Results tagged “corrections”

New Jersey police have arrested a number of members of the Lucchese crime family. In the process of breaking up a multi-billion dollar betting organization, cops discovered that the old school mafia family had also teamed up with the more street-level gang the Bloods. The two groups were working together to smuggle things like iPods, cell phones, and drugs into the East Jersey State Prison. The betting ring was fairly sophisticated, utilizing Internet sites, an 800 phone line, and personal interaction to process more than $2 billion in wagers annually. The smuggling ring was facilitated by a corrections officer who worked at the prison.

The U.S. Attorney's office will be asking a grand jury to indict former police commissioner Bernard Kerik on tax evasion, corruption, and conspiracy charges. Kerik has reportedly made arrangements to surrender tomorrow, instead of being arrested by U.S. marshals. Kerik's dealings have also been questioned, even back when his friend Rudy Giuliani was mayor, but his past became a big story when President Bush nominated him for Secretary of Homeland Security in 2004, only for...

Yesterday morning's hostage standoff in the Bronx turned out to stem from an apparent love-triangle killing. Police had wanted to speak to Marlon Sanders, about a Monday night shooting in Queens. Jamal Leavy was fatally shot in South Jamaica, and police soon discovered that he and Sanders were both dating Shante Dalton, a city corrections officer. When police arrived at Dalton's Bronxdale apartment in their search for Sanders, she refused to let them in, prompting...

WABC 7 reports that someone has been holding hostages in a Bronx home since 4AM. The suspect is holding an uncertain number of hostages (WABC says there may be multiple hostages; Fox 5 says one) at 2445 Williamsbridge Road in the the Bronxdale section. One of the hostages may also be an off-duty corrections officer (the apartment is rented by a corrections officer). The suspect's relationship to the hostage and demands are unknown, but police...

A fire that erupted in a two-family Rosedale home yesterday morning claimed the lives of a Corrections Department captain and her two sons. The Corrections Dept. union said that the victims were Captain Renee Chong and her two young sons.

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a water main break on Pacific St. in Brooklyn, an armed robbery on Jamaica Ave. in Queens, and a burn victim on West 165th St. in the Bronx. Spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy reportedly accomplished many feats during his life, but still died at his home in Queens, NY. A fight among members of a group of men, who were turned away from a Chelsea nightclub because they didn't meet...

Former police commissioner Bernard Kerik's misdeeds continue to plague Rudy Giuliani's Presidential ambitions, with news that the former Mayor knew that his one-time right hand man vouched for a mobbed-up construction company before appointing him police commissioner. Before Kerik was appointed commissioner, one of Giuliani's top aides was made aware of the fact that Kerik––while commissioner of the Corrections Dept.––met with mayoral aides in a Tribeca bar and defended Interstate Industrial Corp. of criminal wrongdoing, as the firm was undergoing a criminal investigation and also undertaking a $165,000 renovation of Kerik's apartment. While at Walker's [the bar], Kerik allegedly said "If I thought Interstate was mobbed up, do you think I'd let my brother work there?" A city investigation of Kerik's conduct eventually cleared him of wrongdoing, but Giuliani has previously claimed that he didn't know about the matter.

A recently settled lawsuit will likely result in fewer strip searches of prisoners at Rikers Island. The suit was filed on behalf of tens of thousands of New Yorkers jailed on misdemeanor charges. The Corrections Office settled a suit yesterday after being sued on behalf of thousands of inmates who were strip-searched at Rikers. The prisoners could collect $3,000 to $4,000 a piece as a result of the agreement. The suit was filed in reaction to the continued noncompliance regarding the practice of prisoner searches following a prior agreement reached in 2002, which stipulated that paper gowns would be provided to people undergoing a search.

EVENTS: Both Open House NY and The New Yorker Festival are upon us. You can check out more of OHNY's event here, and The New Yorker Festival here. Some picks:

