.”
“I know it sounds bland,” he added, “but it’s true.”
He points to a Manhattan building, 590 Madison Avenue, where the developer built a glass-enclosed, tree-filled, covered pedestrian space that is so popular it has turned into the city’s “living room.”
For traditionalists of a certain viewpoint, the gripe about today’s Harvard Square is that it’s become a generic outdoor mall, filled with chain stores and banks.
Yeah? Then what is the problem?
--more--"
Do the Globe have no $hame?
Oddly enough, here come's the trash man now.
Sorry I didn't have enough for coffee.
UPDATE: Buskers push Cambridge to embrace street performing
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Frisk Stop in New York City
It's a way of getting around the law:
"Some NYC officers fail to document stops, monitor says" by J. David Goodman and Al Baker New York Times July 10, 2015
NEW YORK — Some New York City police officers are stopping people for questioning but are not documenting the encounters as required, calling into question the official accounting of a significant decline in stop-and-frisk activity, according to the first report of the federal monitor overseeing the city’s Police Department.
The finding is contained in an 87-page report filed Thursday in US District Court in Manhattan by the monitor, Peter L. Zimroth, who was installed as part of the court’s decision in 2013 that found the department’s stop-and-frisk tactics were unconstitutional.
The report also urges changes to the court’s order to outfit officers with body cameras. Rather than having all officers in five precincts wear cameras, as the court required, Zimroth proposed in his report a broader and more scientific approach — a “randomized controlled trial” — that would issue cameras to officers in 20 precincts around the city and set control groups to allow for comparison.
Zimroth, in a letter filed along with the report, said that while “it is still early in the remedial process and there is much to do,” he found that the Police Department was “moving in a positive direction.”
Yup.
The monitor was tasked by the court with implementing its orders after it consolidated three federal cases against the Police Department: the stop-and-frisk suit, Floyd v. the City of New York, and two involving criminal trespass stops in public housing and private buildings.
Those orders include new training on the laws surrounding police stops, frisks, and searches as well as the policies that guide how those tactics are used. The court called for greater involvement of supervisors in making sure that the officers’ actions were constitutional and free of racial bias.
“NYPD has conducted several precinct audits and concluded that some stops were made but not documented,” Zimroth wrote. “More work needs to be done to determine the extent of the problem and to make sure that there is proper record-keeping.”
--more--"
I suppose they should feel fortunate they were not shot:
"Officials say hammer-wielding man shot by police was mentally ill" Associated Press May 14, 2015
NEW YORK — Manhattan Chief of Detectives William Aubry said they tracked the suspect to a subway station, where he used his Metro card. Officers obtained an image of him and, using facial recognition technology, matched a photo with one on file at the department, Aubry said.
David Baril, 30, has at least eight arrests and a history of schizophrenia and paranoia, police said. He had voluntarily left a mental institution a few months ago, police said....
He's lucky he's still alive.
--more--"
Really stigmatizing the mental disabilities stuff with the shootings.
It get's worse from here:
"New York rolls out plan to drop cash bail for minor crimes" by Jake Pearson Associated Press July 09, 2015
NEW YORK — Thousands of New Yorkers accused of minor or nonviolent crimes won’t face the prospect of raising cash for bail under a plan that seeks to keep such suspects out of the troubled Rikers Island jail.
Why? What's wrong with Rikers?
You know, when one looks around at the AmeriKan penal $y$tem one might also see dens of torture!
The $18 million city plan, detailed on Wednesday, allows judges beginning next year to replace money bail for about 3,000 low-risk defendants with supervision options, including regular check-ins and text-message reminders.
Cash bail has long been criticized by inmate advocates for unfairly targeting poor people.
In New York City? No way!
And reforms were recommended by a mayoral task force last year after reports of a mentally ill homeless man who was unable to make $2,500 bail for trespassing and died in a sweltering Rikers cell.
Baril got lucky; they put him in a nice hospital.
More calls for reform gained traction after the suicide last month of 22-year-old Kalief Browder.
That is a common theme today, too, along with the body cams.
When he was 16 years old, Browder was unable to make $3,000 bail on charges he stole a backpack. He ended up being held in Rikers for three years, beaten by inmates and guards alike, and held in solitary confinement before charges against him were dropped.
That's torture, and $3,000 for a backpack? What did he do, drop it off near a mailbox during the Marathon?
‘‘I think the basic principle is that Kalief Browder and other cases have begun to signify this [need for reform],’’ said Elizabeth Glazer, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator. ‘‘We want to focus on risk to be the determining factor to decide if someone will be in or out; and it has to be risk, not money.’’
Currently, about 41 percent of criminal defendants who pass through New York City courts annually are released on their own recognizance.
About 87 percent of the 1,100 people on supervised release in city pilot programs return to court as scheduled, officials said.
Initial funding, provided by the Manhattan district attorney, allows for as many as 3,000 defendants charged with misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies to bypass bail, letting them live with their families and keep their jobs while their cases wind through the courts. Officials say they would like to expand non-bail options to include thousands more.
Advocates hailed the decision Wednesday, saying expanding options beyond cash bail for poor people accused of nonviolent crimes will help make the criminal justice system fairer.
‘‘Locking up New Yorkers who should be treated as innocent until proven guilty just because they are poor offends the values and principles this country was built on,’’ said Donna Lieberman, New York Civil Liberties Union executive director.
That innocent until proven guilty stuff is gone. It's the accusation that sticks with regular folk (elite don't have to worry unless they get out of line; then their name starts popping up in the paper in unflattering ways).
Releasing defendants to community supervision based on risk-assessment tools that gauge a person’s threat to public safety is increasingly done throughout the country.
The end of that will be the next guy who kills somebody after being allowed to stay home.
About 10 percent of state, county, and city courts currently use some such tool to decide if a defendant is too risky to be released or who qualifies for some level of supervision, according to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which created its own risk instrument that’s used in Arizona, Kentucky, and New Jersey as well as in cities such as Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, and Phoenix.
Chicago is getting rather frisky.
But in New York, unlike most states, efforts to fully do away with bail are complicated by state law, which requires judges to consider defendants’ risk of flight, not their risk of reoffending, when determining bail conditions.
Glazer said she hoped legislators would consider changing the law, a move supported by the state’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, who said in a statement that alternatives to either jail time or no supervision at all ‘‘are critical steps in reducing overreliance on bail.’’
--more--"
It's a good thing you are not headed for Rikers, kiddo:
"Rikers Island guard gets 5 years for inmate death" Associated Press June 19, 2015
NEW YORK — A former Rikers Island guard convicted of ignoring the pleas of a dying inmate dabbed tears from his eyes Thursday after he was handed a five-year prison term by a judge who said the sentence was intended to be a deterrent to others.
Poor guy. The guard, not the scum.
Former Department of Correction Captain Terrence Pendergrass was also fined $5,000 after a jury convicted him in December of depriving 25-year-old Jason Echevarria of his civil rights.
The prisoner swallowed toxic detergent while housed in a now-closed solitary confinement unit for inmates who break jailhouse rules.
You think "Escape From Alcatraz" is just a movie.
According to court papers, the 51-year-old Pendergrass told other jail employees he didn’t want to be bothered unless there was a ‘‘dead body’’ in the cell after Echevarria told two other correction officers that he had wallowed the deadly substance.
Umm, Terry? Better have a look in the cell.
