Queens Councilman May Get Plea Deal

Queens Councilman Dennis P. Gallagher who is accused of raping a woman could get off with a slap on the wrist if he agrees to a plea agreement.

Under the proposed deal, Mr. Gallagher would have to plead guilty to sexual misconduct, a Class A misdemeanor, but would not face jail time, the people familiar with the case said.

A grand jury indicted Mr. Gallagher in the summer on 10 counts of rape, criminal sexual acts and assault. In January, a State Supreme Court justice dismissed the indictment after finding that prosecutors had unfairly prejudiced grand jury members. A new indictment is possible.

Commanding Officer To Testify About Sean Bell Killing

Lieutenant Gary Napoli, the commanding officer in charge of the accused detectives, will be the first police officer to testify who was at the shooting, as the trial zeros in on the 50 shots fired by the police at Mr. Bell and two of his friends, one of whom, officers said, was suspected of having a gun.

Lieutenant Napoli has described the evening of the shooting in interviews with police investigators. The club enforcement detail had met at the Seventh Precinct station house on the Lower East Side of Manhattan the night before.

Prosecutors contend that the detail was disorganized from the start, its members having chosen their own roles in the night’s mission rather than having received them from Lieutenant Napoli. The lieutenant is scheduled to appear on Thursday as a witness for the prosecutor, but he is expected to receive harsh questioning.

Witness Testifies at trial of Police Officers in Sean Bell Case

The testimony from the dancer, Marseilles Payne, 32, in the trial of three detectives charged in Mr. Bell’s shooting was as dramatic as it was at odds with other accounts of that early morning of Nov. 25, 2006. Ms. Payne’s version more closely resembled an account of road rage, with a single detective opening fire after a car collision, than the chaotic events that the police, prosecutors and the defense have described.

Ms. Payne said she last saw Mr. Bell turn on his car’s headlights on Liverpool Street, in Jamaica, Queens, and pull away from the curb. She was at her car and was going to follow him and his friends to a diner for breakfast after her long night of dancing, she said.

“As he came out, a minivan came from behind me and they crashed,” she said. “The driver of the minivan got out of the car. He got out and he started shooting.” She said she was close enough to see the muzzle flash from his pistol.

“I saw the fire, like, three times and I turned and I ran,” she said, adding that she crouched in someone’s shrubs. “I waited for the gunshots to stop. It was about three seconds, and I started to get up, and the gunshots started again.”

The testimony came on the busy second day of the trial, which also featured accounts of Mr. Bell relaxing and celebrating his coming wedding in what would be the last hours of his life, at the Club Kalua. As the group celebrated, a group of undercover officers was on duty at the club, where prostitution and drug activity were suspected.

Officers Accused of Killing "Sean Bell" go on Trial

Fifteen months to the day after Sean Bell was killed in a blast of 50 police bullets, and after rounds and rounds of court hearings, motions and countermotions, the trial of three of the officers who fired their handguns that cold morning began Monday in State Supreme Court in Queens.

Detective Isnora and Detective Michael Oliver face charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter. A third detective, Marc Cooper, fired four shots and hit no one, but one of his rounds struck an AirTrain terminal, and he was charged with reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor.

Long Island Mother Kills Her Three Children

Leatrice Brewer, 27, who has been described as mentally disturbed, murdered her three children on Sunday and she then called the police. Ms. Brewer had been living with the children in an apartment in the Nassau County hamlet of New Cassel. Late Sunday evening, she was charged with the murder of all three children.

Neither the police nor the county medical examiner said what caused the death of the children, who were identified as Jewell Ward, 6; Michael Demesyeux, 5; and Innocent Demesyeux, 18 months old. But investigators said one appeared to have been drowned, while the others had been slashed to death.

The killings on Sunday appeared to add another grim chapter to a growing casebook of children slain by mothers: five drowned in a bathtub near Houston; two battered with rocks in Tyler, Tex.; three drowned in San Francisco Bay. The cases — some ending in verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity — have ignited a national debate over mental illness and the legal definition of insanity.

The Big Commute

There are about 300,000 people who live in New York City and make their way to jobs in the suburbs every day, part of a fast-growing segment of the work force that has turned the traditional idea of bedroom communities on its head. The group includes young workers in high-skilled professions, as well as tens of thousands of others up and down the income spectrum who prefer city living or cannot afford the suburban dream.

Planners and business groups across the region have increasingly come to realize that these commuters are a critical part of their economic prospects and are vigorously promoting transportation initiatives to encourage them. But they face considerable obstacles.