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a gas leak on 70th Rd. and Austin St. in Queens, an aircraft emergency at JFK Airport in Queens, and a pedestrian struck on East 85th St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.
• The New York State Music Fund awarded WFUV a grant of $500,000 to establish a second full-time radio station dedicated to airing more independent musicians and aimed primarily at music fans in their 20s and 30s. The new station will debut in late 2008 and will also stream over the Internet.
• Today is the 200th anniversary of the inaugural voyage of "Fulton's Folly", "Fulton's monster", or the North River Steamboat. The 32-hour journey marked the beginning of regular motorized ferry service up and down the Hudson River.
• A 13-year-old girl on her bike was struck and killed in Queens yesterday by a pickup truck making a right turn. The driver was arrested and charged with driving with a suspended license.
• The New York Times peeks behind the shroud on Liberty St. and offers a slide show of how the Deutsche Bank building is being deconstructed.
• MetsBlog reports that if one can't get to Philadelphia for the Wednesday 8/29 game against the Phillies, it will be broadcast at Manhattan's palatial Ziegfeld Theater on West 54th Street. Mr. Met and the Pepsi Party Patrol will be onhand to convey a Shea-like experience, and the $10 ticket price includes two tickets to a September home game.
• A NYC Dept. of Corrections official was arrested after getting in a brawl at a Chelsea bar yesterday. The New York Post reports that the 41-year-old assistant commissioner at the DOC punched a bartender in the face after he received what he thought was incorrect change.
• Yesterday we linked to a catalog of changes to Wikipedia entries traced to an IP address at Fox News. Apparently someone with a New York Times IP address has been maliciously editing Wikipedia posts as well.

Twenty-three-year-old police officer Russel Timoshenko died yesterday at King County Hospital, five days after being shot twice in the face during a Monday traffic stop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Doctors took him off life support after finding he had no brain activity yesterday afternoon. KCH director of trauma service and surgical critical care, Dr. Robert Kurtz, was visibly upset as he reported Timoshenko's death. From Newsday:

Kurtz, who choked up, said the case "affected us emotionally as well as professionally."

Continue reading "Cop Shot During Brooklyn Traffic Stop Dies,
Suspects Now Face Murder Charges"

Police arrested one man but are still looking for two others involved with Monday's violent traffic stop in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. When police officers Russel Timoshenko and Herman Yan approached over a BMW SUV with stolen license plates, shots rang out from the car, injuring both officers. Twenty-nine-year-old Lee Woods was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault on a police officer and criminal possession of a weapon. The two other men being sought have criminal histories; from the NY Times:

Dexter Bostic, 34, one of those being sought, first went to state prison in 1990 for assault, robbery and sodomy, officials said. He got out in nine years, but went back for three more in 2001. On parole until 2009, he was working at a Long Island car dealership last week when his parole officer last visited him, officials said.

Continue reading "Police Arrest One, Seek Two Others in Cop Shootings"

Two separate initiatives were highlighted yesterday: one to crack down on New York slumlords and another to cut property taxes paid by New York property owners. The City Council passed a bill called the Safe Housing Act that targets landlords with multiple building code violations. It requires the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development to target 200 buildings annually with repeated code violations and in need of emergency repairs and force their owners to make necessary corrections. If the landlord fails to do so in a timely manner, the city will have the work done itself, and then bill the building's owner. Council Speaker Christine Quinn was vehment in calling out landlords whose buildings are not up to code, saying "“I hope the message this bill sends is that if you’re a slumlord, your days are numbered. If you’re a slumlord, you’d better get your building up to code. If you don’t, we’re going to go out there and bring your building to code for you, and we’re going to charge you for it.” This seems like a good initiative. We just hope the city isn't as lax at bill collecting from deadbeat landlords as it is with deadbeat water customers, because then it sounds like taxpayers will just be paying for renovating slumlords' properties.

So do armed guards, barred doors, and locked cells. That's what the City is hoping anyway, as it floats plans to have developers build condos contiguous to an expanded Brooklyn House of Detention. Testing the limits of desirability of New York real estate, the Dept. of Corrections has been considering building retail space and restaurants on the first floor of the jail for the last year (Prison Tower Records? Lever Big House?). But with rents and real estate prices verging on the criminal, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz thinks that people will be happy to not only eat and shop there, but to live next to the jail, and the DOC is considering building residential, hotel, or office buildings that directly abut an expanded Brooklyn House of Detention.

The city is seeking a developer interested in supervising the expansion and renovation of the jail and in owning the retail space on the street level of the complex, as well as the new residential or commercial buildings.

Continue reading "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors"

Jack Rhodes, who was arrested last week for allegedly beating up two elderly women in March, has been transfered to Rikers Island where corrections officials are trying to keep him safe. Rhodes is left in his own cell for 23 hours, except for an hour of exercise while a guard "shadows" him. According to the Daily News, a police sources says the private cell is because many prisoners "would like to take a pop at him."

Demonstrators gathered in Hunts Point Friday, again protesting a proposed jail set to be built on an industrial site in the Bronx neighborhood.