‘‘Such criminal indifference will not be tolerated,’’ US District Judge Ronnie Abrams said in Manhattan as she imposed the sentence but rejected a request by prosecutors that Pendergrass begin serving the prison term immediately.
Finding he had reliably shown up for his court appearances, the judge said he could report to prison Aug. 18.
The judge said deterrence was an important consideration so guards know they will be held responsible for wrongdoing even when they work in a troubled correction system or a jail such as Rikers.
Shoulda got a job on Wall Street instead!
Federal sentencing guidelines had called for a sentence of roughly two years.
She also noted the difficulty of prosecuting civil rights cases.
Prosecutors had asked for a substantial punishment, saying in court papers that his crime was ‘‘particularly cruel.’’
Defense lawyer James G. Frankie wrote that Pendergrass had no reason to accept reports Echevarria had swallowed a soap ball since it was without precedent that an inmate would receive an unauthorized soap ball and ingest it.
He said the claim that he had swallowed the soap ball seemed ‘‘more consistent with malingering to get out of a cell rather than a genuine call for medical assistance.’’
Well, then you beat 'em a couple times for making you get up and away from the TV show or whatever.
Conditions at the nation’s second-largest jail system, where about 11,000 inmates are regularly housed in 10 Rikers Island facilities, have drawn considerable scrutiny over the last year.
There have been numerous reports of inmate beatings, guard corruption, and mistreatment of the mentally ill.
--more--"
And watch out if they get a hold of you:
"N.Y. reaches $5.9 million settlement in chokehold death" New York Times July 14, 2015
My print piece was a four-paragraph AP article.
NEW YORK — New York City reached a settlement with the family of Eric Garner on Monday, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve a wrongful death claim over his killing by the police on Staten Island last July, a lawyer for the family said.
The agreement, reached just a few days before the deadline to file suit, headed off one potentially fractious legal battle over Garner’s death even as a federal inquiry into the killing and several others at the state and local level remain open and could provide a further accounting of how he died.
Still, the settlement was a pivotal moment in a case that has engulfed the city and the Police Department since the afternoon of July 17, 2014, when two officers approached Garner as he stood unarmed on a sidewalk and accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes.
The death of Garner, 43, followed by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, set off a national debate about policing actions in minority communities and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.
Garner’s final words - “I can’t breathe” - repeated 11 times as one officer held him in a chokehold, became a national rallying cry. A Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, fueled weeks of demonstrations. The protests eased after the killing of two police officers in Brooklyn in December by a man who said he acted to avenge Garner’s death.
The killings of the officers shook the city anew, deepening tensions between the police and Mayor Bill de Blasio and slowing a push to enact a host of criminal justice reforms.
And who benefited?
Last year, Garner’s relatives, including his widow, Esaw Garner, and his mother, Gwen Carr, filed a notice of claim - a procedural step that must precede a lawsuit against the city. In the notice, they said were seeking $75 million in damages. Since then, the family has been in talks with the city comptroller’s office, and on Monday, both sides confirmed the resolution of the claim.
“The City of New York has agreed to pay $5.9 million to resolve the Garner case,” said Jonathan C. Moore, the lawyer for Garner’s family.
I don't like the fact that taxpayers had to pay for cop misconduct. Maybe if the individual or group of criminals had to pay (like for civilians), the cops would be more careful.
Moore said the city had until Friday, the anniversary of the death, to come to an agreement. If none had been reached, a suit would have been filed.
The resolution is among the biggest reached so far as part of a strategy by the comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, to settle major civil rights claims even before a lawsuit is filed. Stringer has said the aim is to save taxpayers the expense of a drawn-out trial and to give those bringing the suits and their families a measure of closure.
And more importantly, remove the black eye from authority.
But the settlement did not provide any greater clarity on the actions of the officers that day or the policing strategies that have come under criticism in the year that has followed.
The relatives of Garner, along with Moore, are expected to discuss the settlement at a news conference scheduled for Tuesday morning at the Harlem offices of the National Action Network, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
You know about Al and the FBI?
On Saturday, Garner’s family is expected to lead a rally outside the Brooklyn offices of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York to call for a federal case to be brought against the officers involved in Garner’s death.
“This is not about people getting money,” Sharpton said on Monday. “This is about justice. We’ve got to restructure our police departments and how we deal with policing nationwide.”
When they say it's not about money, it's about money -- and how much Al can collect in donations. With out the division, we don't need him.
The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, citing the chokehold and the compression of Garner’s chest by other officers who held him down.
Several inquiries into Garner’s death were still pending, including investigations by the U.S. attorney’s office, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and state health officials, who are looking into the actions of emergency medical responders in treating Garner.
The Police Department has concluded its internal investigation but has yet to say whether any officers would be disciplined.
The agreement with the city does not cover the private hospital that sent the responders, Richmond University Medical Center. Video shows that as Garner lay on the ground, he was not given oxygen and the actions of the medical responders, also captured on video, appeared disorganized. The conduct of its employees at the scene has come under scrutiny and could result in further legal action. But as of Monday, “nothing has been filed,” William J. Smith, a spokesman for the hospital, said.
De Blasio, speaking to reporters shortly before the settlement had been reached, said the anniversary of Garner’s death was on his mind. “I think it’s on the mind of many New Yorkers, and we, you know, mourn the death of Eric Garner,” the mayor said. “I think we’ve come a long way, even in the last year, in terms of bringing police and community together.”
Kumbaya!
In recent months, the comptroller’s office has reached major settlements in several cases without a suit being filed, effectively cutting out involvement by the city’s Law Department.
Stringer reached a $6.4 million deal with David Ranta, who was imprisoned for 23 years after a wrongful murder conviction; Ranta had sought $150 million.
Related: Ranta's Release
A deal was also reached for $2.25 million with the family of Jerome Murdough, who died in an overheated cell at the Rikers Island jail complex, to settle their $25 million claim against the city.
Well, that stinks. I'll bet the heat made the hangover smell worse.
But while the approach spares the city and those hurt by it from protracted legal fights, it has come under criticism for sidelining experienced lawyers at the Law Department who might better gauge the city’s legal liability.
“The determination of appropriate damage levels is a complex, nuanced process,” said Victor A. Kovner, a former city corporation counsel. “The notion that the comptroller, without the benefit of that experience, seeks to make these resolutions on his own is in my experience grandstanding and against the city’s interest.”
Kovner said settlements in wrongful death and police brutality cases must take into account the pain and suffering of the person as well as future earnings and financial damage to the family. In the case of Garner, his apparent suffering in video images would have probably been a major factor in any settlement discussions.
In 2001, a suit brought by Abner Louima, a Haitian man tortured with a broomstick while in police custody at a Brooklyn precinct station house in August 1997, was settled for $8.75 million, with the city paying $7.125 million and the police officers’ union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which was accused of conspiring to cover up the assault, paying Louima another $1.625 million.
Yeah, that case. They sodomized an innocent man with that thing.
The United States can't lecture anyone when it comes to human rights, although they do it all the time.
That agreement was reached three years into the suit brought by Louima, who was sodomized with the broken broomstick handle. The settlement came after federal trials in which one officer, Justin A. Volpe, was convicted in the attack and sentenced to 30 years in prison, and another pleaded guilty to perjury. Two more were sentenced to probation in the cover-up. Two other officers had their convictions overturned on appeal.
Nearly five years after the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999, the city settled with his relatives for $3 million. The city settled a suit over the 2006 fatal shooting of Sean Bell for $3.25 million.
You know, once is a mistake, twice, aaaaah, more than three times.... pattern.
