Thursday, July 31, 2014

1WTC contractor used fronts to win restricted deals: feds



A Canadian contractor was charged Thursday with falsely obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in World Trade Center construction contracts earmarked for minority- or women-owned businesses.


Larry Davis, owner of DCM Erectors Inc., was expected to appear Manhattan federal court Thursday after being charged by the feds with setting up a front company to defraud the government into giving him steel contacts and then subcontracted the work out to non-minority subcontractors. The scheme allegedly involved DCM’s work at One World Trade Center and the WTC transit hub — contacts that called for the company to be paid $ 256 million and $ 330 million, respectively, according to a criminal complaint. Both contracts have reportedly grown to $ 810 million.


DCM is also performing work at Larry Silverstein’s private 4 World Trade Center project under a reported $ 136 million contract.


The feds’ investigation followed findings last year by the Port Authority’s Inspector General’s office of fraud by Davis and DCM, a New York City company that is a subsidiary of a Toronto-based construction giant.





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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

NYPD Detective Injured in Village Shootout Heads Home



The last officer injured in Monday’s deadly Greenwich Village shoot-out was released from Bellevue Hospital this afternoon.


Detective Mario Muniz was shot in the lower stomach below his bulletproof vest while trying to arrest an alleged child molester.


He was injured in the shoot-out along with two federal marshals.


Ryan Westfield was shot in the leg and Pat Lin was hit in the elbow.


Both marshals have already been released from the hospital.


The three men were all shot while trying to take Charles Mozdir into custody.


Mozdir was killed in the gun battle.


He was wanted in California on a molestation charge.





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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Rikers Probe Exposes Drug Smuggling Network Involving Officers, Inmate



A probe into criminal activity at Riker’s Island has revealed a drug smuggling network involving seven correction officers.


Three of the officers are now facing charges, while four others are being disciplined.


Steven Dominguez and Divine Rahming are accused of trafficking and smuggling narcotics into Rikers, including cocaine and oxydone.


Former Correction Officer Deleon Gifth was charged with committing similar crimes in a different operation.


An inmate and his girlfriend are also named in the indictment.


The Department of Investigation says the charges are just the start of the in-depth investigation.


“But the broader issue is we need to determine the full scope and contours of the various types of illegal activity at Rikers and we then need to make a series of concrete solutions, including things like better screening of everybody who goes into the facility so that we can begin to break the cycle of whatever problems we’re seeing,” said DOI Commissioner Mark Peters.


The Department of Correction, released a statement saying, “We have absolutely no tolerance for corruption, including smuggling contraband that jeopardizes jail security and the safety of staff and inmates alike.”





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Monday, July 28, 2014

EMTs who saved boy’s life celebrate his 7th birthday


Four EMT heroes who miraculously revived a boy they found limp and unresponsive in May joined the lucky kid to celebrate his 7th birthday on Sunday.



Brian DavisPhoto: Brigitte Stelzer



The rescue workers attended the party for little Brian Davis — who they had found not breathing and in severe distress at his Manhattan home after a life-threatening allergic reaction on May 1.


“These are my angels,” Brian’s mom, Ragni Davis, said about the responders. “I love them! Without them I don’t know what would have happened.”


Brian, who suffers from asthma and severe allergies, was in respiratory arrest when Peter Santiago and Joseph Wylie arrived at his fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Gramercy Park.


“This is my friend,” birthday boy Brian said about Santiago. “He saved my life.”


“He started to crash really fast,” Santiago recalled. “We tried giving him his asthma treatment, but then I didn’t want any more delay.”


So Santiago hoisted the little boy and carried him down five flights of stairs to an ambulance that pulled up outside.


EMS paramedic Paul Ardizzone was inside the ambulance and was able to get Davis breathing again before they arrived at Beth Israel Hospital.





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Sunday, July 27, 2014

Grandfather suffers fatal heart attack while driving, injuring tot



A grandfather suffered a fatal heart attack while driving his family, including a 1-year-old boy, in Queens on Sunday, crashing and rolling their SUV, authorities and witnesses said.


The 45-year-old driver was operating his Kia Sedona down 35th Avenue in Astoria when he suddenly suffered the attack around 4:45 p.m., cops said.


The car went up onto the sidewalk, hit a fire hydrant and flipped onto its side in front of the Ravenswood Houses.


Shocked bystanders raced over and began breaking the car’s windows to free the man’s 44-year old wife, 28-year-old daughter and two grandchildren, ages 10 and 1, cops and witnesses said.


