Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Were his puppets: witness

By JULIA MARSH and DAN MANGAN

Last Updated: 3:48 AM, March 21, 2012

Posted: 1:00 AM, March 21, 2012

Add “puppet master” to Pedro Espada Jr.’s many titles.

The former state Senate majority leader manipulated the board of directors of a Bronx nonprofit like a pro — changing official records, getting a huge boost in severance and permission to use a shady system for paying expenses, a former employee testified yesterday.

“He was like the puppet master?” asked Espada’s own defense lawyer, Susan Necheles, at the former Bronx pol’s embezzlement trial in Brooklyn federal court.

Prosecution witness Maria Cruz replied, “That’s correct — that’s what I’m saying.”

NY Post: Spencer A. Burnett

ON HOT SEAT: Pedro Espada enters Brooklyn federal court yesterday for his embezzlement trial.

Cruz testified last week that Espada loaded the staff and board of his nonprofit Soundview Healthcare Network with family and friends — enabling him to allegedly loot the clinic of more than $500,000 to pay for lavish personal expenses such as sushi dinners and spa treatments.

Yesterday, the ex-Soundview personnel boss testified that Espada — who did not attend board meetings — would personally edit those meetings’ minutes afterward, before they were submitted to the federal government, Soundview’s main source of funds.

“What was said was taken down, and the meeting’s minutes were given to Pedro Espada for review, and he made whatever changes he thought, and then they were distributed,” Cruz testified.

She also testified that in 1989, Espada’s originally agreed-upon severance package called for him to be paid one month’s salary for each year worked at Soundview.

But by 2005, the board had voted to jack up that package, to one year’s salary for each year worked — up to a mind-boggling $7 million, just $2 million less than Soundview’s annual income.

Later, Cruz recounted an incident in which Soundview financial executive Ken Brennan was “upset” as he demanded that Espada’s secretary explain whether a $300 charge on the pol’s Soundview credit card was for a personal or business expense.

Afterward, Espada said, “I don’t know why he’s making such a fuss. I paid for my personal expenses on the card with accrued time,” Cruz recalled.

In other words, Cruz said, Soundview’s board allowed Espada to reimburse the charity for personal expenses on the card by forgoing accrued vacation time — not by paying back the cash.

Espada and his son Pedro Gautier Espada are on trial for allegedly embezzling from Soundview and another company between 2005 and 2009.

Meanwhile, Necheles suffered a second day of tongue-lashing from Judge Fredric Block, who repeatedly indicated he was frustrated by delays in her handling documents and exhibits.

“Let’s move on, c’mon!” Block barked.

dan.mangan@nypost.com

[Pedro Espada] was like the puppet master?

— Defense lawyer Susan Necheles

That’s correct — that’s what I’m saying.

— Witness Maria Cruz (left), the former personnel director at Soundview Healthcare

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Pedro smokescreen

‘Don’t cloud my mind!’ judge snaps

By HELEN FREUND and DAN MANGAN

Last Updated: 2:29 AM, March 20, 2012

Posted: 1:06 AM, March 20, 2012

They asked too many questions.

Pedro Espada Jr.’s defense lawyer desperately tried to damage a key witness against the Bronx politician yesterday — but the former exec for the Bronx health clinic that Espada is accused of ripping off held her ground and the strategy backfired.

Espada’s attorney made matters worse by infuriating the judge presiding over the ex-state senator’s embezzlement trial in Brooklyn federal court by repeatedly talking about documents that neither the jurist nor prosecutors had been provided copies of.

“Do you have any idea why I’m having such a difficult time with this trial?” Judge Frederic Block fumed to the lawyer, Susan Necheles.

Gregory P. Mango

STILL SMILING: Former Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. leaves federal court in Brooklyn yesterday with his wife, Connie.

“Are you intentionally trying to cloud my mind?” Block blasted, accusing Necheles of introducing a “distracting” amount of paperwork. “Don’t do that!”

Necheles had no better luck cross-examining the witness, Maria Cruz, who for years was head of personnel at Soundview Healthcare Network — the Bronx nonprofit group that Espada is accused of looting to the tune of $500,000 to fund his lavish lifestyle.

“You’re making this all up, aren’t you?” Necheles asked Cruz regarding her testimony from last week.

An unflappable Cruz calmly replied, “No, I’m not,” leaving Necheles to move on to another point.

Cruz, a key witness against her former boss, had testified last week about a scheme in which Soundview rented out conference rooms and other spaces to medical professionals, religious groups and others in buildings that Soundview controlled.

Instead of Soundview getting paid rent, those payments — for a decade — were made to Espada and his son Pedro Gautier Espada, and to a for-profit cleaning company called CEDC that the younger Espada controlled, prosecutors claim.

An indictment said the former Senate majority leader and his son stole more than $200,000 in rent payments from Soundview, which is a taxpayer-supported charity, from 2005 through 2009.

That money was allegedly used, along with other funds looted from Soundview, to pay for lobster and sushi dinners, birthday parties, spa treatments, cars and other perks that benefited the Espadas and their clan — not the poor people of The Bronx whom the charity was supposed to serve, prosecutors charge.

Under cross-examination by Necheles about this alleged scheme, Cruz freely admitted her own guilt in handling the cash from it and depositing it in banks for Espada’s use.

“I knew what I was doing was criminal,” said Cruz. “I collected rent [for the scheme] from before 2000.”

“I knew what I was doing was a crime, but I didn’t want to lose my job,” she said.