It's what they tell the criminals.
In January, Stringer agreed to pay $17 million to settle wrongful conviction claims brought by three defendants whose cases involved Louis Scarcella, a retired homicide detective whose investigative tactics have come under scrutiny and are under review.
In an interview last December, after the grand jury’s decision, Stringer called Garner’s death “a terrible tragedy” and said “my heart goes out to the Garner family, and I feel very strongly about that.”
--more--"
Those cops didn't go to jail, did they?
Related: N.Y. judge OK’s release of data in Garner case
No wonder they settled. They need good cops in New York:
"NYPD seeks more Muslim recruits" Associated Press June 09, 2015
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department is working to recruit more Muslims and is asking for help within the community to better refine outreach aimed at stifling the lure of overseas terror groups, officials said Monday.
So they can frame them?
Out of about 35,000 uniformed police officers, about 800 are Muslim, according to the NYPD Muslim Officers Society. Of those, only about 20 are higher ranked officials. Lieutenant Adeel Rana, commanding officer of the community affairs immigration outreach unit, said there has been a slow increase over the past decade, but it has been rapidly changing in the past year and a half.
‘‘It’s changing every day; we are getting more and more recruits,’’ he said. ‘‘And as they see people of their own religion in uniform, their eyes brighten.’’
???????
How will they know? Just by looking at them?
???????
There has been an effort to increase openness and communication with the community since the new administration took over, stinging from a public outcry over the contentious stop, question, and frisk policy and the surveillance of Muslims. A unit that investigated Muslims under the previous police commissioner was disbanded, and Commissioner William Bratton said Monday that officials had worked hard to regain trust.
‘‘We will not do anything to jeopardize that trust,’’ he said.
In an effort to reach out to more recruits, the NYPD is also expanding a cadet program where college students are given stipends and fast-tracked to a job. Rana said officers also attend community meetings and fairs. A video played during the department’s annual pre-Ramadan conference showed dozens of uniformed officers who are Muslim saying: ‘‘We are your NYPD.’’
Muslim leaders said they are encouraged by recruitment efforts.
‘‘The more Muslims who work in the NYPD the better,’’ said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Maybe they will go national with it!
--more--"
Well, time to get out of the city.
Took longer than I thought, and I'll be stopping it here for a few hours (how appropriate, huh?)
UPDATE: NY prison inmates suffered beatings, retaliation after historic escape
No Sweat, right?
"Man killed after firing at N.Y. police" by Jake Pearson Associated Press August 14, 2015
NEW YORK — Shortly before emerging from an apartment armed with a fully automatic AK-47, Garland Tyree tenderly told his mother over the phone Friday that he had agreed to surrender after a six-hour standoff with police.
‘‘I’m coming out, Mama,’’ he said, according to the New York force’s top negotiator, Lieutenant Jack Cambria.
Instead, Tyree, 38, a wanted high-ranking member of the Bloods street gang who hours earlier had shot and injured a firefighter responding to heavy smoke in the house, fired his weapon at police and was shot and killed in return.
‘‘It cannot go without saying that this is not the way we want these kinds of negotiations to end,’’ Police Commissioner William Bratton told reporters at a news conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Tyree was to be arrested early Friday at his girlfriend’s apartment in a two-family Staten Island home by US marshals and New York detectives for violating parole. But he refused to open the door, officials said, and then ignited a smoke bomb, prompting the call to the Fire Department.
If true -- and there is always reason to doubt the official story because, well, it's the official story -- how can things come to this. Parole violation gets a guy killed.
Three times before the deadly confrontation, Tyree fired his weapon and officers didn’t return fire, Bratton said.
When he did emerge, wearing a bulletproof vest, his shots struck police cars and a neighbor’s house, officials said.
--more--"
Hey, maybe it was the only way to stop him, but this stuff is becoming much to frequent.
"Some NYC officers fail to document stops, monitor says" by J. David Goodman and Al Baker New York Times July 10, 2015
NEW YORK — Some New York City police officers are stopping people for questioning but are not documenting the encounters as required, calling into question the official accounting of a significant decline in stop-and-frisk activity, according to the first report of the federal monitor overseeing the city’s Police Department.
The finding is contained in an 87-page report filed Thursday in US District Court in Manhattan by the monitor, Peter L. Zimroth, who was installed as part of the court’s decision in 2013 that found the department’s stop-and-frisk tactics were unconstitutional.
The report also urges changes to the court’s order to outfit officers with body cameras. Rather than having all officers in five precincts wear cameras, as the court required, Zimroth proposed in his report a broader and more scientific approach — a “randomized controlled trial” — that would issue cameras to officers in 20 precincts around the city and set control groups to allow for comparison.
Zimroth, in a letter filed along with the report, said that while “it is still early in the remedial process and there is much to do,” he found that the Police Department was “moving in a positive direction.”
Yup.
The monitor was tasked by the court with implementing its orders after it consolidated three federal cases against the Police Department: the stop-and-frisk suit, Floyd v. the City of New York, and two involving criminal trespass stops in public housing and private buildings.
Those orders include new training on the laws surrounding police stops, frisks, and searches as well as the policies that guide how those tactics are used. The court called for greater involvement of supervisors in making sure that the officers’ actions were constitutional and free of racial bias.
“NYPD has conducted several precinct audits and concluded that some stops were made but not documented,” Zimroth wrote. “More work needs to be done to determine the extent of the problem and to make sure that there is proper record-keeping.”
--more--"
I suppose they should feel fortunate they were not shot:
"Officials say hammer-wielding man shot by police was mentally ill" Associated Press May 14, 2015
NEW YORK — Manhattan Chief of Detectives William Aubry said they tracked the suspect to a subway station, where he used his Metro card. Officers obtained an image of him and, using facial recognition technology, matched a photo with one on file at the department, Aubry said.
David Baril, 30, has at least eight arrests and a history of schizophrenia and paranoia, police said. He had voluntarily left a mental institution a few months ago, police said....
He's lucky he's still alive.
--more--"
Really stigmatizing the mental disabilities stuff with the shootings.
It get's worse from here:
"New York rolls out plan to drop cash bail for minor crimes" by Jake Pearson Associated Press July 09, 2015
NEW YORK — Thousands of New Yorkers accused of minor or nonviolent crimes won’t face the prospect of raising cash for bail under a plan that seeks to keep such suspects out of the troubled Rikers Island jail.
Why? What's wrong with Rikers?
You know, when one looks around at the AmeriKan penal $y$tem one might also see dens of torture!
The $18 million city plan, detailed on Wednesday, allows judges beginning next year to replace money bail for about 3,000 low-risk defendants with supervision options, including regular check-ins and text-message reminders.
Cash bail has long been criticized by inmate advocates for unfairly targeting poor people.
In New York City? No way!
And reforms were recommended by a mayoral task force last year after reports of a mentally ill homeless man who was unable to make $2,500 bail for trespassing and died in a sweltering Rikers cell.
Baril got lucky; they put him in a nice hospital.
More calls for reform gained traction after the suicide last month of 22-year-old Kalief Browder.
That is a common theme today, too, along with the body cams.
When he was 16 years old, Browder was unable to make $3,000 bail on charges he stole a backpack. He ended up being held in Rikers for three years, beaten by inmates and guards alike, and held in solitary confinement before charges against him were dropped.
That's torture, and $3,000 for a backpack? What did he do, drop it off near a mailbox during the Marathon?
