Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: smoke inhalation victims at Centre and White Sts. in Manhattan, a shooting on Neptune Ave. in Brooklyn, and a truck vs. overpass at 155th St. and South Rd. in Queens. Design firm EDAW was chosen to plan the Steeplechase Plaza for a now-vacant lot near the Coney Island boardwalk. The development beneath the Parachute Jump may include a water park and a platform for viewing Cyclones minor league baseball......

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is seeking the dismissal of a civil suit against her filed by Council Member Charles Barron's former chief of staff Viola Plummer. Quinn gave Plummer the boot when the councilman's aide refused to sign a pledge to compose herself while the City Council was in session. The City Hall drama all began when Queens Councilman Leroy Comrie refused to vote in favor of naming a street after black activist Sonny......

A federal judge dismissed defamation charges against City Councilman John Liu related to an incident last year when Liu called radio personality DJ Star a "sick, racist pedophile." The characterization was a reaction to an on-air taunt at a rival DJ, when DJ Star (Troi Torain), solicited information on where DJ Envy of Hot 97 lived so he could sexually defile his four-year-old daughter. DJ Star also called DJ Envy's wife, who is Asian, several......

Yesterday, we briefly mentioned that Viola Plummer, former City Council staffer under Councilman Charles Barron, was forcibly removed from a City Council meeting. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn fired Plummer, who had heckled her during meetings and referenced an "assassination" of another City Council member (assassination of his career, Plummer later claimed), for not agreeing to behave during meetings. Plummer filed a $1 million lawsuit against Quinn and continues to work for Barron as a......

As we mentioned, City Councilman Charles Barron held his press conference yesterday to announce his candidacy for the 2009 Brooklyn Borough Presidency. He told the crowds that his platform included affordable housing, health care accessibility, more jobs, standing up to developers who use eminent domain, ending mayor control of schools and more would help everyone. "Am I going to be a borough president for all the people? Absolutely. But I'm letting y'all know now, I'm......

Councilman Charles Barron stood on the steps of Brooklyn's Borough Hall yesterday and announced that he would be running to become the first African-Amercian Borough President in Brooklyn's history. The Daily News reports that Barron wasted no time in denigrating the current Beep Marty Markowitz. "We've had a cheerleader. Now we need a real leader in Brooklyn." Barron was referring to Markowitz's seemingly perpetual sunny disposition and love of public appearances while looking faintly ridiculous.......

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn fired Councilman Charles Barron's chief of staff Viola Plummer yesterday. Quinn had required Plummer to sign a letter agreeing to behave during meetings, after Plummer heckled Quinn during a meeting about street namings and made reference to an "assassination" of Councilman Leroy Comrie, but Plummer refused (she has maintained that she meant a "assassination" of Comrie's character and/or political prospects). And Plummer filed a $1 million racial discrimination suit against......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a church shooting on Schenectady Ave. in Brooklyn, a pedestrian struck on West 17th St. and Union Square West in Manhattan, and a water rescue in Raitian Bay between Staten Island and Sandy Hook, NJ. City Councilman Charles Barron's chief of staff, Viola Plummer, was suspended for six weeks from the City Council and by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who she's also heckled, with a promise of reinstatment if......

Despite having been defeated in a City Council vote, where his chief of staff heckled Council Speaker Christine Quinn and threatened a black councilman with assassination, Councilman Charles Barron renamed a street in Brooklyn "Sonny Abubadika Carson Avenue" anyway, declaring that the renaming "is official whether they [presumably the city] take that sign down or not." Sonny Carson's name was struck from a list of people who would get honorary street signs earlier this spring.......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A partial collapse at a building on 39th and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck at West Moshulu Parkway South and Jerome in the Bronx, and a boat in distress under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge Philanthropists, including former Citibank head Sandy Weill, donated $400 million to Weill Cornell Medical College to go towards new research programs, new facilities, support for students and education and more; Weill's overall contributions......

As if the whole failed Sonny Carson street naming proposal brouhaha needed more wackiness! Today, The New York Sun takes a look at City Councilman Charles Barron's chief of staff, Viola Plummer. During the Sonny Carson street naming debate, Plummer heckled City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and later threatened an assassination "on" another member, Leroy Comrie, who abstained from voting. Barron had laughed the incident off as political squabbling between political opponents, but one couldn't......

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn struck Sonny Carson's name from a list of of New Yorkers to be honored with a street named after them because she thought the political activist was too divisive a figure. Carson was a proponent of black economic empowerment and was distemperate in his views of other New York groups (e.g., whites, Jews, Koreans). Councilman Charles Barron, who shares Carson's past as a radical activist, thought Carson's exclusion from the......

Mayor Bloomberg spent Memorial Day at a number of different events in Queens and spoke about a number of issues: The City Council proposal to name a street after Sonny Carson He called it "probably the worst idea the City Council, anybody in the City Council, has had in recent memory." City Councilman Charles Barron, who supports part of Gates Avenue in Brooklyn to be named after the black activist, told the Daily News, "Tell......

The NYPD decided not to appeal a judge's decision that the NYPD should declassify its surveillance documents from the 2004 RNC, so it has set up a special NYPD RNC Documents website with the documents. Of course, you have to scroll down to the very bottom for a zip file of the 600 pages of documents. And what's above the documents is the NYPD's rather thorough explanation/ defense justifying why it did such extensive......

The incident where a 14-year-old boy was allegedly assaulted by rapper Tony Yayo for wearing a Czar Entertainment t-shirt (Yayo's management company's rival) has now entered the third phase. The first phase was outcry and denial from both sides. The second phase was a press conference held by the Reverend Al Sharpton decrying the violence of the rap industry. And the third phase is the inevitable rap song. The Game, who is managed by Czar......

