UPI.com: Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing

 

Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing

 

 

A technicality forced a judge to reject a plea agreement offered to a 17-year-old girl charged with burning a cat in an oven, New York prosecutors said.

 

 

Cheyenne Cherry had pleaded guilty and accepted a deal for one year in prison for animal cruelty in the May 6 fatal burning of her former roommate’s cat, Tiger Lily, The New York Post reported Tuesday.

 

 

Bronx County Supreme Court Judge Margaret Clancy Monday withdrew the agreement after determining it was illegal to reduce a violent felony charge to a non-violent charge, The Post reported.

 

 

Prosecutors offered a new agreement in which Cherry could plead guilty to animal cruelty in exchange for two years in prison.

 

 

Cherry’s lawyer, Danielle Follette, accused prosecutors of succumbing to pressure from animal rights activists who were following the proceedings.

 

 

Cherry next is to appear in court Dec. 2.

 

 

via UPI.com: Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing.

 

via UPI.com: Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing.

Where Baseball Isn’t Everything – City Room Blog – NYTimes.com

City Room – Blogging From the Five Boroughs

October 1, 2009, 5:23 pm

Where Baseball Isn’t Everything

By David Gonzalez

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times Yankee Stadium pokes out from beyond the elevated subway platform at 161st Street.

Pinstripe fanatics who hustle from their cars to their seats for playoff games this month may not realize it, but there are plenty of things to do near Yankee Stadium that don’t involve beer, booing or going broke.

Local Stop

What are your favorite places to visit near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx?

Concourse Village — taking its name from the Grand Concourse — has museums and theaters that put the lie to the outdated image of a South Bronx aflame.

Better yet, they don’t require a week’s salary (or millions in tax-free bonds) to finance a family outing.

Parts of the South Bronx were still smoldering more than 25 years ago when arts administrators and civic boosters began building the South Bronx Cultural Corridor, showcasing local and international artists, all near the 161st Street stop on the No. 4 or the D train.

Here is an itinerary for a tour, which will be in Sunday’s Metropolitan section.

via Where Baseball Isn’t Everything – City Room Blog – NYTimes.com.

Associated Press: NYPD cop charged in nightstick assault

NYPD cop charged in nightstick assault

A New York City police officer has been indicted on charges that he struck an unarmed man across the face with his nightstick, fracturing several bones.

Marc Rios pleaded not guilty Tuesday to assault and attempted assault charges in Bronx State Supreme Court. His attorney John Pappalardo says Rios was acting in self defense.

The 39-year-old officer works in the 52nd Precinct in the Bronx and has been an officer for 12 years. He was suspended from the NYPD without pay. He faces 15 years in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors say Rios was in a patrol car with his partner on March 30 when the victim, John Roperto, smacked the front end of the car because he felt the car had almost hit him.

Prosecutors say Rios got out and struck him with his police baton, breaking his cheekbone and nose. Pappalardo says the man disobeyed orders to stop and rushed at the officers.

via Associated Press: NYPD cop charged in nightstick assault.

Associated Press: Cablevision launching high school network

Cablevision launching high school network

Cablevision Systems Corporation announced Thursday that it is launching a multiplatform initiative for high school sports and activities.

“MSG Varsity” will have an around-the-clock television network that serves four local regions in the tri-state area, an online destination, and an interactive service.

The series will be available to 3 million households throughout the New York market beginning Sept. 24.

MSG Varsity, in addition to its professional productions, will encourage high schools in the area to provide school-generated content, not only about sports teams but other school activities such as debate, band, drama and dance.

The areas served by the network are Long Island, Brooklyn and Bronx, Connecticut, Westchester and Hudson Valley, and New Jersey.

The programming is expected to include game and event coverage, studio shows, weekly series that address matters relevant to high school students, and “The Challenge,” an academic quiz show for top high school students in the tri-state area.

“There’s always been an interest in high school sports and activities,” said Theresa Chillianis, general manager of MSG Varsity. “I think you’d agree that, today, kids are already using everything from a cell phone to a video camera to capture their own stories. MSG Varsity is simply providing them with a greater platform to tell those stories. And we can do this more cost effectively than others because we already have the technological and operational infrastructure in place.”

via Associated Press: Cablevision launching high school network.