‘‘I think the basic principle is that Kalief Browder and other cases have begun to signify this [need for reform],’’ said Elizabeth Glazer, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator. ‘‘We want to focus on risk to be the determining factor to decide if someone will be in or out; and it has to be risk, not money.’’
Currently, about 41 percent of criminal defendants who pass through New York City courts annually are released on their own recognizance.
About 87 percent of the 1,100 people on supervised release in city pilot programs return to court as scheduled, officials said.
Initial funding, provided by the Manhattan district attorney, allows for as many as 3,000 defendants charged with misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies to bypass bail, letting them live with their families and keep their jobs while their cases wind through the courts. Officials say they would like to expand non-bail options to include thousands more.
Advocates hailed the decision Wednesday, saying expanding options beyond cash bail for poor people accused of nonviolent crimes will help make the criminal justice system fairer.
‘‘Locking up New Yorkers who should be treated as innocent until proven guilty just because they are poor offends the values and principles this country was built on,’’ said Donna Lieberman, New York Civil Liberties Union executive director.
That innocent until proven guilty stuff is gone. It's the accusation that sticks with regular folk (elite don't have to worry unless they get out of line; then their name starts popping up in the paper in unflattering ways).
Releasing defendants to community supervision based on risk-assessment tools that gauge a person’s threat to public safety is increasingly done throughout the country.
The end of that will be the next guy who kills somebody after being allowed to stay home.
About 10 percent of state, county, and city courts currently use some such tool to decide if a defendant is too risky to be released or who qualifies for some level of supervision, according to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which created its own risk instrument that’s used in Arizona, Kentucky, and New Jersey as well as in cities such as Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, and Phoenix.
Chicago is getting rather frisky.
But in New York, unlike most states, efforts to fully do away with bail are complicated by state law, which requires judges to consider defendants’ risk of flight, not their risk of reoffending, when determining bail conditions.
Glazer said she hoped legislators would consider changing the law, a move supported by the state’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, who said in a statement that alternatives to either jail time or no supervision at all ‘‘are critical steps in reducing overreliance on bail.’’
--more--"
It's a good thing you are not headed for Rikers, kiddo:
"Rikers Island guard gets 5 years for inmate death" Associated Press June 19, 2015
NEW YORK — A former Rikers Island guard convicted of ignoring the pleas of a dying inmate dabbed tears from his eyes Thursday after he was handed a five-year prison term by a judge who said the sentence was intended to be a deterrent to others.
Poor guy. The guard, not the scum.
Former Department of Correction Captain Terrence Pendergrass was also fined $5,000 after a jury convicted him in December of depriving 25-year-old Jason Echevarria of his civil rights.
The prisoner swallowed toxic detergent while housed in a now-closed solitary confinement unit for inmates who break jailhouse rules.
You think "Escape From Alcatraz" is just a movie.
According to court papers, the 51-year-old Pendergrass told other jail employees he didn’t want to be bothered unless there was a ‘‘dead body’’ in the cell after Echevarria told two other correction officers that he had wallowed the deadly substance.
Umm, Terry? Better have a look in the cell.
‘‘Such criminal indifference will not be tolerated,’’ US District Judge Ronnie Abrams said in Manhattan as she imposed the sentence but rejected a request by prosecutors that Pendergrass begin serving the prison term immediately.
Finding he had reliably shown up for his court appearances, the judge said he could report to prison Aug. 18.
The judge said deterrence was an important consideration so guards know they will be held responsible for wrongdoing even when they work in a troubled correction system or a jail such as Rikers.
Shoulda got a job on Wall Street instead!
Federal sentencing guidelines had called for a sentence of roughly two years.
She also noted the difficulty of prosecuting civil rights cases.
Prosecutors had asked for a substantial punishment, saying in court papers that his crime was ‘‘particularly cruel.’’
Defense lawyer James G. Frankie wrote that Pendergrass had no reason to accept reports Echevarria had swallowed a soap ball since it was without precedent that an inmate would receive an unauthorized soap ball and ingest it.
He said the claim that he had swallowed the soap ball seemed ‘‘more consistent with malingering to get out of a cell rather than a genuine call for medical assistance.’’
Well, then you beat 'em a couple times for making you get up and away from the TV show or whatever.
Conditions at the nation’s second-largest jail system, where about 11,000 inmates are regularly housed in 10 Rikers Island facilities, have drawn considerable scrutiny over the last year.
There have been numerous reports of inmate beatings, guard corruption, and mistreatment of the mentally ill.
--more--"
And watch out if they get a hold of you:
"N.Y. reaches $5.9 million settlement in chokehold death" New York Times July 14, 2015
My print piece was a four-paragraph AP article.
NEW YORK — New York City reached a settlement with the family of Eric Garner on Monday, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve a wrongful death claim over his killing by the police on Staten Island last July, a lawyer for the family said.
The agreement, reached just a few days before the deadline to file suit, headed off one potentially fractious legal battle over Garner’s death even as a federal inquiry into the killing and several others at the state and local level remain open and could provide a further accounting of how he died.
Still, the settlement was a pivotal moment in a case that has engulfed the city and the Police Department since the afternoon of July 17, 2014, when two officers approached Garner as he stood unarmed on a sidewalk and accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes.
The death of Garner, 43, followed by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, set off a national debate about policing actions in minority communities and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.
Garner’s final words - “I can’t breathe” - repeated 11 times as one officer held him in a chokehold, became a national rallying cry. A Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, fueled weeks of demonstrations. The protests eased after the killing of two police officers in Brooklyn in December by a man who said he acted to avenge Garner’s death.
The killings of the officers shook the city anew, deepening tensions between the police and Mayor Bill de Blasio and slowing a push to enact a host of criminal justice reforms.
And who benefited?
Last year, Garner’s relatives, including his widow, Esaw Garner, and his mother, Gwen Carr, filed a notice of claim - a procedural step that must precede a lawsuit against the city. In the notice, they said were seeking $75 million in damages. Since then, the family has been in talks with the city comptroller’s office, and on Monday, both sides confirmed the resolution of the claim.
“The City of New York has agreed to pay $5.9 million to resolve the Garner case,” said Jonathan C. Moore, the lawyer for Garner’s family.
I don't like the fact that taxpayers had to pay for cop misconduct. Maybe if the individual or group of criminals had to pay (like for civilians), the cops would be more careful.
Moore said the city had until Friday, the anniversary of the death, to come to an agreement. If none had been reached, a suit would have been filed.
The resolution is among the biggest reached so far as part of a strategy by the comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, to settle major civil rights claims even before a lawsuit is filed. Stringer has said the aim is to save taxpayers the expense of a drawn-out trial and to give those bringing the suits and their families a measure of closure.
And more importantly, remove the black eye from authority.
But the settlement did not provide any greater clarity on the actions of the officers that day or the policing strategies that have come under criticism in the year that has followed.
The relatives of Garner, along with Moore, are expected to discuss the settlement at a news conference scheduled for Tuesday morning at the Harlem offices of the National Action Network, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
You know about Al and the FBI?
On Saturday, Garner’s family is expected to lead a rally outside the Brooklyn offices of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York to call for a federal case to be brought against the officers involved in Garner’s death.
“This is not about people getting money,” Sharpton said on Monday. “This is about justice. We’ve got to restructure our police departments and how we deal with policing nationwide.”
When they say it's not about money, it's about money -- and how much Al can collect in donations. With out the division, we don't need him.