9/11 Victims' Family Request May Be Denied

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein has suggested that he would turn down the request of several families of people who died at the World Trade Center to sift through a million tons of debris at the Fresh Kills landfill in a search for human remains left from the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

During the hearing, the judge stated that nothing could ever return dead loved ones to their families. New York City had asked Judge Hellerstein to dismiss the lawsuit that was filed in 2005 by 17 families who believe their relatives' remains were still at Fresh Hills.

Professor At Columbia Will Keep Her Job

Columbia University’s Teachers College will not dismiss Madonna G. Constantine, the professor it charged with plagiarizing numerous works by another professor and two former students.

On Thursday, she renewed her claims that the investigation was biased and that the president, Susan H. Fuhrman, had tried to force her to resign. She said she had not plagiarized anyone’s work and stepped up her public defense.

Her lawyer released a statement by Barbara Wallace, the other black woman in a full tenured position at Teachers, charging that the college’s actions were hasty and left it “vulnerable to the appearance of racial bias.”

Columbia University Accuses Black Professor Of Plagiarism

Dr, Madonna Constantine was the black professor who discovered a noose outside of her door last fall. Now the professor is being accused of plagiarizing the work of colleagues and other students. Here is Dr. Constantine's response to those allegations:

Dr. Constantine, in an e-mail message to faculty and students on Wednesday, called the investigation “biased and flawed,” and said it was part of a “conspiracy and witch hunt by certain current and former members of the Teachers College community.”

“I am left to wonder whether a white faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner,” she wrote.

She added, “I believe that nothing that has happened to me this year is coincidental, particularly when I reflect upon the hate crime I experienced last semester involving a noose on my office door. As one of only two tenured black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.”

Her attorney has stated that the professor's work was plagiarized. Do you think that there is some sort of vendetta against the professor?

A New Alternative For Juvenile Offenders

The Juvenile Justice Initiative, which New York City started in February 2007, is an alternative sentencing program for juvenile offenders. The program sends medium-risk offenders back to their families and provides intensive therapy. The city says that in just a year, it has seen significant success for the juveniles enrolled, as well as cost savings from the reduced use of residential treatment centers.

Until the Juvenile Justice Initiative, family court judges had few options for dealing with youngsters convicted of less-serious crimes. They could place them on probation and hope for the best, or send them to upstate residential centers. The decision would typically depend as much on the gravity of the crime as on the stability of the child’s family. Judges are more likely to send a child into state custody if the home situation is complicated or unsafe.

Panel Seeks Testimony On Ashcroft Deal

United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie has been asked to testify before members of Congress about a multimillion-dollar contract his office awarded to former Attorney General John Ashcroft. The subject of the inquiry is a contract that Mr. Ashcroft’s Washington law firm received from Mr. Christie’s office to serve as a federal monitor. The deal is worth $27 million to $52 million over 18 months.

Under the contract, Mr. Ashcroft’s firm will monitor an Indiana-based manufacturer, Zimmer Holdings, as part of a settlement in a fraud investigation by Mr. Christie’s office. Mr. Ashcroft was also asked to testify but has not responded, according to Ms. Sanchez’s office. A phone message left at Mr. Ashcroft’s law firm on Monday was not immediately returned.

Veteran Judge To Preside Over "Sean Bell" Case

Justice Arthur J. Cooperman will preside over the trial of three detectives charged in the 2006 shooting death of an unarmed bridegroom, Sean Bell, outside a strip club in Jamaica, Queens.

The trial will bring more immediate attention to the 74-year-old judge than most criminal trials, because the defendants have waived their rights to a jury, leaving the verdict solely in Justice Cooperman’s hands. The trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 25.

Man Arrested for killing Psychologist

A 39-year-old man who blamed a Manhattan psychiatrist for having him institutionalized 17 years ago was charged on Saturday with killing a female therapist in a furious knife attack and then slashing the psychiatrist when he tried to come to the woman’s aid, law enforcement officials said.

The man, David M. Tarloff, was picked up at his home in Queens at 7:20 a.m. and later made statements implicating himself in the killing of the therapist, Kathryn Faughey, 56, and the assault on the psychiatrist, Dr. Kent D. Shinbach, who is in his 70s, on Tuesday night inside the East 79th Street offices they shared, the police said.

Confidentiality Hinders Police Investigation

As part of an expansive effort to catch a knife-wielding attacker, police officials confronted a thorny legal hurdle on Friday as they sought the medical records of an Upper East Side therapist who was slain and those of a colleague who was wounded rushing to her aid.

Three days after the attack, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the police and the Manhattan district attorney’s office were trying to get a court order that would allow investigators to go through the patient files — up to 1,000 of them — of the slain therapist, Kathryn Faughey, and the wounded man, Dr. Kent D. Shinbach, in the hope that one could provide evidence leading to the killer.