UPI.com: Report: NYC bldg. inspector busts coming

Report: NYC bldg. inspector busts coming

A wave of arrests of New York City building inspectors is anticipated, in which city employees with alleged crime ties were taped dealing drugs, sources say.

Citing unnamed sources, the New York Post reported Tuesday that at least six inspectors with the city’s Department of Buildings were caught on videotape taking bribes at construction sites. Some with alleged ties to the Luchese Mafia crime family were seen dealing cocaine and prescription drugs to workers, the Post said.

Along with the building inspectors, about two dozen suspected Luchese organization captains, soldiers and associates also are expected to be arrested in the sting, the newspaper said.

“This is going to be big,” a source described as “well-placed” told the Post.

The newspaper said that among the revelations from the Department of Buildings probe are that two of the city employees are regarded as full-blown Luchese associates by law enforcement and that the investigation focused on several landlords who own buildings in Manhattan and The Bronx, with at least one of them facing certain arrest.

via UPI.com: Report: NYC bldg. inspector busts coming.

Ensconced in the Bronx

Ensconced in the Bronx
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
DUG IN José Diaz- Oyola’s spacious longtime home bespeaks past elegance, with its sunken living room and variously patterned parquet floors.

By CONSTANCE ROSENBLUM

ON a frigid January day in 1975, two years before the sportscaster Howard Cosell informed the nation that the Bronx was burning, a 29-year-old nurse named José Diaz-Oyola moved into a two-bedroom apartment on the Grand Concourse.

Mr. Diaz-Oyola was born in Puerto Rico, one of 13 children. He came to New York in 1966, and lived for a time with a sister elsewhere in the borough; when she left the city, he moved to this apartment. For $315 a month, he acquired a foothold in an Art Deco building that would escape many of the ravages that beset the city in the 1970s.

The area had been settled by upwardly mobile Jews, and the apartment, with its sunken living room, dining room, six closets and wraparound casement windows, reflected the prosperity and grace of decades past. The floors were parquet, a different design in each room.

Being on the seventh floor and facing west, the apartment offered a view of both the boulevard, once the borough’s most storied thoroughfare, and Joyce Kilmer Park, a three-block-long swath of green. In the distance, the new tenant could see the old Yankee Stadium, the ballpark where Cosell would utter those sadly memorable words.

Thirty-four years later, the rent having inched up to a still manageable $1,087, Mr. Diaz-Oyola is still there.

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK [NYT]

Pardon Me For Asking: The Urban Divers Celebrate Their 10th Year With Series Of Cool Events

COME EXPLORE THE RICHNESS and CULTURAL DIVERSITY OF NYC’s WATERFRONT.

ENJOY A DAY ON THE SCENIC HARLEM RIVER.

The 4th ANNUAL HARLEM RIVER REVIVAL and FAMILY & KIDS DAY FESTIVAL- SAT JULY 11th , 11am-5PM

” The Nature in the Hood Serie”

Activities Include:

The Great Muscoota River Paddle- Ecocruise on the Harlem River aboard our unique 32ft Indian shipping canoe that accomodates 21 paddlers at time.

Western Performance and Horse Handling by the Federation of Black Cowboys

Performance Stage

Birds of Prey

Archery

…and more

@ The Harlem River Ecology Center located upstream at the Bronx, Harlem River Waterfront, at the southern end of Roberto Clemente State Park , NYC Bridge Park and River Park Towers, just north of the historic High Bridge, now in restoration

TAKE THE METRO NORTH – HUDSON RIVER LINE TO MORRIS HEIGHTS STOPS RIGHT AT THE STATE PARK.

See you there…

The Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy

ENVIROMEDIA MOBILE

www.urbandivers.org

via Pardon Me For Asking: The Urban Divers Celebrate Their 10th Year With Series Of Cool Events.

Harlem River Rezoning Hearing

Harlem River Rezoning Hearing | Room Eight

Harlem River Rezoning Hearing
posted by gov_wire
Mon, 06/15/2009 – 2:27pm

Webinar

Harlem River Lower Concourse Rezoning Hearing

You can speak up! Achieving access to the Harlem River, today!

Tuesday, June 23, 9:30 AM

9:30 AM

City Council Zoning & Franchises COMMITTEE

Committee Room – City Hall All are welcome to testify!