Continue reading "Hunts Point Residents Are Anti-Jail"

Police officer Jacqueline Melendez Rivera was indicted on two charges related to the February 10 shooting of fellow cop Andrew Suarez. The shooter was Melendez Rivera's husband, Jose Rivera, who shot at Suarez and other undercover officers in an unmarked car while driving in Park Slope. (Suarez was shot in the arm.)

After the Brooklyn DA's office officially dropped charges against him, Francis Evelyn is speaking out. A 58-year-old janitor at P.S. 91 with no criminal history, Francis had been arrested on Monday after an 8-year-old accused him of molesting her in the school basement. He was arraigned and held on $150,000 bail, so Evelyn went to Rikers. But the next day, prosecutors asked for Francis to be released on his own recognizance because the girl's story started to seem inconsistent. And it turned out that the girl had made previous accusations of being abused. Yesterday, the prosecutors dropped charges due to "insufficient evidence."

• The Port Authority has officially agreed to fund $1 billion of the Freedom Tower's construction
• Dr. Denton Sayer Cox, whose patients have included Andy Warhol and John Steinbeck, told police he was beaten and burned with a chemical at York and East 73rd Street but police believe he was the "victim of a gay pickup gone wrong" in his Upper East Side apartment. Either way, he's fighting for his life.
• A corrections officer gets a $1 million settlement because his female boss said things like "You better come and get some of this. My stuff is not going to wait for you forever." and "Why don't you let me make a man out of you?"
• Admissions for NYC public schools are "much more difficult" than college according to parents
• Bickfords, Corvingtons, and bishop crooks: Forgotten NY looks at old-fashioned street lamp design
• A 12-year-old boy died yesterday morning, after falling out the window of his 5th floor apartment in Harlem. His father believes his son pushed the air conditioner and may have tried to retrieve it, but the police are investigating.
• New anti-outdoor advertising poster boy: Restaurateur Keith McNally who picketed the Hotel Gansevoort today
• And in days old news, the Law & Order episode based on the Adrienne Shelly murder was came in second last Friday night, beaten by an episode of Numb3rs.
Continue reading "Extra, Extra"

Revere Demo by F.Trainer.

The intersection of 94th Street and Ditmars Boulevard in Queens became the scene of a violent confrontation last night. An off-duty corrections officer shot another man during a struggle that stemmed from road rage.

Sometimes Gothamist comes across a news story that makes our head hurt. Such is the story of the excess security doors the city bought six years ago, which were never installed, and now have been given to the State Department.

Dear lord, it's only mid-September but already the amount of new releases flooding theaters is getting a bit overwhelming.

- From contribute: A steal, bikini torpor.

Are street or place or even lane. - And hey, one more anniversary this weekend. I've been your Gothamist Weekend Editor for one whole year now, huzzah! It wouldn't be nearly as much fun without all of your comments and tips (and corrections, I live for your corrections).

After former police commissioner Bernard Kerik's guilty plea in a corruption probe, the city has removed his name from the "Tombs" - the downtown Manhattan correction facilitated renamed after him in 2001. The Daily News had an editorial asking the Mayor to take down the sign for the "Bernard B. Kerik Complex" on Saturday, and at 1AM yesterday, maintenance workers did just that. The Daily News was credited with making officials aware of Kerik's questionable behavior - like receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in home repairs for free - and the News also points out he now has a criminal record.

Mayor Bloomberg's momentary visit with President Bush yesterday at JFK Airport is being analyzed backwards and forwards. The Daily News says Bloomberg "blinked" in not chastising the President enough over the lack of Homeland Security funding for the city. The Mayor recounted his conversation for reporters:

"I welcomed him to New York, took credit for the great weather... I did thank him for his efforts to make all homeland security moneys ... distributed based on risk. He had said that a number of times... And while I wish the pot was bigger, and that is something that he has some control over, then, it really gets down to the House and the Senate, and that's where we've got to make our case. Other than that, you know, we just chitchatted about how nice it was for him to come."

MOVIES: Don't forget, the Bryant Park movies start tonight! The movie won't begin until sunset - which is about the same time the rain and thunder are scheduled to begin. Tonights features in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, The Birds. Be an early bird (heh) and get there at 5 for a good spot on the lawn!

- Stephen Colbert hosted the White House Correspondent Dinner last night. And ouch! Read about it here. Watch it here.

Just when we were starting to forget about Peter 'the fake firefighter rapist' Braunstein, the New York Post brings him back. Er, well, talks to his 62-year-old former Bellevue roommate, a guy named William Allman.