Use of Myspace may Violate Restraining Order

If you have a restraining order against someone and that person contact you through the social networking site, Myspace, that person may be held in contempt of court:

In one of the first rulings of its kind, a Staten Island judge has said that a teenage girl could be charged with violating a restraining order by using MySpace.com to reach out to people she was told not to contact.

The girl, Melisa Fernino, 16, of West Brighton, Staten Island, was charged with three counts of criminal contempt in September after she was accused of sending a MySpace “friend request” to Sandra Delgrosso and her two daughters on Aug. 23. The order was put in place after Ms. Fernino made several violent threats against Ms. Delgrosso, who had dated her father, and against her two daughters, said a Staten Island official who insisted on anonymity because the case originated in Family Court, where proceedings are private.

This is good news for those who may have been in an abusive relationship and their abusers try to contact them through Myspace.

Sister Sues Over Firefighter Brother's Death

The sister of one of the two firefighters killed in August fighting a fire at the former Deutsche Bank building sued the government agency that owns the building and several contractors on Wednesday, charging they knowingly created dangerous conditions that led to her brother’s death.

The sister, Barbara Beddia Crocco, contends in the suit that her brother, Robert Beddia, 53, died because of conditions caused during the dismantling of the building, including piles of combustible debris, dismantled fire connections, compromised stairwell walls and barricaded exits.

The lawsuit says the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which owned the building, and several private companies knew of the potentially fatal conditions before the fire.

Irag Troops Receives Shoddy Mental Health Care At Fort Drum

Can you imagine serving four tours of duty in Iraq yet having to wait for more than a month to receive psychological help? Well, that is exactly what is going on at Fort Drum:

According to a draft report, “Fort Drum: A Great Burden, Inadequate Assistance,” which was given to The New York Times last week, uncovered several problems with the mental health services on the post, which is north of Syracuse. Based on interviews with a dozen soldiers and the mental health providers on the base, the report describes problems with under staffing, a reliance on questionnaires to identify soldiers in need of treatment and a sometimes dismissive view at the company level of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, the commander of the 10th Mountain Division, which includes the Second Brigade, acknowledged the shortcomings of the mental health care on the base, and said the problems were being addressed. In particular, he said, the providers of psychological services on the base have been expanding their effort to interview “those who are most at risk,” though “the screening process is not where we want it to be.”

Indeed, the report said that the wait for an appointment has eased since three Army psychiatrists were reassigned last month from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, joining three psychiatrists already on the base, to address the needs of 3,500 Second Brigade soldiers recently back from Iraq. But, the report noted, the reassignment was “only a temporary fix” since the psychiatrists from Walter Reed would probably return to Washington in a few weeks.

Fort Drum lacks its own hospital, so any soldier needing inpatient treatment has to be sent to Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, which recently increased the number of beds in its psychiatric unit to 32 from 24.

But the report said that when the psychological facilities at the base have closed for the day, some soldiers have bypassed Samaritan and driven more than an hour to Syracuse for treatment. The Veterans for America report said the soldiers fear that doctors at Samaritan will side with some base leaders, who had, “in some cases, cast doubt on the legitimacy of combat-related mental health wounds.”

Nor is the heavy service the only problem at Fort Drum. In the last two weeks, it has been at the center of a controversy over whether the Army instructed the Department of Veterans Affairs last March to stop helping soldiers there with their disability claims. At first, the Army surgeon general, Eric B. Schoomaker, denied that the Army had told Veterans Affairs to do so.

Fort Drum needs to be totally investigated because this is a shoddy way to treat soldiers who have given so much of themselves. Is it too much to ask that they receive the help they most desperately need?

New York State Businesses Misclassifying Employees

Sometimes businesses will do anything to get out of paying unemployment taxes and workers compensation benefits:

A new crackdown on employers in New York State that are paying workers off the books has snared dozens of companies and uncovered millions of dollars in violations. The sweeps focused on the construction and restaurant industries and sought to ferret out off-the-books work as well as the misclassification of workers as independent contractors.

State officials said that worker misclassification — from the failure to pay unemployment insurance taxes to failure to withhold income taxes — causes substantial revenue losses at various levels of government.

In their sweeps, which investigated 117 companies, state officials found that 2,078 employees had been misclassified as independent contractors. The task force also found 646 workers who were owed minimum and overtime wages totaling about $3 million.

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. I am sure there are other businesses doing the same thing as well.