“Mr. Espada always said that it [the inquiry into his practices] was a witch hunt and that it was his company and that I wouldn’t get into trouble,” Cruz said.

Cruz testified that after she became aware of the federal criminal probe into Espada, she voluntarily presented herself to investigators.

“I thought to myself, ‘Let me go in and meet with them and see how I can help,’ ” Cruz answered Necheles.

Additional reporting by Mitchel Maddux

dan.mangan@nypost.com

Monday, March 19, 2012

Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez: Northern Manhattan’s population is shrinking; we need more affordable housing

Rodriguez says rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing has triggered a 'silent crisis' in his district, resulting in a population drop of more than 18,000

By Ydanis Rodriguez / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, March 19, 2012, 4:00 AM

Octavio Estevez inside his new apartment at 369 Edgecomb Avenue, with City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who helped him find housing, which was necessary for Octavio to be put on a kidney transplant list.

Michael Schwartz for New York Daily News

Octavio Estevez inside his new apartment on Edgecombe Ave. in Washington Heights, with City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who helped him find housing, which was necessary for Estevez to be put onto a kidney transplant list.

Octavio Estevez was in a battle for his life. After having to leave his job because of a potentially deadly illness, he was unable to find an apartment he could afford in his neighborhood of Washington Heights. He and his family were forced to leave the place he had called home for decades, to relocate to a homeless shelter in the Bronx.

While there, he found out that in order to get the kidney transplant he needed to survive, he would have to find more stable housing. With no other options in sight, it seemed as if Estevez might never get the life-saving treatment he needed, because of a shortage of affordable housing.

Through stories in the Daily News and other media, Estevez and his family were able to partner with the Community League of the Heights and a local developer to find an apartment in a newly renovated building. His new apartment is a victory we can all be proud of, but what about the families forced to leave Northern Manhattan who don’t get their faces in the paper? These are the families who have become part of a silent crisis.

This silent crisis has caused the population of Northern Manhattan to drop from more than 208,000 to 190,000; a loss of more than 18,000 people. Considering the addition of people who have recently moved into the community, this means the number of residents who have left is likely to be higher than 20,000. These 20,000 people are our friends, our families and our neighbors, but have been forced to move by the drastic rent increases in the past 10 to 15 years.

As dramatic as this exodus is, many don’t notice it until it’s too late, because it happens one family at a time. You have a goodbye party for one of your neighbors one week, the next you notice that a small local bodega has shut down, and the family owning it now has to move to the Bronx. Many of us look at each of these stories individually, not necessarily connecting them as part of a much bigger problem. So, many residents stay quiet, the only visible evidence is the “For Rent” signs and the moving trucks, and the number of people hurt by this silent crisis continues to rise.

In my office, every single day local residents come in who are facing eviction because the rents of the apartments they’ve lived in for years are suddenly and dramatically increasing. While we work hard to advocate for them, and are often successful, the reality is that we’re up against forces bigger than any one of us. While my office can advocate, we cannot create new affordable housing by ourselves. Since 2004, only 138 units of affordable housing have been built in Northern Manhattan — just over 1% of the total units built in the borough of Manhattan in the same time period. So while we lose 10% of our people, we’ve only received 1% of the new housing, and a small percentage of the preservations.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Photos show Bronx pol Espada partying on taxpayer dime: feds

Here’s the birthday-party pony — and the purported pilfering, pot-bellied porker who paid for it. Disgraced Bronx politician Pedro Espada Jr. looks jolly in one of a slew of photographs entered into evidence at his embezzlement trial. Espada is...

Espada turned family tree into money tree at tax-funded clinic: ex-staffer

By MITCHEL MADDUX and DAN MANGAN

Last Updated: 6:47 AM, March 16, 2012

Posted: 12:40 AM, March 16, 2012

Pedro Espada Jr. ran his taxpayer-funded health clinic like a family business — and it made him filthy rich, a devastating prosecution witness said yesterday at the ex-pol’s federal corruption trial.

The former state Senate majority leader loaded more than a dozen relatives, cronies, hangers-on — and even his sons’ baby mamas — onto the payroll of the Soundview Healthcare Network that he founded and controlled.

By doing so, the once-powerful Democrat made it child’s play to illegally tap the Bronx nonprofit’s coffers for more than $500,000 to fund his lavish lifestyle — including $100,000 alone for dining, including sushi and lobster dinners — while getting paid a king’s ransom in salary and promised severance, prosecutors charge.

Spencer Burnett

Former Soundview personnel boss Maria Cruz testified in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.

Spencer Burnett

WHAT’S HE SO HAPPY ABOUT? A beaming Pedro Espada Jr. arrives for his corruption trial at the Brooklyn federal courthouse yesterday with wife Connie and his bodyguard.

In one case, an Espada relative’s boyfriend was placed on Soundview’s board of directors — which OK’d Espada’s questionable salary and expenses — despite his utter lack of experience in either non-profits or the health-care industry, former Soundview personnel boss Maria Cruz told Brooklyn federal-court jurors.

“I heard he worked in a restaurant — I think he was a cook,” Cruz deadpanned when prosecutor Todd Kaminsky asked about the man’s résumé.

Cruz also testified that the former state senator’s son and co-defendant in the case, Pedro Gautier Espada, installed vending machines in Soundview’s facilities — and then allegedly pocketed the money collected by those machines, while operating a cleaning company that had a lucrative contract with Soundview.