“I heard this loud explosion, looked out the window, and people were jumping on top of the roof pulling them out,” said Amanda Spigner, 25. “It seemed like everybody was helping out.”


Spigner said the baby boy frantically crawled through broken glass to get out of the car before being scooped up by a man.


“The little boy, the baby, with braids, he crawled out himself,” she said. “[The man who found him] was trying rock him, calm him down. But the baby kept screaming.”


Another witness, Deja Daniels, 16, said good Samaritans tried to revive the driver before EMTs arrived and took him to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.


“Everybody was trying to help [the driver],” Daniels said. “They were giving him CPR. They said he wasn’t responding.”


The other occupants of the car were taken to Elmhurst General Hospital, where they were listed in serious but stable condition.





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Saturday, July 26, 2014

NYPD detained men who had pressure cookers to ‘prepare rice’



Police detained two men at a Midtown hotel late Friday after a doorman reported they possessed a pair of pressure cookers like those used to make the Boston Marathon bombs.


But the men say it was a misunderstanding: They plan to use the pressure cookers to prepare rice, chicken and meat.


Mohammad Alotaibi, 21, and Ayoub Alawadhi, 20, pulled up to the InterContinental Hotel on East 48th Street late Friday with the pressure cookers in their car’s trunk, said law enforcement sources.


A doorman called Crimestoppers, and NYPD counterterrorism and intelligence officers arrived to question the men.


Police did not charge the pair, who are both Idaho residents.


“The police questioned us for three hours. It was a little scary,” said Alawadhi. “I am leaving New York because of this. We were supposed to stay until Tuesday, but we are leaving Sunday.”


Alawadhi said they bought the pressure cookers at an Arab supermarket in Dearborn, Michigan.


It took a while for them to figure out why the cops were questioning them, he said.


“They said they found the pressure cookers. I said, ‘Yes, what’s wrong with that?’” Alawadhi recounted.


“They said, ‘You haven’t heard about Boston?’ And I said ‘No.’ And they told me about Boston.”


Alawadhi said he and Alotaibi are students, and that they just completed summer classes at a Michigan university.





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Cuomo is Eliot ‘Steamroller’ Spitzer all over again



Andrew Cuomo is a f—ing steamroller. You gotta problem with that?


US Attorney Preet Bharara apparently does, judging from his reaction to last week’s remarkable, 6,400-word essay in The New York Times detailing gubernatorial interference with an investigating commission Cuomo very publicly imposed on Albany 13 months ago — only to disband it when it started putting heat on him.


Even Cuomo doesn’t dispute that he stuck his thumb in the soup. But he says it was his very own commission — and that he was free to compromise it, or to kill it, whenever.


So he did. So there.


But Bharara, every corrupt New York pol’s monster under the bed, takes exception: “If other people aren’t going to [fight official misconduct], then we’re going to do it. That’s our main mission.”


Cuomo’s legal pettifoggers are, well, pettifogging. But the governor clearly has poked a big stick into a bear cave, and he’s not likely to walk away from the episode with his reputation intact.


Just like the last self-designated avenging angel of Albany — the very much former governor Eliot Laurence Spitzer.


That is, just like the man who — three weeks into his abbreviated gubernatorial term — famously pronounced himself to be a “f—ing steamroller” poised to “roll over [Albany] and anybody else!” (History records that Albany was not amused.)


There are many differences between Spitzer and Cuomo, but the two men have this in common: They are bombastic, profane-in-private control freaks who rarely opt for persuasion when blunt-force trauma is available.


Spitzer’s arrogance is rooted in great wealth, steeped in the unshakeable conviction that he is — in every situation and all possible circumstances — the smartest man in the room. If not the world.


Cuomo is less scrutable. He’s never met the man he can’t stare down, or so he clearly believes. But sometimes the arrogance seems tentative — the product, perhaps, of the same outer-borough insecurities that often hobbled his father, Mario Cuomo.


No matter. The hubris is real, and therein reside the origins of his current problems.


Spitzer, for the record, accomplished precisely nothing during his brief term.


Always a slave to his instincts and appetites, his epic tirades generated first resistance, then paralysis. His effectiveness, such as it was, ended in July 2007, when The Post’s Fredric U. Dicker revealed that he had sent state troopers after political enemies. And when he left office nine months later, the central figure in a bizarre sex scandal, Albany was in near total meltdown.