Long Island Hospital Under Investigation

When we enter a hospital, we expect the hospital to take care of us. The following case, however, illustrates that some hospitals can be a dangerous place:

The investigation of Mercy Medical Center was prompted by the complaints of one of its doctors, Anthony Colantonio, who said a physician’s assistant had improperly inserted catheters, chest tubes and pacemakers into patients. Three such patients died, the doctor said: a 65-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman last summer, and a 19-year-old woman in October. The Health Department would not confirm whether the assistant was a focus of its investigation.

I am glad the doctor came forward. Sometimes this sort of thing is covered up.

New York Area Unions and the Mafia

Can Labor Unions ever escape the influence of organized crime? Recent indictments show that two labor unions were plagued by mafia influence:

A trucking company owner, Joseph Spinnato, together with unnamed others, repeatedly embezzled money from Local 282’s health and pension funds. The charges detailed an enduring practice in which construction and trucking companies contribute less money to union benefit funds than is required, usually by underreporting the hours that employees work. While the scheme often operates with the complicity of union stewards, officials with Local 282 and its benefits funds were not accused of wrongdoing.

Louis Mosca, the business manager of Laborers’ Local 325 in Jersey City, was charged with taking a $2,000 bribe to give someone a union card, a move often done to help someone qualify for a construction job or union benefits. Michael King, a shop steward of Laborers’ Local 731 in Queens, was also accused of selling a membership.

Prosecutors say the unions that deliver cement and other building supplies have long been a magnet for Mafia involvement because mob officials know that if they delay deliveries, construction companies can lose large amounts of money. Those union locals thus become an ideal pressure point for extortion.

Mob Informant Had Power And A Wire

How the mob got caught:

Mr. Joseph Vollaro, who had already been netted in a drug sting by the State Organized Crime Task Force, had agreed to become a government witness. He wore a hidden recording device and captured his conversations with a range of accused mobsters, including Mr. Corozzo.

So it appears that it was actually the Task Force, federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. who were stringing Mr. Corozzo along, gauging his sincerity to try to determine whether he indeed intended to induct their informant into the family, a ceremony some among them were keen to record for posterity.

Gambino Crime Family Indicted

Bad boys, bad boys, what are you going to do, what are you going to do when they come for you was the last song mob members thought they would hear. The Gambino Crime Family had to think about that song:

Scores of crimes were outlined in state and federal indictments unsealed on Thursday that charged 87 people and represented a government move against the upper echelon of the Gambino crime family.

Beginning with early morning knocks on doors around the New York City area, the case formed the basis for a roundup that authorities called the biggest such sweep in memory, one that was coordinated with arrests by Italian authorities in Sicily.

The charges took aim at not only the family’s leadership but at a cadre of middle managers and lower level figures in the Gambino clan and others in the Bonanno and Genovese families. Also charged were several union and construction officials.

Will they beat the charges? I guess they think it will take the feds some time to convict them if this becomes a repeat of the late John Gotti "Teflon Don" episode.

An Armory Employee Arrested For Bribery In The Fashion Business

We all have heard stories of politicians accepting bribes for favors. Well, bribery has now entered the fashion industry. It seems that Mark Jacobs International may have been paying bribes to hold their elaborate fashion shows at the armory:

Since 2000, James Jackson, who served as the superintendent of the armory for more than eight years, solicited more than $40,000 in bribes from the company that produced Mr. Jacobs’s shows and the others, officials said. Mr. Jackson is accused of demanding money and gifts, including computers and a Bowflex exercise machine, to hold certain dates for events, to ease the paperwork and in some cases to allow early access to the building, which typically rents for $6,000 a day.

Mr. Jackson, 56, of Queens, a 30-year employee of the Division of Military and Naval Affairs who earned $58,951 as superintendent of the 26th Street Armory until shortly after his arrest in October, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday, officials said. He faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted. He declined to comment through his lawyer, Alan Abramson.

The century-old 26th Street building, also known as the 69th Regiment Armory, has been especially sought by designers because it is one of the few spaces in the city that can hold thousands of people with unobstructed views.

This story will probably have those in the fashion business to push for charges to be filed against Jacobs.

Are You An Impostor?

Social psychologists have studied what they call the impostor phenomenon since at least the 1970s, when a pair of therapists at Georgia State University used the phrase to describe the internal experience of a group of high-achieving women who had a secret sense they were not as capable as others thought. Since then researchers have documented such fears in adults of all ages, as well as adolescents.

Their findings have veered well away from the original conception of impostorism as a reflection of an anxious personality or a cultural stereotype. Feelings of phoniness appear to alter people’s goals in unexpected ways and may also protect them against subconscious self-delusions.