And Cruz said the elder Espada, because of his awful credit rating, asked her to co-sign a loan for a luxury car he was hoping to buy.

“He wanted to obtain a Bentley. He wanted me to co-sign for him,” Cruz said about the pricey purchase, which eventually fell through.

She later co-signed with him on a loan for a Mercedes-Benz he bought — allegedly with funds illegally siphoned from a cleaning company he and his son controlled.

That company also had a contract with Soundview.

Espada’s wife, Connie, had a fully insured GMC Yukon SUV paid for by Soundview, even when she was no longer an employee, Cruz said.

And Cruz — testifying as part of a nonprosecution agreement with the feds — described photographs showing a birthday party for an Espada relative that the pol allegedly paid for with Soundview funds.

Among those photographs shown jurors was one of a beaming Espada Jr. next to a child who is sitting astride a pony. Others showed goats and someone dressed like the children’s-TV dinosaur Barney.

Next >

Rick Santorum tries to clarify declaration that English must be Puerto Rico’s official language for statehood

remarks enraged many voters in the predominantly Spanish-speaking commonwealth — and may hurt Santorum in Sunday’s GOP primary

Christopher Gregory/Getty Images

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO - MARCH 14: Presidential candidate and former U.S. Rick Santorum (R-PA) attends a prayer service at the Path of the Cross Evangelical Church on March 14, 2012 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Presidential candidate and former U.S. Rick Santorum (R-PA) two-day campaign on the island is meant to win the 20 of 23 GOP delegates up for grabs on the island commonwealth in his bid for the republican presidential nomination. His religious views are likely to entice the vote of the island's large religious population. (Photo by Christopher Gregory/Getty Images)

Rick Santorum has a message to Puerto Rican voters: I’m sorry.

Or, “Lo siento.”

Santorum was trying to clarify his controversial declaration that English would have to be Puerto Rico’s official language if the island wanted to become a state.

Those remarks enraged many voters in the predominantly Spanish-speaking commonwealth — and may hurt Santorum in Sunday’s GOP primary.

“Obviously Spanish would be the language here,” he told reporters late Thursday.

“We understand that you know the people of different cultures speak different languages,” Santorum sputtered, “but we have a common language, and that’s what I was saying yesterday.”

Puerto Ricans are United States citizens who cannot vote in the general election, but do have a voice in the primary process.

Santorum raised eyebrows by traveling to the Caribbean island after his wins in Mississippi and Alabama on Tuesday.

Though Puerto Rico is largely Catholic, a religion Santorum shares, the candidate does not have anything like the campaign structure on the island that rival Mitt Romney has built. Romney also has fared very well in offshore contests in places like Guam and America Samoa.

The controversy ignited after Santorum gave an interview to San Juan newspaper El Vocero about the island’s statehood bid.

“As in any other state, you have to comply with this and any federal law — and that is that English has to be the main language,” the former Pennsylvania senator said.

“There are other states with more than one language, as is the case in Hawaii,” he continued, “but to be a state in the United States, English has to be the main language.”

His comments cost him the support of several previous backers — including that of a former Puerto Rican senator.

In November, voters on the Caribbean island will hold a referendum on whether Puerto Rico should become a state — though the final decision will be made by Congress.

Previous statehood votes have been defeated.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Espada Again

Written by Laura Nahmias on March 5, 2012. Posted in Trials/Hearings

Time posted: March 5, 2012 4:00 AM-

Looming trial doesn’t faze inimitable former Bronx senator

Ex-State Sen. Pedro Espada (photo by Barry Sloan)

On the 10th floor of the Brooklyn federal courthouse, former Bronx Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. waited, in a dark suit with broad white pinstripes and a purple tie, surrounded by his son and five-person legal team.

The February weather was unseasonably warm outside and Espada, facing an 18-count fraud indictment, was immoderately relaxed.

“I feel hopeful about life,” he said with an impish grin, “because I am blessed.”

Aware of his media audience, he launched into a short biographical sketch, detailing how he had grown up on public assistance in the Bronx, fought for everything in his life and would continue to fight.

The 59-year-old former senator hinted at the defense he and his counsel are preparing to present for a trial scheduled to start March 13, after months of delaying tactics that have exasperated prosecutors.

Espada accuses Gov. Andrew Cuomo of a government conspiracy to take him down, and blames his alleged fraud on the Soundview HealthCare Center he helped found, whose board of directors, his defense claims, should have known what he was doing all along.

As he told the Daily News in August, he believes Cuomo has a “personal obsession to take on and dominate my world and my manhood.”

All of this promises what is sure to be an interesting trial. Espada, formerly a master tactician of the Senate whom The New York Times once described as “skilled at exploiting disorder,” seems to thrive in the rules-based world of the courtroom, where common sense occasionally takes a backseat to due process.

Federal prosecutors claim Espada is guilty of embezzling and laundering money through Soundview and two related janitorial-services companies. He and his son, Pedro G. Espada, are accused of stealing millions of dollars from the clinic, which receives more than $1 million annually in Medicare and Medicaid grant funding for its patients. The clinic serves about 20,000 people a year, said the clinic’s director of public affairs, Rachel Fasciani.

Among the allegations Espada faces: pocketing rent from religious organizations trying to use Soundview conference rooms for services, using Soundview funds to pay for pony rides at a relative’s petting-zoo birthday gathering, hiring a ghostwriter with Soundview money for a book Espada thought of writing, making a down payment on a $125,000 Bentley, spending $1,300 on fruit baskets cut to look like floral arrangements and dropping upwards of $100,000 on restaurant meals over four years, including $20,000 at one sushi restaurant in Mamaroneck, the town outside his former Bronx district where he owns a home.