Then came the surreal David Paterson interregnum — punctuated by the increasingly frequent corruption convictions won by Bharara. Meltdown descended into farce.


And so the scene was set for Andrew Mark Cuomo, who came to office pledged to reform Albany once and for all.


The low-hanging fruit was quickly plucked: Budgeting reform and peripheral tax relief were achieved, and a sense progress was real.


But friction always takes a toll. Cuomo proved to have no appetite for the heavy lifting real change would require — for truly taking on the Legislature, the public-employee unions and other left-leaning special interests — and presently stagnation set in.


And frustration, manifested in unguarded public moments with hectoring speeches characterizing dissenters from the company line — traditional Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Second Amendment supporters and so on — as “extremists” unworthy of intellectual engagement.


Ugly stuff, but par for the Cuomo course.


Meanwhile, Bharara’s federal gumshoes were hard at work. Their increasingly frequent indictments and convictions, from the governor’s perspective, simply underscored how little he himself had accomplished in that respect.


Fast forward to a year ago, after Cuomo’s third legislative session failed yet again to produce significant anti-corruption legislation.


Once more the governor reached for the bludgeon: He appointed a special anti-corruption commission under the state’s 107-year-old Moreland Act — properly employed, that’s Albany’s version of the nuclear option — and handed it a very clear mandate.


“Anything (the commission) wants to look at, they can look at — me, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller, any senator, any assemblyman,” declared Cuomo. [Members] have total control and ability to look at whatever they want to look at.”


Which Albany pol dared argue with that? Complain, yes. Obstruct, no. It was classic, naked Cuomo my-way-or-the-highway coercion.


Imagine Cuomo’s surprise, then, when he discovered that his handcrafted commission had taken him at his word. That it was indeed, according to the Times, looking squarely at his own campaign practices.


That would never do. Key Cuomo aide Larry Schwartz, a bludgeon of his own in hand, descended swiftly on the mutineers.


What happened next isn’t entirely clear — but this much is beyond dispute:


n  The Albany establishment was not at all intimidated by Cuomo and his commission, which he folded in less than a year. The entire exercise yielded nothing.


n  Preet Bharara, who swiftly confiscated the commission’s records, is now combing through them — methodically and ominously.


Spitzer proved that sometimes steamrollers pop gaskets. Too bad for Cuomo that he wasn’t paying attention.





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Kayakers breach secure area at JFK airport



Two kayakers stranded in Jamaica Bay made their way to a secure area of Kennedy Airport outside the view of security patrols early today, police sources said.


The men ended up at the end of a pier that juts out into the bay from the end of Runway 4L. The pier supports navigation equipment meant to help planes takeoff and land.


They men, both 21, were spotted by maintenance workers at about 1:30 a.m., said the sources.


The security breach occurred in a part of the airport inaccessible to Port Authority police cars. No police boat patrols were operating in the area at the time, the sources said.





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Police Arrest Man Who Allegedly Set Cat on Fire



Police have arrested a Bronx man who they say killed a cat by setting it on fire.


Investigators say surveillance video shows 31-year-old Ernesto Bailey pouring fluid on a cat laying on this sidewalk outside an apartment building on East 182nd Street.


They say Bailey then used a lighter to set the cat on fire before running off.


A picture of the cat was released, but is too graphic to show.


Police say Bailey lives in the apartment building.


He’s charged with aggravated cruelty to animals, torture of an animal, reckless endangerment and arson.





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Motorcyclist Dies After Being Hit by Ambulance



A man died after his motorcycle is struck by an ambulance Friday morning.


Police say the 44-year-old man was riding his motorcycle on Lexington Avenue near 96th Street when he was hit.


The New York Presbyterian ambulance from was traveling along 96th Street with its lights and sirens on.


The man was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.





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Friday, July 25, 2014

Family of Eric Garner Meets with Federal Investigators



Relatives of the Staten Island man who died while being arrested last week, are asking for federal civil rights charges against the officers involved.


Eric Garner’s family and the Reverend Al Sharpton went to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn to make their case.


They met with members of the Civil Rights Division for about half an hour.


Sharpton says there is precedent for federal investigators to get involved with cases of NYPD misconduct.


He says based on what Garner said in video of the incident, it’s clear the feds should step in.


“There can be no doubt that at some point in 11 cries of ‘I can’t breathe’ that intent is established. There can be no doubt based on the video tapes that clearly the EMS workers and the other police did nothing to stop the illegal use of a chokehold and there can be no doubt that a chokehold was used with intent,” said Rev. Al Sharpton.