Three detectives were charged in the November 2006 shooting of Sean Bell outside a Queens nightclub, and all three pleaded not guilty. Two of the police officers, Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora, face serious charges that include first-degree and second-degree manslaughter (it was originally thought they would only face second-degree manslaughter), while Detective Marc Cooper faces charges of reckless endangerment. When asked how he would plea, Isnora's lawyer Philip Karasyk said, "Not guilty......

Yesterday morning, an off-duty police officer killed another clubgoer who was threatening another off-duty cop. At Brooklyn's The Elite Ark, which was having a Notorious B.I.G. tribute, a shoving match started that caused a commotion. Twenty-one year-old Kristen McKenzie allegedly fired a gun at an unarmed off-duty detective's head, but missed. The detective then tackled McKenzie, trying to get the gun, and the gun went off, injuring the detective. The NY Times reports that he......

Yesterday, the NYPD revealed a plan hatched by a Rikers inmate to kill Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and place a bomb at 1 Police Plaza. David Brown, an ex-con who is in jail because he violated his parole by "disobeying an order of protection against his ex-wife" (he tried to kill her in 2001), told an undercover cop posing as a hit he was "fed up with the case where the guy got shot 50......

It's a new semester at City College and it'll be a new round of fighting over a campus center's "Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur" sign. The Daily News reports that City Councilman Charles Barron re-placed the controversial sign for the City College NY community center and vows to re-place it if it's taken down again:"We are here to say to the City University that we have a right to self-determination, that we have a right to free......

The City Council questioned Police Commissioner Ray Kelly about NYPD tactics in the wake of the fatal shooting of Sean Bell. The Council was aggressive and straightforward; for instance, Councilman David Yassky said , "Too many African-American New Yorkers feel that they are at risk or that their family members are at risk of mistreatment, whether it be to be stopped without reason or to be victimized by excessive force." Councilman Charles Barron asked Kelly......

The Mayor touted the news that NYC's unemployment rate dropped to 4.3% last month, saying, "News that our average unemployment rate in 2006 was the lowest on record is yet another example how New York's recovery from 9/11 is exceeding our wildest dreams." The unemployment rate has been below 5% September through December, which Crain's says is the "first below-5% performance since the 1980's." (The record low was in October, when the rate was 4.1%.)......

Maybe the new black is actually selling huge middle-income housing complexes. The NY Times reports that the 140 acre Starrett City apartment complex in Brooklyn is up for sale. And who's the broker? Why the firm of CB Richard Ellis, which handled the $5.4 billion sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village to Tishman-Speyer. From the NY Times:The complex, whose owner changed its name in recent years to the more chic-sounding Spring Creek Towers, is......

Residential groups on the Upper East Side had filed a lawsuit to stop the building of a garbage transfer station at East 91st Street and the FDR Drive, but a judge dismissed the suit, noting that the plan would "further the city's announced, rational goals of promoting equity among the boroughs for responsibility over waste disposal, and reducing truck traffic." Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg proposed the controversial plan almost two years ago and tried to get......

Two brothers were shot dead by a man - and an undercover police officer on his way from court back to the office stumbled upon the scene. The police officer reportedly fired five rounds at the shooter from his car, but the shooter is still on the loose (it's unclear if any of the cop's bullets hit him). People on the Bedford-Stuyvesant block were frightened by the sudden gunfire, and a witness says that the......

The police played a 911 call made during Monday's Brooklyn barbecue shooting. The NYPD claimed that housing cop Jason Jeremiah was hit on the head with a Razor scooter, causing him to shoot the attacker and the call seemed to support that: "One guy is down because he beat the cop in the back with a bike, with a scooter, and the cop shot him...He took one of the kid's scooters and he beat the......

Though Borough Park is quiet after Tuesday night's fire-and-almost brimstone clash between Hasidim and police over the arrest of an old man who did break the law, tempers are still flaring. Arthur Schick, the 75 year old man whose chatting on a cellphone while driving raised police interest, says the officer who pushed him to the ground said, "This is the way we treat a nigger." Schick also felt that the crowds that protested and......

It's not the best week for Mayor Bloomberg. His West Side stadium gets poo-pooed, and now the City Council doesn't like his plan for trash! The City Council, led by City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, voted against the mayor's trash plan. The Bloomberg administration's plan was to ship the city's garbage via barges, in order to cut sanitation truck traffic, by creating/renovating marine transfer stations in the city. One was in Miller's Upper East......

The Mayor got good news and bad news from the City Council yesterday. Good news: The City Council approved the city's plan to revelop Brooklyn's Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront. The one lone opposing vote came from Councilman Charles Barron, who said, "There has to be a day in this City Council where we don't settle for less than 50 percent affordable housing" - the current plan has a provision requiring new apartment buildings to have one-third affordable......

While the Mayor and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller may seem similar - they are white...they live on the Upper East Side...uh... - they actually aren't, and the NY Times examined their extremely political spitting match. Gothamist liked how Mayor Bloomberg views Miller as unaccomplished and unambitious, because next to him, who can be (this does not bode well for prospective suitors for Emma and Georgina), but there was another quote that got us thinking:City......

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has decided to "unvite" Cracker Barrel from visiting Brooklyn. Last week, politicians, community leaders, and even our readers were up in arms about Markowitz having the Cracker Barrel folks up for a courtesy visit, to bring some Southern chain-style cooking to Brooklyn. Markowitz alluded to some of the chain's past problems with gay and black employees when he said: "I do not believe they are ready for Brooklyn. It is......