Espada, who served four terms in the State Senate and has been known to refer to himself in the third person as “Hurricane Espada,” treats the criminal charges as a trifle.

He could face a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment on each of the embezzlement counts and five years for conspiracy, as well as a fine of $250,000 on each count of conviction, a spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office said.

When the indictment was first announced in December 2010, then Attorney General Cuomo accused Espada and his son of “secretly siphoning money from a healthcare clinic in order to fund [his] lavish lifestyle.”

For months, Espada’s attorney Susan Necheles (pronounced like “necklace”) and co-counsel have fought back in a war of attrition, filing motions and countermotions to each government filing, withholding discovery documents and pushing for dismissal of the case.

In early February, for instance, prosecutors sought assurances from Judge Frederic Block that Espada couldn’t refer to his theories about personal vendettas or try to sway the jury by arguing that his conviction would hurt Soundview’s patients. Prosecutors also sought to block the defense from arguing that Espada isn’t guilty of fraud because the government should have known he was lying.

The Espada team’s tactics appear to have exasperated prosecutors, who have repeatedly requested that Necheles turn over items required in the discovery phase of the case.

More recently, Espada’s lawyers argued the government committed prosecutorial misconduct when it searched computer records at Soundview because prosecutors may have seen communications between Espada and his attorneys protected by attorney-client confidentiality.

“The government’s egregious actions have violated defendants’ due process rights and irreparably prejudiced them,” Necheles wrote.

She asked the judge to dismiss the entire case, “based on severe government misconduct.” The motion was denied.

As the March 13 trial date approaches, former Soundview employees expected to testify against Espada said that he and his attorney had tried to intimidate them out of testifying against him.

A former employee named Maria Cruz said Espada had withheld $10,000 in vacation and sick-leave pay until the day after the government was required to notify his counsel who was going to be testifying against him. During a recent hearing, as the counsel for both sides argued the fine points of jury selection, Block took a pause from the proceedings to remind the assembled of some basic principles of right and wrong apparently lost in the muddle.

“Fraud is fraud, whether the government is a victim or someone else is,” he said with a note of exasperation. “There is no defense for fraud.”

lnahmias@cityandstateny.com

video by Rafael Martínez Alequín

(an interview with the owner of the Sushi Restaurant in Westchester, where the Espadas spent $20,ooo on sushi meals)

Saturday, March 10, 2012

NYT: Fraud Found in Jobs Effort; Blow to Bloomberg

Fraud Found in Jobs Effort; Blow to Bloomberg

By MICHAEL POWELL

One of New York City’s largest nonprofit job placement agencies claimed to have helped find jobs for at least 1,400 people in less than two years when in fact it had not.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city will fight a $128 million award to minority FDNY applicants

Judge's decision stems from discrimination lawsuit

Comments (6)

(You'll appeal and LOSE Mr. Bloomberg , it comes a time when a smart person choose to "cut their losses" and move forward. The Mayor challenging this only solidifies that he is what many Black folks believe him to be racist. His actions certainly doesn't attempt to prove that belief wrong.)

By Tina Moore / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, March 9, 2012, 9:15 PM

Michael Scott Berman for the New York Daily News
Judge Nicholas Garaufis outside Brooklyn courthouse.

Mayor Bloomberg vowed Friday to appeal a federal judge’s decision to award up to $128 million to minority applicants discriminated against by past FDNY exams.

“The bottom line is we don’t agree with his decision at all, and it’s only the first step in the process,” Bloomberg said Friday on WOR radio’s John Gambling show. “You can rest assured we will appeal.”

Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who has blocked the FDNY from hiring because of his ruling on the exams, appointed special monitors to hold hearings to award to some 2,000 minority applicants who got above a threshold score on the 1999 and 2001 tests.

Despite Bloomberg’s assurance, Garaufis said Thursday that the hearings will move forward even if the city challenges his ruling. While the judge said the city had years to avoid the financial liability, Bloomberg predicted the payouts will be much lower than the ceiling set by the judge.

Bloomberg said he supports a “plain IQ test” for firefighters along with strength tests to prove they can handle the job.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Rangel, Engel, Lowey loom as possible reps for Co-op

Engel’s back in Co-op City?

By Michael Horowitz

BRONX, NEW YORK, March 8- Representative Eliot Engel may, once again be representing Co-op City in Congress.

That's what would happen if the federal judge's redistricting plan for the state ultimately becomes law.

Co-op City will reportedly have one of three members of Congress in the community's district once the political dust over redistricting settles.

One plan, which the federal Magistrate Roanne C. Moss and the Republican-controlled State Senate have put forward, would have Rep. Eliot Engel running for reelection to Congress in Co-op City, where he would face strong opposition from his long-time foes in the local community.

A second plan, proposed by the Democratic-controlled Assembly, would have long-time Rep. Anita Lowey representing Co-op City if she were reelected.

Finally, a third plan, supported by both the NAACP and the good-government Common Cause group, would have Rep. Charles Rangel's district extend into Co-op City, largely African-American areas of the northeast Bronx, and Mount Vernon in Westchester County.

The proposals by the State Senate and the State Assembly, in contrast to plans that the NAACP and Common Cause support, would have Rangel's district extending into relatively small areas in the south Bronx and Yankee Stadium areas.