Officer Daniel Pantaleo and another officer have been put on desk duty.


A cell phone video of Garner’s arrest shows Pantaleo putting him in what appears to be a chokehold.


The Staten Island District Attorney already has a criminal investigation open.





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Ambulance going to emergency strikes and kills motorcyclist



An ambulance racing to an emergency struck and killed a motorcyclist Friday morning in East Harlem, authorities and witnesses said.


The New York Presbyterian ambulance was heading eastbound on East 96th Street with lights and sirens on when it collided with a silver Yamaha motorcycle going south on Lexington Avenue at 9:40 a.m., cops said.


Stunned onlookers said the biker, 44, was thrown from his ride and wedged under the ambulance’s tire.


“It was horrible. The biker’s head was underneath the wheel,” said George Zhang, a 17-year-old student. “He hurt mostly his face and his head.”


A second ambulance soon arrived on the scene and rushed the motorcyclist to Metropolitan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, officials said.


Police are withholding the name of the deceased pending family notification.


It was not immediately clear who had the light, and officials said the investigation is ongoing.





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NYPD terror chief scales Brooklyn Bridge to inspect white flag site



NYPD terror chief John Miller wanted a first-hand look at the scene of the white flag caper high atop the Brooklyn Bridge — so he made the death-defying climb with roughly dozen other cops on Friday morning.



Photo: Paul Martinka



Miller urged investigators to see the crime scene themselves, in order “to further document” it, he told The Post.


The top cop came along because, “I wouldn’t ask my people to go anywhere I wouldn’t go myself,” he said.


He added, “We’re just going to take a look at the scene, we need to further document the actual crime scene… This is a chance to get the squad that’s actually doing the investigation a first hand look.”


Clad in blue helmets, officers, including ESU workers, attached themselves to vertical cables using hooks and carefully scaled the bridge’s larger horizontal main cable.


On Tuesday, a group of intruders slipped past NYPD anti-terror patrols and replaced the bridge’s American flags with white banners at a stunning height of roughly 270 feet.





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De Blasio gets big welcome in grandmother’s hometown



Italian boys love their nonnas and Mayor de Blasio is no exception, paying an emotional visit to his grandmother’s hometown of Grassano on Thursday.


Hundreds cheered the mayor as he told the crowd, in Italian and English, of the strength he receives from his ancestors.


Anna Briganti, the mayor’s maternal grandmother, left Grassano in 1902 for New York.


Grassano’s city council declared her grandson an honorary citizen.


“When I fight every day for a more just city, it’s because of lessons taught to me by my mother and taught to her by her mother,” de Blasio told the crowd.


“We will carry Grassano in our hearts wherever we go and whatever we do,” he added to thunderous applause.


Some local women wore traditional regional garb from the 1800s. A marching band played the US and Italian anthems. The mayor and his family return home from their eight-day Italian trip on Sunday after visiting Venice.





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Thursday, July 24, 2014

Officials Investigate Toddler’s Possible Drowning Death



Officials are investigating the death of a Staten Island toddler.


Fire officials believe the child may have drowned at an address that appears to belong to Mother Byrd Licensed Day Care Preschool in Mariner’s Harbor.


Investigators say the child was taken from the location to Richmond University Medical Center where the child was pronounced dead.


The child’s age and gender have not yet been released.





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Fortune teller predicted lotto winner’s jackpot—16 years before


Winning the lottery jackpot began at an amusement park for one retired NYPD cop – 16 years ago.


Edna Aguayo, who won $ 1,000 a day for the rest of her life through New York Lottery’s Cash4Life game, said a psychic told her long ago she’d hit it big one day.


“I knew I’d win one day, I just didn’t know when,” said the 20-year police officer who retired three years ago. “I was in an amusement park and went to see a reader. She told me to buy ‘for life’ lottery tickets because she could see that one day I was going to hit a ‘for life’ prize.”


Aguayo, of Queens, purchased the winning ticket at Waldbaum’s supermarket on Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach and matched all six numbers — 9-19-34-37-49 and Cash Ball 2 – in the July 14 drawing.


“I thought I would win the second prize,” she said. “I didn’t think I was ever going to win the top prize.”


Aguayo, who purchases Cash4Life tickets every Monday and Thursday, will rake in $ 227,410 a year after taxes.


“I really need a vacation! There’s a lot of islands I want to go to,” beamed the woman, who didn’t want to give her age.