Brooklyn Police Corruption Scandal Cast Shadow On Arrests

If you can't trust the messenger, you can't trust the message. That is exactly what is happening with this ongoing Brooklyn police corruption scandal that will allow criminals to go free:

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has dismissed charges or vacated convictions in 183 cases because one or more of the four officers had played a significant role in them. In addition, the city’s special prosecutor has thrown out five pending indictments against eight defendants.

The scandal emerged in September when an officer in the squad, Detective Sean Johnstone, was heard on a departmental tape recording saying that he and his partner, Officer Julio Alvarez, had recovered 28 bags of cocaine from a suspect but turned in only 17. The officers were charged in December with misconduct and falsifying records. An investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau led to the arrests in January of two other officers, Sgt. Michael Arenella and Officer Jerry Bowens.

Court papers said they took drugs and cash they had recovered and gave them to an informant in exchange for information. While the officers who were charged are not suspected of making any illegal profit, the corruption investigation has forced prosecutors and defense lawyers to review cases that involved any of the four officers.

Defense attorneys are checking whether clients were wrongly charged or convicted. Steven Banks, the attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, said they expected to review several hundred cases. The cases dismissed so far represent 129 misdemeanors and 54 felonies, according to the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes.

This means that in some cases, convicted dealers are back on the streets with their records wiped clean and sealed. Addicts who were sentenced to treatment instead of jail could now be ineligible for the programs. And charges, whether for possession of small amounts of marijuana or dozens of grams of cocaine, are being dropped.

This will cost the city a lot of money as well as erode people's confidence in the Brooklyn police department.

Federal Probe Into Senator Joseph L. Bruno's Business Dealings Broadens

What do federal investigators hope to find concerning Senator Joseph L. Bruno's business dealings with this company? This investigation has been going on for some time leaving some to speculate that the senator's business dealings are somewhat shady:

For more than a decade, Mr. Bruno earned a salary from Wright Investors' Service, based in Milford, Conn., in addition to his legislative pay of $121,000. His affiliation with the company began shortly before he became majority leader in 1995. Neither the amount of his salary nor the specifics of his job have been disclosed, and such disclosure is not required under state ethics laws.

A number of the pension funds’ trustees also have longstanding political ties to Mr. Bruno, who has been a close ally of labor unions in the Legislature. Some of the trustees even personally lobbied Mr. Bruno about legislative issues, state records and interviews with the officials revealed. Records also show that prominent locals in New York City invested at various times with Wright, including the New York City District Council of Carpenters and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International union.

Whatever happened to transparency in government? If the feds do not find anything criminally wrong, it sure smells like there could be some type of ethics violation in the mix.

New York Bankrolls Presidential Campaign

If you want to know where the largest presidential campaign contributors reside; well look no further, they are right here in New York:

Through the end of last year, the metropolitan region contributed more than $80 million to presidential aspirants. New York’s singers, actors, literary lights and plutocrats wrote checks across party lines, in some cases covering their bets by running the table of candidates.

These New Yorkers have deep pockets and they don't mind spreading the wealth.

Heavily Armed Officers To Patrol Subways

After the 9/11 attacks, people became more aware of the possibility of more attacks in the United States. As a result of the possibility of future terrorist attacks, the New York City police department will patrol the subways on a daily basis:

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced the grants at a news conference on Friday at Grand Central Terminal, where Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly outlined his plans to add a layer of security to the city’s 24-hour transit system.

Mr. Kelly’s plan to heighten security and monitor a subway system that carries nearly five million people a day along 656 miles of tracks reflects the city’s continuing concerns about a possible attack.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, police patrols increased in the subways, particularly at the entrances to the 16 underwater tunnels. As terrorists have hit rail systems around the world, the police in New York have reacted with strategies tailored to thwart similar attacks.

Although no plan is 100% foolproof, this bold new plan will make citizens feel that the City is doing all it can to protect the public.

Immigration Reform: Who Are You Hiring?

Are your employees legal? If you don't know the answer to that question, it may be time you find out:

In the latest move on eastern Long Island to crack down on illegal immigrants, Brian Beedenbender, a freshman Suffolk County legislator proposed a bill on Thursday that would require the estimated 15,000 licensed contractors there to verify their workers’ legal status.

Under Mr. Beedenbender’s proposal, the county’s estimated 15,000 contractors — including electricians, plumbers, home contractors, roofers and asphalt pavers — would be required to verify employees’ legal working status. Violators would face punishment ranging from losing their licenses to being fined or jailed up to four years. Currently, Suffolk County gets 100 to 200 license applications a month and renews about 500. Several public hearings will be held before the proposal is voted on by the County Legislature.

It seems that the legislator is placing a heavy burden on these employers. What do you think?