Assemblyman Michael Benedetto said, this week, that he is hopeful that both houses of the State Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo will agree on Congressional district lines by March 12, a deadline that Federal Magistrate Roanne C. Mann, the court-appointed judicial master for New York's redistricting, has set for an agreement on a Congressional reapportionment plans for the state.

However, Gov. Como has said that he is inclined to reject partisan plans from legislators and let the courts draw redistricting lines for the state.

Magistrate Mann, for her part, has indicated that she supports the plan, advocated by the NAACP and Common Cause, that would have Rep. Rangel's district extend into Co-op City, largely African-American areas of the northeast Bronx, and Mount Vernon in Westchester County.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Will the FDNY Remain Over 90 Percent White and Male?

A Society of Black Firefighters Hopes to Bring More Minorities to the Job

By Steven Thrasher Wednesday, Mar 7 2012

Deep in a Harlem housing complex's basement last Wednesday, hundreds of physically fit, hopeful young men (and a handful of women) sat in chairs on the floor of a basketball court with anticipation. Even after all the seats were filled, a table of black members of the New York City Fire Department continued to check people in until it was standing room only.

Sam Zide

The gathered were overwhelming black, but there were about 50 white candidates, with a smattering of Hispanic and Asian faces. They had come to a tutoring session for the FDNY's latest written exam, which will be given for the first time by computer over several weeks starting March 15.

The results of the last firefighter written exam, given in 2007, were tossed out after Mayor Bloomberg refused to follow a federal judge's guidelines in applying affirmative action. The federal government has sued the city for four decades for not complying with the Civil Rights Act's Title VII provision "to assure equality of employment opportunities and to eliminate those discriminatory practices and devices which have fostered racially stratified job environments to the disadvantage of minority citizens."

More than 90 percent of New York firefighters are white males. In the past decade, it was George W. Bush's Department of Justice that initiated the latest phase of the federal lawsuit demanding that the city address this.

Unlike the last test, which was created by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (and, critics charged, written to benefit people from firefighting families), this new exam was made by an independent test maker in consultation with the city, the feds, and the Vulcan Society—the organization of black firefighters that is running sessions to help black candidates prepare.

"Some of you didn't register" for the class, FDNY captain Paul Washington, the public face of the Vulcans, said as he started Wednesday night's session.

Captain Washington made it clear that, though everyone who was there would be accommodated, he wasn't happy about it. They had enough handouts, he said, but "we might not always have enough resources, and we're going to make sure we use the resources we have to make sure the people we think should be on the job" get hired.

One white guy flinched. Another snickered. Everyone else stared blankly.

The Vulcans' goal to get more black firefighters on the FDNY—a job Washington calls "a path to the middle class," which will make you "set for life"—is a daunting one.

The Vulcans claim that nearly 60,000 people signed up to take the exam, almost three times as many as the record-setting 22,000 who signed up last time. About 20 percent of those who signed up were black.

The Vulcans say that 40,000 to 45,000 will actually show up to take the test. That means they have to make sure every black person they recruited actually takes the exam.

Of the approximately 9,000 current FDNY firefighters, only about 300 are black. The city might only hire about 300 firefighters in total for the next academy class, and there were probably more than 300 hopeful black New Yorkers on Wednesday night alone, with hundreds showing up at each of the almost 20 Vulcan sessions across the city.

The likelihood of any individual getting hired—like a 20-year-old black Air Force reservist who spoke to the Voice—is slim indeed.

To give them the best shot, for hours, Captain Washington walked through the types of questions that will be on the exam, including a Myers-Briggs-style personality-test portion, a video memory-retention portion (with one sample video on zombies and the other on astronomy), and a traditional math- and reading-comprehension segment.

In some ways, the job of firefighter is more sought after now than when the federal government first sued in the early '70s. Firefighters can't be outsourced, and the benefits and pay are far more generous than at working-class jobs in the private sector, which have steadily disappeared during the past four decades.

The odds of getting hired from this test are less than one in a hundred, even for the most dedicated candidate. Still, some are leaving nothing to chance.

"The city is also offering a class," one white attendee who is already employed as an FDNY EMT told the Voice. "But I figured I'd take this one, too. Captain Washington is very well-known, and he said this would be the best class, so I signed up."

sthrasher@villagevoice.com

The NYPD Tapes Confirmed

The report police hid for nearly two years that corroborates a Voice investigation — and vindicates a whistle-blower the NYPD tried to destroy

By Graham Rayman Wednesday, Mar 7 2012

Photography: Henry Hargreaves, Prop Styling: Sarah Guido

In 2010, The Village Voice produced a five-part series, the "NYPD Tapes," about a cop who secretly taped his fellow New York Police Department officers.

Photography: Henry Hargreaves, Prop Styling: Sarah Guido

Details

NYPD Tapes: The Series
The NYPD Tapes Part 1
Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct
The NYPD Tapes, Part 2
Bed-Stuy street cops ordered: Turn this place into a ghost town
The NYPD Tapes, Part 3
A Detective Comes Forward About Downgraded Sexual Assaults

The NYPD Tapes, Part 4
The WhistleBlower, Adrian Schoolcraft

Follow continuing coverage of the NYPD Tapes here at our Runnin' Scared blog.

