Sean Bell vigil on 2nd anniversary of NY shooting

Sean Bell vigil on 2nd anniversary of shooting

Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 10:57 AM

AP Eyewitness News

NEW YORK — About 100 people gathered before dawn Tuesday for a candlelight vigil and prayer service on the second anniversary of the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man on his wedding day that sparked outrage in the black community.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and Sean Bell’s fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, led the memorial on the street in Queens where the 23-year-old black man was killed outside a strip club on Nov. 25, 2006 after leaving his bachelor’s party.

At precisely 4:10 a.m. – the time of the shooting – the mourners rang a large bell 50 times to mark the number of bullets fired at the Bell and two of his friends, who were seriously injured.

After laying wreaths and flowers, the group marched half a mile to a church, where Sharpton held a prayer service.
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“The idea is to commemorate the second anniversary and to continue to push for a federal case,” Sharpton said later.

At a non-jury trial in April, a judge acquitted three police officers of state charges that included manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment.

The officers – undercover detectives investigating reports of prostitution at the club – said they opened fire because they thought one of the men was reaching for a gun. No weapon was found.

The shooting and subsequent acquittals of the officers ignited protests and raised questions about whether the NYPD was too quick to use excessive force against minorities.

Last week, Bell’s family and their lawyers met privately with federal prosecutors to discuss a possible civil rights case against the shooters.

“They’ve assured them they were doing a full investigation,” Sharpton said Tuesday. “We don’t know what the outcome will be but … the family is still demanding justice in this matter.”

U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell has refused to comment on the private meeting.

“Sean Bell’s civil rights were violated – the right to go home unarmed and not be killed by police,” Sharpton said.

Among others in attendance Tuesday were Bell’s parents and Joseph Guzman, one of the two men injured in the shooting.

“It seemed like it just happened all over again just being here,” Bell’s father, William Bell, told NY1 television. “The feeling hasn’t changed. It still hurts.”

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[ABCLOCAL.GO.COM]

Wheeling: The Talk of the Town

Wheeling

by David Owen December 1, 2008

It’s possible for a New Yorker to go weeks without glimpsing a river or a harbor, and to lose track of the fact that Manhattan is both an island and a seaport. This misapprehension is inconceivable, however, for a user of the Waterfront Greenway, a well-marked thirty-two-mile route for walkers, runners, skaters, cyclists, and other non-motorized travellers. It follows the Hudson, Harlem, and East Rivers around Manhattan’s perimeter, with occasional inland detours (across Dyckman Street, way up beyond the Cloisters; along the spine of central Harlem; around a couple of dozen blocks near the United Nations). The Greenway is especially well suited to bicyclists, who, if they are moderately fit and don’t blow a tire on a broken apricot-brandy bottle, can cover the entire distance in a single leisurely morning or afternoon. Biking the Manhattan shoreline turns the city inside out, and gives the cyclist firsthand answers to questions that often stump even lifelong residents, such as: are there any decent places in Manhattan to go rock climbing, and what the heck do they keep under the Henry Hudson Parkway? Perhaps you yourself rode the Greenway on a recent, spectacular Friday afternoon, beginning and ending at the Battery, where, when you started, a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat was baiting a fishhook with a half-dollar-size crab, which he had selected from a joint-compound bucket at his feet. If so, here are a few of the other things you may have noticed along the way:

Helicopters and small airplanes flying above the Upper Bay like dragonflies above a swimming pool.

A man wearing a black wetsuit and an orange life jacket, bobbing in the Hudson about fifty feet from shore, using various hand tools to affix four large pink plastic petals to a rotting wooden piling. According to another man, who was standing onshore and holding a walkie-talkie, the man in the water was “installing prototypes for an art project, to see how they make it through the winter.”

The Parthenon-like and perhaps spectacularly luxurious colonnaded rooftop outdoor lounging facility of Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club, at Fifty-first and Twelfth.

A guy who had been shooting hoops alone on a court underneath the West Side Highway asking another guy, who had been shooting hoops alone on a different court, two courts away, for a little help in retrieving his ball, which had become stuck between the rim and the backboard, and then also asking, “Wanna play?,” and then the two of them continuing to shoot hoops alone but now on courts adjacent to each other.

A man in bluejeans travelling south on a bright-yellow pedicab piled high with driftwood, which presumably he had collected along the river’s edge, steering with his right hand and using his left hand to give his left leg a downstroke power assist; and a middle-aged nun in a white habit, veil flapping, riding a regular bike in the opposite direction.

A lost or discarded parking ticket undulating like a miniature magic carpet in the tiny waves a few feet from shore.

A guy fishing with an enormous surf-casting rod a little downstream from the George Washington Bridge and around a bend from the Jeffrey’s Hook Lighthouse, which was saved from demolition in 1951 by outraged readers of the children’s book “The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge,” by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward.