“Lucky millionaires club” winners Edna Aguayo, Yolanda Vega, Catherine Morales, and Elizabeth Polcari.Photo: VictorAlcorn.com



Two other New York women cashed in on huge lottery winnings Thursday, including 20-year-old college student Catherine Morales, of East Rockaway, and Coram resident Elizabeth Polcari, 49.


Morales, whose dad convinced her to play the lottery, plans to pay off her student loans with the $ 1,000 a week she won after matching five Cash4Life numbers in a June 19 drawing. She will receive a one-time payment of $ 661,800.


“At first I was in denial, but then I was just really happy,” she said. “My first call was to my father and he was in denial too. When he realized it was real, he was happy for me.”


Meanwhile, Polcari, who won $ 3 million on a Kings Ransom scratchoff ticket, will spend her earnings on a “red Corvette.” She opted to take a lump sum of $ 2,340,000, which works out to $ 1,548,612 after taxes.


Polcari’s luck changed after she said she started focusing “on the good.”


“Luck is a state of mind,” she said. “I will start planning the wedding of my dreams and buy a new house.”


Lottery drawer Yolanda Vega joked the three women were now part of “the lucky millionaire lottery club.”





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FAA Lifts Ban on U.S. Flights to Israel



The Federal Aviation Administration lifted its ban on U.S. flights to and from Israel Tuesday night.


According to a statement officials made the decision after taking stock of the security situation in Israel and the measures that the goverment has put in place since a rocket landed one mile from Tel Aviv’s airport on Tuesday.


The U.S. ban went into effect Tuesday afternoon.


Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg flew to Israel Tuesday on its national airline El Al in a show of solidarity and as a protest to FAA restrictions.


He was greeted by Israel’s Prime Minister on the tarmac.


“You have to take reasonable precautions, but you cannot shut down everything just because one terrorist someplace on the other side of the world says ‘I’m going to be a threat,’” Bloomberg said.


Before he leaves, Bloomberg will meet with Israel’s president and pay his respects to an American who was killed in Gaza over the weekend while voluntarily serving in the Israeli Defense Forces.


He will also meet with a Teach for America delegation stationed in Israel.





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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Family and Friends to Mourn Eric Garner at Funeral




Family and friends are gathering today to say a final goodbye to Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died last week as police tried to arrest him.


And the funeral comes as NYPD officials are taking a closer look at the department’s procedures.


According to the Daily News, the NYPD’s new inspector general, Philip Eure, is reviewing the use of banned chokeholds over the past five years.


The department barred chokeholds in 1993, but the Civilian Complaint Review Board has substantiated 10 chokehold complaints since 2009.


Video of Garner’s attempted arrest appears to show plainclothes officer Daniel Pantaleo putting him in a chokehold.


Garner later died of cardiac arrest, but the city Medical Examiner says a cause of death is pending further study.


Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is promising a full review of NYPD training procedures.


“I would anticipate that coming out of this effort that there will be a retraining of every member of the New York City police department in the weeks month and potential years ahead,” said Bratton.


A march and rally were held Tuesday in Tompkinsville, where Garner died.


About a hundred people marched to the nearby police station, where they held a candlelight vigil in Garner’s memory.





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Brooklyn Bridge’s flags have been stolen before



Old Glory has gone missing from the Brooklyn Bridge before.


Thieves swiped two American flags from the span two years ago, but they were never busted, according to a Department of Transportation worker tasked with replacing the flags on the bridge Tuesday.


“They went up and robbed the flags from both ends in 2012,” Nick Krevatas, 49, a bridge painter, told The Post.


The case had been reported to cops, said Krevatas, who said he replaced those flags, too. Local media never picked up the story.


Another US flag was stolen from the bridge 10 years ago, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, Krevatas noted.


Krevatas, who has been to the top of the bridge 30 to 40 times, says flag-grabbing is a tough enterprise. Thieves must scale a locked gate to reach the top of the towers.


“There’s a door up there, a gate. They scaled it and climbed up the ladder to the top,” he said.





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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Novice City Council members still don’t know what they’re doing



It took six months in office for members of the City Council freshman class to admit they really don’t know what they’re doing.


An e-mail obtained by The Post shows that some of the 21 novice legislators expressed befuddlement over the rules governing the so-called “stated” meetings — which have been held at least twice a month since January.


Despite having attended 15 of the sessions and received days-worth of orientation sessions, the newbies are scheduled for a first-of-its-kind group lesson on the workings of government during a “mock” Council session on Wednesday afternoon.