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For more than two years, Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded every roll call at the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn and captured his superiors urging police officers to do two things in order to manipulate the "stats" that the department is under pressure to produce: Officers were told to arrest people who were doing little more than standing on the street, but they were also encouraged to disregard actual victims of serious crimes who wanted to file reports.

Arresting bystanders made it look like the department was efficient, while artificially reducing the amount of serious crime made the commander look good.

In October 2009, Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for three hours and detailed more than a dozen cases of crime reports being manipulated in the district. Three weeks after that meeting—which was supposed to have been kept secret from Schoolcraft's superiors—his precinct commander and a deputy chief ordered Schoolcraft to be dragged from his apartment and forced into the Jamaica Hospital psychiatric ward for six days.

In the wake of our series, NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered an investigation into Schoolcraft's claims. By June 2010, that investigation produced a report that the department has tried to keep secret for nearly two years.

The Voice has obtained that 95-page report, and it shows that the NYPD confirmed Schoolcraft's allegations. In other words, at the same time that police officials were attacking Schoolcraft's credibility, refusing to pay him, and serving him with administrative charges, the NYPD was sitting on a document that thoroughly vindicated his claims.

Investigators went beyond Schoolcraft's specific claims and found many other instances in the 81st Precinct where crime reports were missing, had been misclassified, altered, rejected, or not even entered into the computer system that tracks crime reports.

These weren't minor incidents. The victims included a Chinese-food delivery man robbed and beaten bloody, a man robbed at gunpoint, a cab driver robbed at gunpoint, a woman assaulted and beaten black and blue, a woman beaten by her spouse, and a woman burgled by men who forced their way into her apartment.

"When viewed in their totality, a disturbing pattern is prevalent and gives credence to the allegation that crimes are being improperly reported in order to avoid index-crime classifications," investigators concluded. "This trend is indicative of a concerted effort to deliberately underreport crime in the 81st Precinct."

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The investigation found that crime complaints were changed to reflect misdemeanor rather than felony crimes, which prevented those incidents from being counted in the all-important crime statistics. In addition, the investigation concluded that "an unwillingness to prepare reports for index crimes exists or existed in the command."

Moreover, a significant number of serious index crimes were not entered into the computer tracking system known as OmniForm. "This was more than administrative error," the probe concluded.

There was an "atmosphere in the command where index crimes were scrutinized to the point where it became easier to either not take the report at all or to take a report for a lesser, non-index crime," investigators concluded.

Precinct Commander Steven Mauriello "failed to meet [his] responsibility." As a result, "an atmosphere was created discouraging members of the command to accurately report index crimes."

Mauriello's lawyer and union representative say he did nothing wrong.

Some 45 members of the command were interviewed, and hundreds of documents were examined.

The implications of the report are obvious: If the 81st Precinct was a typical station house, then crime manipulation is more widespread than city officials have admitted.

John Eterno, a criminologist at Molloy College and a former NYPD captain, says that what was happening in the 81st Precinct is no isolated case. "The pressures on commanders are enormous, to make sure the crime numbers look good," Eterno says. "This is a culture. This is happening in every precinct, every transit district, and every police housing service area. This culture has got to change."

As for Mauriello, he's no rogue commander, says Eterno, who has published a book about crime reporting with John Jay College professor Eli Silverman. "Mauriello is no different from any other commander," he says. "This is just a microcosm of what is happening in the entire police department."

Indeed, it is clear from Schoolcraft's recordings that Mauriello was responding to pressure emanating from the Brooklyn North borough command and police headquarters for lower crime numbers and higher summons and stop-and-frisk numbers.

The seven index crimes—murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny, and auto theft—are the central public indicators of the city's crime rate and, by extension, its reputation. The crime numbers are also the bedrock in evaluating the Bloomberg administration and critical to attracting tourism and economic development to the city.

As a result, Mayor Bloomberg and Kelly have gone to great lengths to insist the crime statistics are accurate. They have publicly downplayed the Schoolcraft allegations and insisted that any "underreporting" is a tiny anomaly.

Andrew Breitbart ‘bombshell’ video from Barack Obama’s college days released, falls flat say critics

The video did not seem as earthshattering as Breitbart initially claimed it to be, just weeks before the 43-year-old unexpectedly passed away at his home last Thursday

Comments (47)

By Aliyah Shahid / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, March 8, 2012, 9:34 AM

FoxNews.com

President Obama is seen here in a video hugging Harvard professor Derrick Bell.

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

Before Andrew Breitbart passed away last week, he bragged that he had bombshell video from Obama’s college days.

So much for Andrew Breitbart's last scoop, say critics.

The video the late, conservative provocateur boasted could take down President Obama has been released — and many are saying it isn't all it was cracked up to be.

The full tape aired Wednesday night by Fox News' Sean Hannity, who was accompanied by Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Joel Pollak and contributor Ben Shapiro.

The 1991 video shows a younger Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, speaking at a peaceful, racial equality rally led by professor Derrick Bell.

The event was in support of Bell, who was angry over Harvard's failure to offer tenure to black professors.

Obama is seen embracing Bell, described by Pollak as the "Jeremiah Wright of academia."

Wright, the president's controversial ex-pastor, threw Obama's campaign into turmoil in 2008 when a video surfaced of Wright ripping American policies.

In the 1991 rally video, Obama is heard saying,

"Open your hearts and open your minds to the words of professor Derrick Bell."

Fox News also played footage, taped last year, in which Harvard professor and Obama ally Charles Ogletree, admits he hid the video during the 2008 election, but declares, "I don't care if they find it now."