Several hundred pigeons loitering near the center of an otherwise unoccupied playing field, and, on the other side of the bike path, a man in running clothes sticking out his lower lip while doing rapid, shallow pushups on a bench.

A trailer, carrying rowing shells, parked near the magnificent gate of the Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse, in Swindler Cove Park, on the Harlem River.

The turreted, thirty-room 1887 mansion of James Anthony Bailey, who was the co-founder, with P. T. Barnum, of “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The mansion, which is at the northeast corner of 150th Street and St. Nicholas Place and is made of limestone, inspired Chester Wickwire, who may or may not have invented the woven-wire window screen, to build an almost identical mansion in Cortland, New York, in 1890.

Four old guys watching four other old guys eating slices of pizza at a white plastic card table on the sidewalk at 120th and First.

More bollards, cleats, capstans, hoists, and other riverside mooring paraphernalia—some of it freshly painted—than you would think could possibly have an ongoing nautical application in New York City.

A young man transporting a set of golf clubs—which he had stuffed vertically into his bicycle’s saddlebags—toward Stuyvesant Town.

Three young women from a country where the shoes don’t look like ours, on a walkway above what may be the only sandy beach in Manhattan (under the western end of the Brooklyn Bridge), heading north from the South Street Seaport area, on their way to their next big adventure. ♦

COURTESY OF – NEWYORKER.COM

Blake brothers to appear at Harlem tennis fundraiser today

Blake brothers to appear at Harlem tennis fundraiser today

• November 25, 2008

James Blake, the 10th-ranked tennis player in the world and a Yonkers native, will headline today’s winter fundraiser for the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program (HJTEP).

Thomas Blake, James’ brother, is a product of the HJTEP and also will be in attendance. The fundraiser aims to raise awareness of health, tennis and education programs in the Harlem community.

 The reception begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Harlem Armory Center at 1 West 142nd Street.

Former New York mayor David Dinkins and former tennis pro Justin Gimelstob are among the guests.

The night will conclude with a celebrity tennis exhibition.

Jake Thomases

COURTESY OF-LOHUD.COM

Spitzer’s Father Denies Bias Against Employees

Spitzer’s Father Denies Bias Against Employees

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and C. J. HUGHES

It was another trying day for Bernard Spitzer, the father of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Helped by a hearing aid and a cane, Mr. Spitzer appeared on Monday in State Supreme Court in the Bronx, where he testified that neither he nor his real estate management company had engaged in racial discrimination when a black doorman and three black porters were discharged nine years ago.

The four former workers at a luxury apartment house that Mr. Spitzer built at 150 East 57th Street have sued Mr. Spitzer, charging bias against darker-skinned employees. One black doorman, Anthony Haydenn, asserted that he, unlike the lighter-skinned doormen, was ordered not just to clean toilets, but to do so with a toothbrush.

When Mr. Spitzer testified, after a lawyer and an assistant helped him to the stand, he calmly but firmly rejected any suggestions of racial discrimination.

“As far as I know, their termination was in no way, in no way affected by the color of their skin,” said Mr. Spitzer, who is 84.

He denied having anything to do with hiring or firing the workers, saying such matters were handled by the building’s management company, Gumley Haft. The plaintiffs settled a lawsuit against Gumley Haft last week, with the terms kept confidential.

In the sharpest exchange during Mr. Spitzer’s hour on the stand, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Anthony C. Ofodile, pushed to get him to admit that he was conscious of the race of the building’s doormen and porters.

“I did not see a white doorman or a black doorman,” Mr. Spitzer said.

Mr. Ofodile immediately challenged that assertion, and Mr. Spitzer quickly elaborated.

“I don’t see the blackness or whiteness or pinkness or yellowness of a doorman,” he said. “I have a mind that focuses on the fact that he is a doorman and functions as a doorman.”

Mr. Spitzer testified without any hint of anger and was unruffled during cross-examination. He wore a charcoal gray suit and light blue tie.

When not testifying, Mr. Spitzer kept his right hand on his metal cane and occasionally fiddled with the hearing aid in his left ear. At times, he seemed to nod off, his chin tucked into his chest. Mr. Spitzer was hospitalized for Parkinson’s disease after his son resigned in March, but he has made public appearances since then in much improved condition.

During his testimony, Mr. Spitzer repeatedly told Mr. Ofodile, who is from Nigeria and has a heavy accent, that he did not understand what he was asking.

“I’m afraid I can’t make out specifically what you’re saying,” Mr. Spitzer said.

Sometimes the judge, Justice Lucy A. Billings, asked Mr. Spitzer to repeat what he had said because he spoke so softly.

Mr. Ofodile pressed Mr. Spitzer on how he could know that discrimination did not come into play if he had nothing to do with the decisions on hiring or firing. Mr. Spitzer did not respond to the question directly.