The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, citing the chokehold and the compression of Garner’s chest by other officers who held him down.
Several inquiries into Garner’s death were still pending, including investigations by the U.S. attorney’s office, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and state health officials, who are looking into the actions of emergency medical responders in treating Garner.
The Police Department has concluded its internal investigation but has yet to say whether any officers would be disciplined.
The agreement with the city does not cover the private hospital that sent the responders, Richmond University Medical Center. Video shows that as Garner lay on the ground, he was not given oxygen and the actions of the medical responders, also captured on video, appeared disorganized. The conduct of its employees at the scene has come under scrutiny and could result in further legal action. But as of Monday, “nothing has been filed,” William J. Smith, a spokesman for the hospital, said.
De Blasio, speaking to reporters shortly before the settlement had been reached, said the anniversary of Garner’s death was on his mind. “I think it’s on the mind of many New Yorkers, and we, you know, mourn the death of Eric Garner,” the mayor said. “I think we’ve come a long way, even in the last year, in terms of bringing police and community together.”
Kumbaya!
In recent months, the comptroller’s office has reached major settlements in several cases without a suit being filed, effectively cutting out involvement by the city’s Law Department.
Stringer reached a $6.4 million deal with David Ranta, who was imprisoned for 23 years after a wrongful murder conviction; Ranta had sought $150 million.
Related: Ranta's Release
A deal was also reached for $2.25 million with the family of Jerome Murdough, who died in an overheated cell at the Rikers Island jail complex, to settle their $25 million claim against the city.
Well, that stinks. I'll bet the heat made the hangover smell worse.
But while the approach spares the city and those hurt by it from protracted legal fights, it has come under criticism for sidelining experienced lawyers at the Law Department who might better gauge the city’s legal liability.
“The determination of appropriate damage levels is a complex, nuanced process,” said Victor A. Kovner, a former city corporation counsel. “The notion that the comptroller, without the benefit of that experience, seeks to make these resolutions on his own is in my experience grandstanding and against the city’s interest.”
Kovner said settlements in wrongful death and police brutality cases must take into account the pain and suffering of the person as well as future earnings and financial damage to the family. In the case of Garner, his apparent suffering in video images would have probably been a major factor in any settlement discussions.
In 2001, a suit brought by Abner Louima, a Haitian man tortured with a broomstick while in police custody at a Brooklyn precinct station house in August 1997, was settled for $8.75 million, with the city paying $7.125 million and the police officers’ union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which was accused of conspiring to cover up the assault, paying Louima another $1.625 million.
Yeah, that case. They sodomized an innocent man with that thing.
The United States can't lecture anyone when it comes to human rights, although they do it all the time.
That agreement was reached three years into the suit brought by Louima, who was sodomized with the broken broomstick handle. The settlement came after federal trials in which one officer, Justin A. Volpe, was convicted in the attack and sentenced to 30 years in prison, and another pleaded guilty to perjury. Two more were sentenced to probation in the cover-up. Two other officers had their convictions overturned on appeal.
Nearly five years after the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999, the city settled with his relatives for $3 million. The city settled a suit over the 2006 fatal shooting of Sean Bell for $3.25 million.
You know, once is a mistake, twice, aaaaah, more than three times.... pattern.
It's what they tell the criminals.
In January, Stringer agreed to pay $17 million to settle wrongful conviction claims brought by three defendants whose cases involved Louis Scarcella, a retired homicide detective whose investigative tactics have come under scrutiny and are under review.
In an interview last December, after the grand jury’s decision, Stringer called Garner’s death “a terrible tragedy” and said “my heart goes out to the Garner family, and I feel very strongly about that.”
--more--"
Those cops didn't go to jail, did they?
Related: N.Y. judge OK’s release of data in Garner case
No wonder they settled. They need good cops in New York:
"NYPD seeks more Muslim recruits" Associated Press June 09, 2015
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department is working to recruit more Muslims and is asking for help within the community to better refine outreach aimed at stifling the lure of overseas terror groups, officials said Monday.
So they can frame them?
Out of about 35,000 uniformed police officers, about 800 are Muslim, according to the NYPD Muslim Officers Society. Of those, only about 20 are higher ranked officials. Lieutenant Adeel Rana, commanding officer of the community affairs immigration outreach unit, said there has been a slow increase over the past decade, but it has been rapidly changing in the past year and a half.
‘‘It’s changing every day; we are getting more and more recruits,’’ he said. ‘‘And as they see people of their own religion in uniform, their eyes brighten.’’
???????
How will they know? Just by looking at them?
???????
There has been an effort to increase openness and communication with the community since the new administration took over, stinging from a public outcry over the contentious stop, question, and frisk policy and the surveillance of Muslims. A unit that investigated Muslims under the previous police commissioner was disbanded, and Commissioner William Bratton said Monday that officials had worked hard to regain trust.
‘‘We will not do anything to jeopardize that trust,’’ he said.
In an effort to reach out to more recruits, the NYPD is also expanding a cadet program where college students are given stipends and fast-tracked to a job. Rana said officers also attend community meetings and fairs. A video played during the department’s annual pre-Ramadan conference showed dozens of uniformed officers who are Muslim saying: ‘‘We are your NYPD.’’
Muslim leaders said they are encouraged by recruitment efforts.
‘‘The more Muslims who work in the NYPD the better,’’ said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Maybe they will go national with it!
--more--"
Well, time to get out of the city.
Took longer than I thought, and I'll be stopping it here for a few hours (how appropriate, huh?)
UPDATE: NY prison inmates suffered beatings, retaliation after historic escape
No Sweat, right?
"Man killed after firing at N.Y. police" by Jake Pearson Associated Press August 14, 2015
NEW YORK — Shortly before emerging from an apartment armed with a fully automatic AK-47, Garland Tyree tenderly told his mother over the phone Friday that he had agreed to surrender after a six-hour standoff with police.
‘‘I’m coming out, Mama,’’ he said, according to the New York force’s top negotiator, Lieutenant Jack Cambria.
Instead, Tyree, 38, a wanted high-ranking member of the Bloods street gang who hours earlier had shot and injured a firefighter responding to heavy smoke in the house, fired his weapon at police and was shot and killed in return.
‘‘It cannot go without saying that this is not the way we want these kinds of negotiations to end,’’ Police Commissioner William Bratton told reporters at a news conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Tyree was to be arrested early Friday at his girlfriend’s apartment in a two-family Staten Island home by US marshals and New York detectives for violating parole. But he refused to open the door, officials said, and then ignited a smoke bomb, prompting the call to the Fire Department.
If true -- and there is always reason to doubt the official story because, well, it's the official story -- how can things come to this. Parole violation gets a guy killed.
Three times before the deadly confrontation, Tyree fired his weapon and officers didn’t return fire, Bratton said.
When he did emerge, wearing a bulletproof vest, his shots struck police cars and a neighbor’s house, officials said.
--more--"
Hey, maybe it was the only way to stop him, but this stuff is becoming much to frequent.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Taking a Trip to Rikers Island
Better make it a school field trip:
"Why violence toward inmates at NYC’s Rikers Island jail grew" by Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip | New York Times August 14, 2014
NEW YORK — The portrait emerging last week from the report on Rikers Island by the US attorney’s office in Manhattan is of a place with almost medieval levels of violence, meted out with startling ferocity by guards and their superiors.
Think of that the next time Obummer is out their waxing about fake fraud hoaxes and such, and tossing about human rights, etc, etc.