The video did not seem as earthshattering as Breitbart initially claimed it to be, just weeks before the 43-year-old unexpectedly passed away at his home last Thursday.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, the rabble-rouser declared, "We are going to vet [Obama\] from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008."

But PBS, which aired the footage as part of a 2008 election special, noted "there's nothing new about the clip or Obama's role in the controversy at Harvard Law School."

Fox News contributor Juan Williams said on the show that he was disappointed by Breitbart's promised bombshell.

"I must say, I thought this was going to be so much more," said Williams. "I thought this was going to be a smoking gun... But it really didn't come to much."

Ben Smith of BuzzFeed — who initially posted segments of the video earlier in the day — argued on MSNBC that the video showed Obama took a side, but did "it in a way that feels very conciliatory."

But Pollak and Shapiro — who ripped Smith for posting an edited version of the video — said the fact Ogletree tried to hide the video was telling.

"This [rally\] was not about diversity, which is a noble and good cause. This is about radical ideology, racial ideology,” Pollak argued. "When Barack Obama says open your hearts and open your minds to the words of professor Derrick Bell... he's talking about some very radical things."

Pollak pointed to a controversial speech Bell made, in which he said America was still a racist country and the civil rights moment was a sham because “white supremacy remains the system.” He also cited a fictional piece Bell wrote called, “Space Traders,” where “white Americans would sell black Americans to space aliens to pay off the national debt.”

Bell, the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School, passed away from cancer at the age of 81 last year. He is credited for laying the groundwork for the controversial “critical race theory,” which argues race and power should be considered in legal scholarship.

In David Remnick’s Obama biography “The Bridge,” the author says Bell, over the course of 20 years, repeatedly threatened to quit in order to get Harvard to hire more minorities.

Luis Reyes Rivera: "bullet Cry": Poem about Malcolm X assasination

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

NYT: City Room

Bloomberg Defends Grading System Derided by Restaurateurs

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM and KATE TAYLOR

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, at Zero Otto Nove in the Bronx, said a grading system had led to cleaner restaurants.

Some restaurateurs say that the letter grades, which must be displayed in a prominent position, are handed out in unfair and inconsistent ways.

Interactive Map: Restaurant Ratings

March 7, 2012 9:46 AM ET

Morning Buzz, March 7: A Lottery Lawsuit

By HANNAH MIET

What we're reading in The Times and elsewhere, including articles about NBC's decision not to renew the contract of the anchorwoman Sue Simmons and the redrawing of Congressional districts.

March 6, 2012 6:09 PM ET

As Trial Nears for Espada, Another Now Looms

By MOSI SECRET

Certain criminal counts against Pedro Espada Jr. and his son were severed from the continuing federal prosecution in Brooklyn, and could be tried separately in Manhattan.

March 6, 2012 3:33 PM ET

Ahead of Restaurants' Complaints, Some Words From the Mayor

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proclaimed the city's letter-grading system for restaurants a success a day before the City Council will hear from restaurant operators.

March 6, 2012 1:08 PM ET

Judge Issues Congressional Redistricting Proposal

By THOMAS KAPLAN

With state lawmakers unable to agree on how to draw new districts, a federal magistrate judge has offered her own map to a judicial panel.

Go to City Room »

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Solar Energy

By Anastassia Cardona

We like the idea of energy independent from fossil fuels, but solar panels have built themselves a luxurious reputation. Most of us don’t consider it a possibility, even if we have $30,000 to put them on our roof. Our kids need to go to college, and our mortgage must be paid. However, people do drop the 30-G. It is because having solar panels on their roofs means that they produce their energy, not the power plants. And in the long run, you pay less for your energy than if you paid the power plant that whole time. For a homeowner, installing solar panels yields the same liberating feeling that a young adult might feel after paying their final car payment. It sucks to payout indefinitely to the power company. Being able to get power from a source other than a centralized utility is something that any of us would do if we had the money.

Lately, the energy business is taking a small but perhaps significant economic turn away a monopolistic model. New businesses are entering the market and selling power separate from the energy generated at a far-away power plant. They sell energy in the form of a Power Purchase Agreement. This offers a way for consumers to go solar without paying $30,000 or even more than a few hundred bucks. From the homeowner’s perspective, it works similarly to the traditional utility we all buy from now. We buy the electricity that they deliver from the power plant. The difference is that the power plant is on our homes.
A Power Purchase Agreement means that a homeowner agrees to pay for the electricity from a set of solar panels on their roof for a certain period of time, usually around 20 years. In exchange, the Solar Utility maintains the system during that time. The homeowner gets better rates than their utility. The solar utility gets rebates that the homeowner otherwise redeems. If the homeowner moves, the agreement and the better rates carry on with the new homeowner.

Many agree that this seems like the next logical step in how we buy and sell energy. The main limitation of solar is that it is expensive. All power plants are. We don’t expect that a whole community of people pool together $50,000 each individually to own a co-op power plant. We have a utility company that raises money from investors to buy a power plant instead. The utility company sells the energy to customers and pays the big investors back over time. So wouldn’t we expect the solar revolution to take off with a similar structure?

Just like a traditional utility, the solar utility buys a power plant. In this case, a few thousand solar panels. This makes each panel cost much less than a homeowner buying 2 to 5 panels at a time. Then the power plant is split up into hundreds of pieces, and put on people’s roofs by local roofing companies as hired by the solar utility. The overhead cost to maintain the systems is so much lower than the overhead it takes to run a traditional utility, that the profit margin is higher, allowing the customer to have protected energy rates: all while the rates of consuming fossil-fuel energy continues to climb.