The lawsuit was filed nine years ago by Mr. Haydenn, a doorman who was fired, and by three porters who were also discharged: Akim Rodriguez, Leonard Boyce and Trevor Morris. The plaintiffs said the building soon replaced them with whites or light-skinned Hispanics.

Mr. Spitzer was the first witness to testify. The plaintiffs are scheduled to testify in the jury trial later this week.

In his opening statement, Mr. Ofodile repeatedly insisted that Mr. Spitzer knew these men and was personally involved in running the 34-story, 145-apartment building on 57th Street.

In the lawsuit, Mr. Haydenn asserted that Mr. Spitzer had told the building’s supervisor that he did not want black or darker-skinned Hispanics working at the building.

Mr. Haydenn said that the reason his supervisor gave for his dismissal was that there were urine stains found on one of the toilets he had cleaned.

“In this case, the plaintiffs were fired by the defendant based on their race,” Mr. Ofodile said. Their dismissals caused some of his clients marital problems, hypertension and emotional distress, the lawyer said.

In her opening statement, Jennifer Rubin, the lead lawyer for Mr. Spitzer, said, “Mr. Spitzer did not know the plaintiffs, did not know the color of their skin, and if he did not know the color of their skin he could not discriminate against them on that basis.”

Mr. Spitzer’s lawyers voiced frustration that the case has dragged on since 1999.

Jeffrey Moerdler, another lawyer for Mr. Spitzer, said: “This long, meritless case plods on after nine years of baseless accusations, character assassination and extortionate tactics.”

COURTESY OF-[NYT]

CABER-YEA: $3.99 WINE BOTTLE

CABER-YEA: $3.99 WINE BOTTLE

By JULIA DAHL

November 25, 2008

Got the economic-downturn blues? Grab a bottle of Recession Red.

A California company called The Wine Group is selling a merlot, a cabernet sauvignon and a chardonnay – for just $3.99 a bottle. And New Yorkers love it.

At Gotham Wines on 94th Street and Broadway, the cabernet sauvignon has become the store’s best-selling California wine. Sales associate Selim Tlili says the label draws customers in and the price seals the deal.

“It’s a good, experimental wine,” Tlili said. “If you don’t like it, you haven’t really lost anything, but if you like it, you’ve got a great wine.” That’s exactly what Gotham patron Diane Ortega figured when she first purchased a bottle about a month ago.

“I couldn’t believe it was so cheap,” said Ortega, 52. “I decided if I didn’t like it, I could just cook with it.”

Ortega brought the bottle home to drink with a dinner of whitefish and was pleasantly surprised.

“It was delicious,” she said.

COURTESY OF – NYPOST.COM

Correction Commissioner Martin Horn grilled on tragic slay on Rikers

BY SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, November 25th 2008, 12:54 AM

At times contrite, at times defiant, Correction Commissioner Martin Horn broke his silence Monday about the beating death of a young inmate on Rikers Island.

Testifying before City Council members about youth violence in city jails, he called the Oct. 18 slaying of Christopher Robinson, 18, “a great tragedy.”

“We are eager to get to the bottom of this case not only to bring to justice those who are responsible but also to understand the circumstances of his death and so try to prevent future deaths,” he said.

Inmates told Robinson’s mom guards let at least three young men assault her son. Two Rikers correction officers were put on desk duty because of the attack. The Bronx district attorney’s office is investigating.

RELATED: RIKERS ISLAND GUARD MADE ME FIGHT THUG, EX-IMATE SAYS

Horn’s delayed mea culpa – stressing that Robinson’s death is the first homicide in a city jail since 2004 – didn’t appease the crowd of politicians and youth advocates packed inside the City Hall chamber.

He turned testy when Councilman Lewis Fidler (D-Brooklyn) admonished him for not doing more to combat violent teen inmates, many of whom have mental problems.

“I run the jails, I don’t provide care,” Horn shot back as many in the crowd booed.

sweichselbaum@nydailynews.com

NYPD’S BADGE IS A $HIELD

By DAVID SEIFMAN, CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF

November 25, 2008

It’s always been a haven for victims of crime. Now the NYPD is becoming a shelter for victims of the economic crisis.

Applications to join the Finest are soaring and fewer cops are looking to retire, Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday.

“Retirements will slow down just because people will find it more difficult to find other employment,” Kelly told at a City Council budget hearing.

He said 80 percent of cops usually retire after 20 years, when they become eligible for half-pay pensions and lifetime medical benefits.

“That’s down to the lower 70s,” said Kelly. “That’s a reflection, we believe to a certain extent, of the economy.”

It was only months ago – when the economy was booming and the police starting salary was an embarrassing $25,000 – that the NYPD was struggling to fill its academy classes.

So many veteran cops are staying put that the next police class in July 2009 will have just 500 to 700 recruits, down from a projected 2,000.

That led to some sharp questioning from council members upset that Mayor Bloomberg has canceled the January 2009 police class to save $36 million this fiscal year.

david.seifman@nypost.com