The 2½-year investigation, which focused on the abuse of teenage inmates by correction staff, was exhaustive in cataloging the brutality.
I thought that was something important.
But a critical question that went unaddressed is how conditions were allowed to get to this point.
Yeah, the government and mouthpiece media that pushed the agenda of tyranny and war upon us doesn't know how this happened? The government that sanctioned torture hasn't a clue.
Rikers has been a place of violent excess for decades. And the growing ranks of inmates with mental illnesses, reaching nearly 40 percent of the jail population today, have added to the challenges for correction officials.
Related: Not Over Troubled Bridgewater
That's been locked in isolation for a while now.
But conditions worsened substantially under the administration of mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which reduced jail staff and failed to curb escalating violence by guards, say former correction officials, inmates’ advocates, and others familiar with the jail.
What? The great bipartisan, loving mayor who funds all sorts of causes and is so pro-gun control and put so many people out in the streets?
“There was very little interest in expending political capital and financial capital on the jails,” said Martin F. Horn, who was correction commissioner during Bloomberg’s first two terms.
What an a$$hole!
As mayor, Bloomberg earned a reputation for being a consummate manager who leveraged his private sector experience to tackle municipal problems. But he never made Rikers a high priority, though conditions were deteriorating drastically, say people familiar with the jail’s problems.
In Bloomberg’s last term, the use of force by officers on inmates jumped by 90 percent, according to Correction Department data. Inmates’ advocates and public officials charged with overseeing the jails said they pleaded with the administration to address the issue.
“We met with the Department of Correction and the Bloomberg administration about the prevalence of violence directed by correctional staff towards prisoners, and they didn’t respond,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the New York City Board of Correction, a watchdog agency.
But they sure are quick to get out to Missouri, huh!!??
Early on, the Bloomberg administration cut more than 3,000 correctional positions. While some of the cuts were attributable to the declining inmate population and the closing of facilities, Horn said the reductions eventually went too far.
Did they open them back up for the illegal immigrant kids who have once again disappeared from my paper?
When even more were proposed in 2008, he sent a letter to the city’s budget office, warning that further reductions would be “impossible without compromising the safety of everybody in the jail.”
For the remaining officers, mandatory overtime became the norm. Exhausted guards were increasingly prone to lashing out at inmates, said officers and oversight officials.
Umm, I'm really NO LONGER INTERESTED in EXCUSES when it is AUTHORITY that CREATED the PROBLEM to BEGIN WITH!
More recently, in Bloomberg’s third term, the Correction Department greatly reduced the number of officers responsible for escorting mentally ill inmates to therapy, meaning that many were locked in solitary confinement 23 hours a day and rarely got out for services.
That.... IS TORTURE!! Right here in AmeriKa itself!
Not Gitmo, not Bagram, not Abu Ghraib. RIGHT HERE on THESE SHORES!
Where is that PIOUS PRESIDENT?!!!
Resentment and anger among inmates built up, said a senior Health Department official, leading to more attacks on guards by inmates.
Oh, right, now it is the poor thin blue line that protects privilege under attack. Nice spin.
A mental health task force, created by the Bloomberg administration in 2011, produced few results and lacked participation by key city officials, including Raymond W. Kelly, who was the police commissioner.
I always thought Kelly was a sphincter.
Stu Loeser, a former press secretary who is again a spokesman for Bloomberg, challenged claims that as mayor Bloomberg was indifferent to conditions at Rikers. Loeser pointed out that at City Hall the mayor sat a few feet from Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor who oversaw the Correction Department, and conferred with her “throughout the day, almost every day.”
What, hello and goodbye?
The current crisis at Rikers stems in part from aggressive efforts to end the chaos and bloodshed that plagued its jails in the 1980s and 1990s.
By making it worse and adding to it?
At the time, the average daily population was around 20,000, almost twice its current level. Gangs like the Netas and the Latin Kings battled one another, as well as the guards. The chief problem then was inmate violence. Slashings and stabbings were routine. A thriving trade in drugs and weapons went virtually unchecked by a demoralized staff.
And how many of that staff were corrupt and helping get things in, because that is the only way they can.
Today, violence is once again surging, but now it is the guards who are perceived to be at the heart of the problem.
Not in AmeriKa, no way! Our loving security services wouldn't do that!
Bernard B. Kerik — he helped oversee Rikers from 1995 to 2000, first as the top deputy at the Correction Department and then as commissioner — is credited with bringing inmate violence under control. A beefed-up SWAT team was equipped with clubs, pepper spray, and electrified stun shields. A data system similar to the Police Department’s Compstat was created to identify the jail’s trouble spots.
Related: 9/11 Thug Bernard Kerik Released From Prison
He also played Rambo when he was in Iraq, mo$tly forgotten now. Too bad a "terrorist" didn't behead him when he was there.
In 1999, there were fewer than 100 stabbings by inmates, compared with 1,100 five years earlier.
But even as conditions improved, advocates warned that allowing guards to rely so heavily on force could get out of hand.
“Whenever you impose a system of restraint on this scale, it can easily be abused,” Jonathan S. Chasan, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, told The New York Times in 1999.
He told that to the Times when?
It's been OVER 15 YEARS that this problem was known and NO ONE in GOVERNMENT did a DAMN THING?
The frequency of officers’ using force on inmates remained steady during Kerik’s tenure under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and declined during Bloomberg’s first term, reaching its lowest point in 2004, according to department data. But then it spiked.
How did you know those buildings were going to collapse contrary to all the laws of physics, Rudy, and why did you destroy a crime scene by shipping the steel off to China?
In 2004, the department documented 961 altercations with inmates involving force. In 2013, with the ranks of inmates with mental illnesses on the upswing, there were 3,285. In the first six months of 2014, use of force was up by a third.
--more--"
At least the cops have been charged with crimes, right?
"In deadly NYC jail beatings, no criminal charges" by Jake Pearson | Associated Press August 21, 2014
NEW YORK — Agitated and hallucinating from alcohol and heroin withdrawal, inmate Angel Ramirez took a swing at a jail guard and missed.
Then this guy deserves to die.
What followed, according to investigative documents obtained by the Associated Press, was a quick punch back from the guard that put Ramirez on the floor. Then he was dragged away, beyond the view of security cameras, and three other guards were called in. Inmates later told investigators they heard screaming and the sickening crack of nightsticks against bone.
Ramirez, 50, died of numerous blunt-impact injuries that included a ruptured spleen, shattered ribs, and a stomach filled with blood. When a jail investigator interviewed the guards — eight months later — they insisted Ramirez was struck only once and only in self-defense.
That July 2011 case is among three deaths in New York City’s jails over the past five years in which inmates were alleged to have been fatally beaten by guards. Yet in none of those cases was anyone ever charged with a crime.
The lack of accountability in the city’s jail system was singled out time and again in a scathing federal review issued this month.
A Correction Department spokesman would not comment directly on Ramirez’s case but stressed that newly appointed Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte believes excessive force is ‘‘absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated on his watch.’’
Uh-huh. You gonna get out in front of it and stop it?
Ponte has begun rewriting use-of-force policy, installing more security cameras, and revising the recruitment and training of guards, spokesman Robin Campbell said.
Union leader Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said that while any officer who illegally uses excessive or improper force should face criminal charges, the rarity of such prosecutions is proof of how frivolous many of the allegations against his members are.
Yeah, there isn't a conspiracy to cover up in government.
--more--"
So who is the next shipment of prisoners?