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Click here to learn more.

Issues you might raise at the hearing:

•

High-rises and higher rents on the Harlem River?

•

Manufacturing jobs lost to lofts?

•

Or real affordable housing and public amenities for us, today?

•

Or a public park mapped at Park Avenue with monies to implement if for our existing communities?

See our testimony from the April 1st hearing of the City Planning Commission. We have been advocating for public access to the Harlem River for many years, and the rezoning proposal for the Lower Concourse is an ideal opportunity! Request that the park at Park Avenue be created with resources to implement it today, instead of vague descriptions and studies. Future parkland restricted by the garbage tracks away from the river to be created in 20 years, if at all, is not acceptable. Why does the Highline get $100’s of millions of dollars, and we have zero official access here? There must be money in the budget for this site! Send a note to your elected officials about this today.

Friends of Brook Park

PO Box 801

646.648.4362

information@friendsofbrookpark.org

You received this message because you may be interested in this information and ways to get involved.

Thanks

for all you do!

Up and Out of New York’s Projects

Up and Out of New York’s Projects
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
RACE YOU Bronxdale Houses became Sonia Sotomayor’s home in 1957, a time of promise in the projects.

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and MICHAEL WILSON

WHEN Sonia Sotomayor first set foot in the Bronxdale Houses along Bruckner Boulevard in 1957, they encapsulated New York’s promise. The towers beckoned to the working class as a coveted antidote to some of the city’s unlivable residential spaces and, later on, its unfathomable rents. These were not the projects of idle, stinky elevators, of gang-controlled stairwells where drug deals go down. In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, when most of the city’s public housing was built, a sense of pride and community permeated well-kept corridors, apartments and grounds. Far from dangerous, the projects were viewed as nurturing.

There are more than 400,000 residents in the New York City Housing Authority’s 2,611 buildings at any given time. Judge Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee for the United States Supreme Court, is just one of more than 100 marquee names on a city list of alumni.

Many are athletes or entertainers. Jay-Z, the rapper, grew up in the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn. Wesley Snipes, the actor, in the Monroe Houses in the Bronx. Marc Anthony, the salsa singer, in the Metro North Houses in East Harlem. Mike Tyson and Hector Camacho, the boxers, and a deep bench of basketball players all came up through the projects.

There are congressmen (Gary Ackerman, Eliot L. Engel, Gregory W. Meeks) and chief executives: Lloyd C. Blankfein runs Goldman Sachs, Howard Schultz heads up Starbucks, and Ursula M. Burns, who was named chief executive of Xerox this month, will become the first black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company.

Today, the average income of residents is $22,728, the average rent $324. An estimated 46 percent of families work, 12 percent are on public assistance. Some buildings suffer from neglect, but there are waiting lists to get in.

In a 1999 article in a housing authority publication, Judge Sotomayor recalled celebrating the move by pedaling her tricycle around the “spacious, pristine, white” apartment — right into a wall, leaving an unmistakable black mark. Petrified, 3-year-old Sonia hid under the bed for two hours. “Marring that wall was the single most traumatic event of my childhood,” she was quoted as saying. LIZETTE ALVAREZ

The Projects Were a Launching Pad for Many Successful New Yorkers – NYTimes.com

Man fires at Bronx crowd, wounds one

Man fires at Bronx crowd, wounds one

BY Zachary Goelman and Jonathan Lemire

DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Monday, May 25th 2009, 4:00 AM

A gunman opened fire into a crowd outside a Bronx nightclub early Sunday morning, wounding one man, police and witnesses said.

The suspect ran down E. 185th St. in Belmont with his handgun blazing, unleashing a fusillade of shots at a crowd that had gathered outside the Blue Villa Bar & Lounge, witnesses said.

“I heard about six shots,” said one witness, who did not want to give his name.

“Three, and then maybe three more,” he added. “I ran away and then lay down on the ground.”

One man was shot in the back and was taken to nearby St. Barnabas Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition, police said.

The gunman ran from the scene and remains at large, police said.

The motive for the shooting was unknown, though the manager of the Blue Villa Bar said the incident was not connected to the nightclub.

via Man fires at Bronx crowd, wounds one.