January 21, 2008
About That Brooklyn Heights Arsenal...
Above right image from WNBC, below photograph of 58 Remsen Street from the Daily News
Yesterday we mentioned that a cache of weapons - including a number of pipe bombs - were found in a Remsen Street apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Now it turns out the apartment was shared by an ex-con and a professor at Columbia University!
Ivaylo Ivanov got the attention of police around 1AM yesterday morning, claiming he was shot in the hand by a stranger. But then he admitted he shot himself and when police went to his home at 58 Remsen Street, they found, per the Post, "six pipe bombs, sniper rifles, a handgun, shotguns, a crossbow with arrows, silencers, bomb-making equipment and other weapons." Other homes were evacuated as the bomb squad descended onto the street.
The co-op duplex apartment is owned by Michael Clatts, a Ph.D. and an associate professor at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. He is described as an AIDS researcher and and organization writes " is a medical anthropologist whose principal area of interest is in community epidemiology and the development of community-based public health programs" (he's "conducted a number of epidemiological studies related to HIV risk in NYC"). A co-op board member, Alan Brasunas, told the Daily News, "One has to assume Michael must have seen something at one point. It's not a huge apartment...We obviously have concerns about both people."
However, some residents told the Sun that Clatts frequently traveled and "may have been out of the country this weekend." And the police said that they do not think Clatts "had anything to do with this" - the two men appeared to have separate living areas.
The police are investigating whether Ivanov, who has been arrested for petit larceny, has ties to terrorist groups or the the Russia mafia (however, one police source said, "Russian Mafia aren't fazed by getting a fingertip shot off - and they certainly don't go to the cops for help."). Ivanov was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and falsely reporting an incident. According to the Post, he told the police he's a spy for the Mossad (well, that explains the weapons!) and was apparently suspected in the rash of Brooklyn hate crimes last fall.
Update: Ivanov has confessed to defacing cars, synagogues, and homes in Brooklyn Heights with swastikas last September (see our posts here: 1, 2).
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Pretty building.
The ex-con and the professor? I smell sit-com material!
Kind of scary to think that the impotent loser who was scrawling that crap around the neighborhood really was hoarding guns.
I find the sensationalist coverage of this event utterly disgusting. Having once taken in a wildly visionary acamdemic, I am sure that Michael Clatts is being slandered for an act of good will.
As the NDRI bio expains, Clatts is a medical anthropologist who has devoted much of his career to tracing and controlling the spread of AIDS. His work obviously takes him away from Brooklyn for extended periods of time. He likely encountered Mr. Ivanov in the course of his studies and offered his often-empty apartment as a shelter for a troubled soul. The fantasies Ivanov chose to persue in his host's absence were obviously terrifying. But it's worth noting that the NYPD has filed no charges against Clatts.
Ivanov's swastika-painting binge may have included synagogues largely by accident. After all, there are two schuls -- one orthodox, one reformed -- less than a block from the Remsen Street apartment. Channel 7 reported that the hateful graffiti were all over the street. Media attention focused on the Orthodox, since they wear yarmulkes and other traditional grab and run a child-care center. What about the reformed Jews? What about the Maronite Christian cathedral that also shares the block? Why was the Conservative Jewish synagogue, just three blocks away, apparently spared?
Jumping to conclusions makes good video, but it fails to cover the complexity of this situation. I have no complaint about throwing Ivanov into the slammer, but we need Clatts' testimony before we pass judgement.