"Times Square warnings cut into characters’ tips" Associated Press August 14, 2014
NEW YORK — Bright red police leaflets warning Times Square tourists that photos with costumed characters are free, and tipping is optional, are taking a bite out of the bottom line for the many Elmos, Mickey Mouses, SpongeBobs, and Statues of Liberty who dress up to help make ends meet.
The blitz kicked off over the weekend, with officers handing out fliers in five languages.
That is what happens when you are a sanctuary city.
City officials say they had to take action after physical attacks on some visitors, including children.
Tip or else, huh?
The unruliness peaked last month when a Spider-Man was accused of punching a police officer for telling a woman the character could not force her to pay up.
Some of the mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants who wear the giant costumes say they have been left with far less to feed their families.
Standing 7 feet tall and swathed in light green robes with an American flag pouring down her right arm, Lady Liberty — as played by Hugo Gomez, a 34-year-old Dominican immigrant with three children — has a prime spot in the middle of Times Square.
He leaned down to whisper to a reporter that before the police-enforced measure, he drew about $150 in tips each day. In recent days, he made about $40.
New York police don't have bigger crimes or problems to solve, huh?
--more--"
So what is next in that stinking city, death squads?
I'm sure Bill can just buy them off if things go wrong.
Related: Louisiana Getting Rid of Good Old Boy Cops
Little too late, isn't it?
Send 'em up to New York City, I guess. They should fit right in.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"N.Y. public advocate shows police body cameras" Associated Press August 22, 2014
NEW YORK — Compelled by video of a police chokehold death and the lack of such evidence in the fatal shooting of a Missouri teenager, a top New York City official Thursday intensified her push to equip the city’s 35,000 officers with body-worn cameras.
Public Advocate Letitia James held a demonstration of the cameras, which she said would protect residents from misconduct and police officers from false allegations, all while saving the city millions of dollars in legal costs.
‘‘This simple tool will go a long way in improving police-community relations in New York City,’’ James said, holding up a camera that records up to 45 hours of audio and video.
James proposed a camera pilot program earlier this month in the aftermath of Eric Garner’s chokehold death on Staten Island on July 17 and Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9.
The pilot program would cost about $5 million and outfit about 15 percent of the force — primarily officers in areas with high rates of crime and misconduct complaints, James said.
Introducing the cameras, which sell for $450 to $900 each, in the department would cost about $32 million, she said.
That’s a far cry from the city’s spending on misconduct-related litigation. Last year alone those judgments and settlements cost city taxpayers $152 million, James said.
‘‘It’s a win-win for both the police and the community,’’ she said.
James said Police Commissioner William Bratton has supported the use of body cameras in the past. Mayor Bill de Blasio is reviewing the program proposal, James said.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association police union, has said he wants to see evidence of the cameras’ effectiveness.
He said the city spends so much on legal costs because it ‘‘refuses to fight even the most ridiculous and baseless of the claims.’’
--more--"
Also see:
"Al Roker didn’t have this honor in his forecast. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio surprised the ‘‘Today’’ show weatherman on his 60th birthday Wednesday and declared it Al Roker Appreciation Day across the city. De Blasio presented Roker with a mayoral proclamation featuring a photograph of the home where Roker grew up in St. Albans, Queens. The NBC morning show aired a retrospective on Roker’s life and career and had other surprises planned to mark the start of his seventh decade."
That's all politicians are now. They are public relations servants placed in front of cameras to do their ma$ter's biddings and give us a show. Why waste anymore time on them?
And that other big guy choked to death for illegal cigarette sales? Bill?
"Why violence toward inmates at NYC’s Rikers Island jail grew" by Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip | New York Times August 14, 2014
NEW YORK — The portrait emerging last week from the report on Rikers Island by the US attorney’s office in Manhattan is of a place with almost medieval levels of violence, meted out with startling ferocity by guards and their superiors.
Think of that the next time Obummer is out their waxing about fake fraud hoaxes and such, and tossing about human rights, etc, etc.
The 2½-year investigation, which focused on the abuse of teenage inmates by correction staff, was exhaustive in cataloging the brutality.
I thought that was something important.
But a critical question that went unaddressed is how conditions were allowed to get to this point.
Yeah, the government and mouthpiece media that pushed the agenda of tyranny and war upon us doesn't know how this happened? The government that sanctioned torture hasn't a clue.
Rikers has been a place of violent excess for decades. And the growing ranks of inmates with mental illnesses, reaching nearly 40 percent of the jail population today, have added to the challenges for correction officials.
Related: Not Over Troubled Bridgewater
That's been locked in isolation for a while now.
But conditions worsened substantially under the administration of mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which reduced jail staff and failed to curb escalating violence by guards, say former correction officials, inmates’ advocates, and others familiar with the jail.
What? The great bipartisan, loving mayor who funds all sorts of causes and is so pro-gun control and put so many people out in the streets?
“There was very little interest in expending political capital and financial capital on the jails,” said Martin F. Horn, who was correction commissioner during Bloomberg’s first two terms.
What an a$$hole!
As mayor, Bloomberg earned a reputation for being a consummate manager who leveraged his private sector experience to tackle municipal problems. But he never made Rikers a high priority, though conditions were deteriorating drastically, say people familiar with the jail’s problems.
In Bloomberg’s last term, the use of force by officers on inmates jumped by 90 percent, according to Correction Department data. Inmates’ advocates and public officials charged with overseeing the jails said they pleaded with the administration to address the issue.
“We met with the Department of Correction and the Bloomberg administration about the prevalence of violence directed by correctional staff towards prisoners, and they didn’t respond,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the New York City Board of Correction, a watchdog agency.
But they sure are quick to get out to Missouri, huh!!??
Early on, the Bloomberg administration cut more than 3,000 correctional positions. While some of the cuts were attributable to the declining inmate population and the closing of facilities, Horn said the reductions eventually went too far.
Did they open them back up for the illegal immigrant kids who have once again disappeared from my paper?
When even more were proposed in 2008, he sent a letter to the city’s budget office, warning that further reductions would be “impossible without compromising the safety of everybody in the jail.”
For the remaining officers, mandatory overtime became the norm. Exhausted guards were increasingly prone to lashing out at inmates, said officers and oversight officials.
Umm, I'm really NO LONGER INTERESTED in EXCUSES when it is AUTHORITY that CREATED the PROBLEM to BEGIN WITH!
More recently, in Bloomberg’s third term, the Correction Department greatly reduced the number of officers responsible for escorting mentally ill inmates to therapy, meaning that many were locked in solitary confinement 23 hours a day and rarely got out for services.
That.... IS TORTURE!! Right here in AmeriKa itself!
Not Gitmo, not Bagram, not Abu Ghraib. RIGHT HERE on THESE SHORES!
Where is that PIOUS PRESIDENT?!!!
Resentment and anger among inmates built up, said a senior Health Department official, leading to more attacks on guards by inmates.
Oh, right, now it is the poor thin blue line that protects privilege under attack. Nice spin.
A mental health task force, created by the Bloomberg administration in 2011, produced few results and lacked participation by key city officials, including Raymond W. Kelly, who was the police commissioner.
I always thought Kelly was a sphincter.
Stu Loeser, a former press secretary who is again a spokesman for Bloomberg, challenged claims that as mayor Bloomberg was indifferent to conditions at Rikers. Loeser pointed out that at City Hall the mayor sat a few feet from Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor who oversaw the Correction Department, and conferred with her “throughout the day, almost every day.”