“At the request of several freshmen Council Members, [we] will be holding a mock stated meeting along with a brief history of the council to more clearly explain the order and procedures which are followed at the stated meetings pursuant to law and council rule,” reads an email sent by the body’s senior director of community engagement, Karina Claudio Betancourt.


The training is being run by Gary Altman, counsel to Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, in the committee room at City Hall, according to the email.


Council officials noted that the unusual mid-term session isn’t just for new members, but also for their staffs and interns who might be less familiar with the rules.


They said the main focus of the mock meeting will be on procedure – in part because some of the rules were recently changed in a reform effort – but will also include a historical review of the Council and its powers.


“Like most legislative bodies, including the US House of Representatives, the Council sometimes offers refreshers for members, staff and interns on parliamentary procedure for stated meetings,” said speaker’s office spokesman, Eric Koch.


“With rules reform happening just a few months ago, this is an opportunity to help make the Council’s already efficient meetings run even better.”


The bi-monthly stated meetings are where the full Council votes on legislation, the budget and land-use items, and where individual members can introduce bills.


When asked about the remediation for rookies, some of the first-year electeds downplayed the need for a refresher — but said that more information can’t hurt.


“It’s always helpful. I’m somewhat of a parliamentarian coming from my background in labor… but it’s always necessary to understand the rules of engagement,” said I. Daneek Miller (D-Brooklyn), a former union leader for MTA bus workers in Queens.


“That being said, we’ve already completed an entire legislative session,” he added.


Fellow freshman Laurie Cumbo (D-Brooklyn) said as a former director of a non-profit, she’d attended her fair share of stated meetings even before being elected.


But Cumbo said the training is likely to benefit even the most experienced of the new members.


“The same course can be taught by 10 different people and each time you would learn something new,” she said.





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Respected principal busted for sneaking drugs into prison



A highly respected Brooklyn principal was busted for allegedly sneaking drugs into a state prison, officials said Tuesday.


PS 28 principal Sadie Silver, 40, was pinched at Coxsackie Correctional Facility last week along with boyfriend Michael Acosta, 34, according to state police.



Sadie Silver



“Silver and Acosta were found to possess a quantity of heroin and suboxone, which they were attempting to deliver to an inmate,” state police Maj. Patrick Regan said in a statement.


The suspects were at Coxsackie to visit Silver’s son Alex Mercado, who is doing time on weapons charges at the prison, according to WCBS-TV.



Silver’s boyfriend Michael Acosta



They were both hit with the same charges — two counts of possession of drugs, one count of bringing contraband into a prison and endangering the welfare of a child by having a minor with them at the time of their arrest, state cops said.


The kid is Silver’s young daughter, Channel 2 reported.


Acosta was caught at the visitors screen room with two small balloons filled with drugs, according to the broadcast report.


While Silver did not have any drugs in her possession, investigators believe she was in on plans to smuggle in the narcotics, law enforcement sources said.


Silver has been widely credited with boosting test scores at PS 28 in Bedford-Stuyvesant since 2002.





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City Officials Investigate Mystery of White Flags Over Brooklyn Bridge



An investigation is underway after someone replaced two American flags on top of the Brooklyn Bridge with white ones.


Police and the Department of Transportation are trying to figure out who switched out the flags and when it happened.


City agencies are working to determine whether another agency did it for some reason.


The Emergency Service Unit removed the pair of mysterious white flags.


Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said he’s confident the NYPD will get to the bottom of things.


In a statement, Adams said, in part, “If flying a white flag atop the Brooklyn Bridge is someone’s idea of a joke, I’m not laughing. The public safety of our city is of paramount importance, particularly our landmarks and bridges that are already known to be high-risk targets.”





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Mar arrested in gruesome decades-old cold case



YAPHANK, N.Y. — Authorities say a Long Island man faces murder charges in connection with the death of two women in the 1990s.


John Bittrolff, of Manorville, was arrested Monday and charged with two counts of second-degree murder.


Suffolk police say the nude bodies of 31-year-old Rita Tangredi and 20-year-old Colleen McNamme were found within three months of each other in wooded areas of East Patchogue and Shirley.


According to Newsday, police said in a statement that detectives at the original crime scenes in 1993 and 1994 recovered DNA evidence linking them. This year, police said detectives recovered DNA evidence linking Bittrolff to the cold cases.


Both women had been strangled and sustained a severe blow to the head.





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