The idea of a solar utility isn’t completely new. When you hear of commercial companies like Microsoft, Google, or WalMart “going solar,” they don’t actually buy systems, they buy Power Purchase Agreements from a solar utility, even though they have enough money to buy their own systems. This is because the rates are still predictable and reliable and they don’t have to invest the money upfront. Just like buying panels, a PPA will save them thousands of dollars in avoiding energy prices going up.

As technology gets better and cheaper, more of us can buy solar electricity without investing in equipment that makes it expensive. The consumer wins with fixed rates of electricity that competes with their utility’s rate. The solar utility wins because they get government rebates and produce electricity with way less overhead. The utility wins because there is less stress on the aging power grid. And we all have a little more independence from our dependence on fossil fuels.

Anastassia Cardona has run state-wide and national campaigns lobbying for clean energy, including the Million Solar Roofs Initiative which put California at number one in the country for solar homes. She now works for a clean energy utility company in California, specializing in de-centralized sources of electricity.

The New York Times

Kate Taylor notes: “It has become an annual New York drama: cutbacks in the mayor’s proposed budget loom, with threats of firehouses being shut down, arts programs slashed and senior centers closed, only to be followed by restorations in the City Council. Yet the drama does not have a happy ending for everyone, and some of the cutbacks are eventually enacted. This year, many families are concerned that cuts to child care and after-school programs could result in 47,000 children losing access to those services, advocates for the programs said on Sunday.”

New York Daily News

Jennifer Cunningham reports: “Timothy Cardinal Dolan chided Rush Limbaugh on Sunday, saying the campaign against the White House birth control policy shouldn’t be ‘pugnacious.’ ‘Whatever we do, and however strongly we feel, we do it charitably, we do it civilly,’ Dolan said after Sunday morning Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

In his column, Ken Lovett notes: “Gov. Cuomo’s budget team pushed the state teachers retirement system into scrapping a critical review of his pension reform plan, the Daily News has learned. A formal fiscal analysis sent to Cuomo’s budget office on Jan. 31 by the organization that administers the pension system for teachers and school administrators included a section slugged ‘legal concerns.’ “

Lovett also writes: “A previous state Senate GOP redistricting plan to merge six city Democrats into three districts will be dramatically scaled back. Under a revised redistricting plan due soon, Queens Sens. Michael Gianaris and Jose Peralta are no longer expected to be put into a single district, insiders say. The plan should also ‘decouple’ Brooklyn Sens. Eric Adams and Velmanette Montgomery.But Queens Democratic Sens. Toby Ann Stavisky and Tony Avella would still merge into one district in order to create an Asian-majority district in Flushing, insiders said.”

The New York Times

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Lindsay Lohan poked fun at her own legal troubles in this Saturday Night Live skit, 'Scared Straight.'

Lindsay Lohan appears on Saturday Night Live, March 3, 2012.

Lindsay Lohan lampooned her legal troubles, showed off her curves and got some laughs in her comeback bid on “Saturday Night Live.”

The troubled starlet poked fun at her public troubles in her opening monologue, getting frisked by one cast member, having her pupils checked for signs of drug use by another, and setting off an alarm when she tried to step off stage.

SEE IT: THE MANY FACES OF LOHAN'S HARD-PARTYING, DRAMA-FILLED LIFE

“I thought you guys trusted me,” Lohan said in mock-horror while wearing a tight blue dress. “I get the feeling everyone thinks I’m going to screw up.”

The platinum blond’s performance seemed uneven at times, but she got the most chuckles during a “Real Housewives of Disney” skit in which she played a sassy, violent Rapunzel.

She also played herself in a “Scared Straight” skit, donning a jail jumpsuit and warning kids to stay out of trouble. “First you’re hanging out with mean girls and then you’re stealing a necklace,” she warned.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Monday, March 19, 2012

Rodriguez says rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing has triggered a 'silent crisis' in his district, resulting in a population drop of more than 18,000

By Ydanis Rodriguez / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, March 19, 2012, 4:00 AM

Michael Schwartz for New York Daily News

Octavio Estevez inside his new apartment on Edgecombe Ave. in Washington Heights, with City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who helped him find housing, which was necessary for Estevez to be put onto a kidney transplant list.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Espada turned family tree into money tree at tax-funded clinic: ex-staffer

remarks enraged many voters in the predominantly Spanish-speaking commonwealth — and may hurt Santorum in Sunday’s GOP primary

Christopher Gregory/Getty Images

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Thursday, March 8, 2012

A Society of Black Firefighters Hopes to Bring More Minorities to the Job

The report police hid for nearly two years that corroborates a Voice investigation — and vindicates a whistle-blower the NYPD tried to destroy

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The video did not seem as earthshattering as Breitbart initially claimed it to be, just weeks before the 43-year-old unexpectedly passed away at his home last Thursday

By Aliyah Shahid / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, March 8, 2012, 9:34 AM

FoxNews.com

President Obama is seen here in a video hugging Harvard professor Derrick Bell.

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

Before Andrew Breitbart passed away last week, he bragged that he had bombshell video from Obama’s college days.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM and KATE TAYLOR

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

By HANNAH MIET

By MOSI SECRET

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

By THOMAS KAPLAN

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Sunday, March 4, 2012