What, hello and goodbye?
The current crisis at Rikers stems in part from aggressive efforts to end the chaos and bloodshed that plagued its jails in the 1980s and 1990s.
By making it worse and adding to it?
At the time, the average daily population was around 20,000, almost twice its current level. Gangs like the Netas and the Latin Kings battled one another, as well as the guards. The chief problem then was inmate violence. Slashings and stabbings were routine. A thriving trade in drugs and weapons went virtually unchecked by a demoralized staff.
And how many of that staff were corrupt and helping get things in, because that is the only way they can.
Today, violence is once again surging, but now it is the guards who are perceived to be at the heart of the problem.
Not in AmeriKa, no way! Our loving security services wouldn't do that!
Bernard B. Kerik — he helped oversee Rikers from 1995 to 2000, first as the top deputy at the Correction Department and then as commissioner — is credited with bringing inmate violence under control. A beefed-up SWAT team was equipped with clubs, pepper spray, and electrified stun shields. A data system similar to the Police Department’s Compstat was created to identify the jail’s trouble spots.
Related: 9/11 Thug Bernard Kerik Released From Prison
He also played Rambo when he was in Iraq, mo$tly forgotten now. Too bad a "terrorist" didn't behead him when he was there.
In 1999, there were fewer than 100 stabbings by inmates, compared with 1,100 five years earlier.
But even as conditions improved, advocates warned that allowing guards to rely so heavily on force could get out of hand.
“Whenever you impose a system of restraint on this scale, it can easily be abused,” Jonathan S. Chasan, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society, told The New York Times in 1999.
He told that to the Times when?
It's been OVER 15 YEARS that this problem was known and NO ONE in GOVERNMENT did a DAMN THING?
The frequency of officers’ using force on inmates remained steady during Kerik’s tenure under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and declined during Bloomberg’s first term, reaching its lowest point in 2004, according to department data. But then it spiked.
How did you know those buildings were going to collapse contrary to all the laws of physics, Rudy, and why did you destroy a crime scene by shipping the steel off to China?
In 2004, the department documented 961 altercations with inmates involving force. In 2013, with the ranks of inmates with mental illnesses on the upswing, there were 3,285. In the first six months of 2014, use of force was up by a third.
--more--"
At least the cops have been charged with crimes, right?
"In deadly NYC jail beatings, no criminal charges" by Jake Pearson | Associated Press August 21, 2014
NEW YORK — Agitated and hallucinating from alcohol and heroin withdrawal, inmate Angel Ramirez took a swing at a jail guard and missed.
Then this guy deserves to die.
What followed, according to investigative documents obtained by the Associated Press, was a quick punch back from the guard that put Ramirez on the floor. Then he was dragged away, beyond the view of security cameras, and three other guards were called in. Inmates later told investigators they heard screaming and the sickening crack of nightsticks against bone.
Ramirez, 50, died of numerous blunt-impact injuries that included a ruptured spleen, shattered ribs, and a stomach filled with blood. When a jail investigator interviewed the guards — eight months later — they insisted Ramirez was struck only once and only in self-defense.
That July 2011 case is among three deaths in New York City’s jails over the past five years in which inmates were alleged to have been fatally beaten by guards. Yet in none of those cases was anyone ever charged with a crime.
The lack of accountability in the city’s jail system was singled out time and again in a scathing federal review issued this month.
A Correction Department spokesman would not comment directly on Ramirez’s case but stressed that newly appointed Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte believes excessive force is ‘‘absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated on his watch.’’
Uh-huh. You gonna get out in front of it and stop it?
Ponte has begun rewriting use-of-force policy, installing more security cameras, and revising the recruitment and training of guards, spokesman Robin Campbell said.
Union leader Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said that while any officer who illegally uses excessive or improper force should face criminal charges, the rarity of such prosecutions is proof of how frivolous many of the allegations against his members are.
Yeah, there isn't a conspiracy to cover up in government.
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So who is the next shipment of prisoners?
"Times Square warnings cut into characters’ tips" Associated Press August 14, 2014
NEW YORK — Bright red police leaflets warning Times Square tourists that photos with costumed characters are free, and tipping is optional, are taking a bite out of the bottom line for the many Elmos, Mickey Mouses, SpongeBobs, and Statues of Liberty who dress up to help make ends meet.
The blitz kicked off over the weekend, with officers handing out fliers in five languages.
That is what happens when you are a sanctuary city.
City officials say they had to take action after physical attacks on some visitors, including children.
Tip or else, huh?
The unruliness peaked last month when a Spider-Man was accused of punching a police officer for telling a woman the character could not force her to pay up.
Some of the mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants who wear the giant costumes say they have been left with far less to feed their families.
Standing 7 feet tall and swathed in light green robes with an American flag pouring down her right arm, Lady Liberty — as played by Hugo Gomez, a 34-year-old Dominican immigrant with three children — has a prime spot in the middle of Times Square.
He leaned down to whisper to a reporter that before the police-enforced measure, he drew about $150 in tips each day. In recent days, he made about $40.
New York police don't have bigger crimes or problems to solve, huh?
--more--"
So what is next in that stinking city, death squads?
I'm sure Bill can just buy them off if things go wrong.
Related: Louisiana Getting Rid of Good Old Boy Cops
Little too late, isn't it?
Send 'em up to New York City, I guess. They should fit right in.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"N.Y. public advocate shows police body cameras" Associated Press August 22, 2014
NEW YORK — Compelled by video of a police chokehold death and the lack of such evidence in the fatal shooting of a Missouri teenager, a top New York City official Thursday intensified her push to equip the city’s 35,000 officers with body-worn cameras.
Public Advocate Letitia James held a demonstration of the cameras, which she said would protect residents from misconduct and police officers from false allegations, all while saving the city millions of dollars in legal costs.
‘‘This simple tool will go a long way in improving police-community relations in New York City,’’ James said, holding up a camera that records up to 45 hours of audio and video.
James proposed a camera pilot program earlier this month in the aftermath of Eric Garner’s chokehold death on Staten Island on July 17 and Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9.
The pilot program would cost about $5 million and outfit about 15 percent of the force — primarily officers in areas with high rates of crime and misconduct complaints, James said.
Introducing the cameras, which sell for $450 to $900 each, in the department would cost about $32 million, she said.
That’s a far cry from the city’s spending on misconduct-related litigation. Last year alone those judgments and settlements cost city taxpayers $152 million, James said.
‘‘It’s a win-win for both the police and the community,’’ she said.
James said Police Commissioner William Bratton has supported the use of body cameras in the past. Mayor Bill de Blasio is reviewing the program proposal, James said.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association police union, has said he wants to see evidence of the cameras’ effectiveness.
He said the city spends so much on legal costs because it ‘‘refuses to fight even the most ridiculous and baseless of the claims.’’
--more--"
Also see:
"Al Roker didn’t have this honor in his forecast. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio surprised the ‘‘Today’’ show weatherman on his 60th birthday Wednesday and declared it Al Roker Appreciation Day across the city. De Blasio presented Roker with a mayoral proclamation featuring a photograph of the home where Roker grew up in St. Albans, Queens. The NBC morning show aired a retrospective on Roker’s life and career and had other surprises planned to mark the start of his seventh decade."
That's all politicians are now. They are public relations servants placed in front of cameras to do their ma$ter's biddings and give us a show. Why waste anymore time on them?
And that other big guy choked to death for illegal cigarette sales? Bill?
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