The Port Authority plans to seek a toll hike of at least $2 on its Hudson River crossings and an increase in PATH rail fares after next week’s state legislative elections, The Star-Ledger has learned.
Is it money to bolster security against possible terrorist attacks or fishing Brooklyn’s non-profit waters for potential mayoral votes?
Either way, Rep. Anthony Weiner last week touted his work in helping 12 Brooklyn non-profit and religious institutions get federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants.
Among the “high-risk” non-profits, according to Weiner, that are receiving federal funds include such vulnerable targets as the Medical Rehabilitation Center in Borough Park.
NEW YORK CITY, NY — The number of bias crimes against Jews in New York City soared 15 percent this year, with some blaming the spike on last month’s controversial visit from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Through Oct. 7, there were 94 reported hate crimes against Jews – making up almost half of the city’s 209 total bias incidents, NYPD stats show.
Over the same period last year, 82 anti-Jewish crimes were reported.
NEW YORK, NY — Supermanager Mike Bloomberg has tackled public schools, cleared the smoke out of bars and nudged crime down to historic lows.
But there’s one bunch that’s been a lot tougher to reform: the guys who tow your car for unpaid tickets.
The Anti-Defamation League yesterday honored the NYPD’s commissioner of Intelligence, David Cohen, as the first recipient of an award named after an Italian police chief who saved more than 3,500 lives during the Holocaust. The police chief of Fiurme, Giovanni Palatucci, forged documents and visas that allowed thousands of Jews to escape death in concentration camps during World War II. He was eventually caught and died in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944.
As he received the award, Mr. Cohen compared Fiurme to New York City, noting that Jews from throughout Central Europe had flocked to the Italian city seeking refuge, much like the millions of immigrants who come today.
It may surprise some cyclists, but New York City has been honored as one of the nation’s most bike-friendly cities.
New York rode away with a bronze medal from the League of American Bicyclists, which recently put the city on par with the college town of Davis, Calif.
The nod comes as Mayor Bloomberg works to promote cycling – installing 400 to 500 bike racks a year, and setting aside 400 miles of bike lanes and paths by 2009.
NEW YORK, NY — Con Ed charges the highest rates of any major U.S. electric utility, yet rotting paper wrapped around aging high-voltage wires is all that separates the city from its next blackout.
For years, the state Public Service Commission has been after Con Ed to replace its 10,000-volt paper-insulated cables, some of which failed during the 1999 Washington Heights blackout and last year’s nine-day Astoria and Long Island City outage.
Con Ed concedes that the underground cables have a higher failure rate than newer ones, but it has no plan to replace them all before 2024.
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn [CHI] — This morning New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly joined Israel’s Foreign Minster Tzipi Livni on the steps of Cong. Binei Avarham in Brooklyn Heights, where last week a swastika was found spray-painted just days before Sukkos.
The rabbi of the Shul, Chabad Shliach Rabbi Ari Raskin took the opportunity to do Mivtza Lulav with Tzipi Livni on site where the swastika once was.
More pictures in the Extended Article.
QUEENS, NY — One person carrying a gun in a bag was arrested on the St. John’s Queens campus Wednesday afternoon, police said.
The man had a President Bush mask and an old-style single-shot .50-caliber rifle, according to law enforcement officials. No injuries were reported.
Police sources said the man is a student of Guyanese descent who lived in a campus dorm. Sources said the student takes medicines for psychiatric issues and that police were investigating whether he had gone off his meds.
Today, 9/11/07 marks 6 years to the terror attacks on our country, the attacks that claimed 2,974 lives.
The official city commemoration schedule, city street closures, along with resource links can be found in the Extended Article.
Click Here for a newscast of the story (NY1)
The NYPD is taking steps to protect the city’s Jewish community from terrorism during the upcoming High Holidays.
Commissioner Ray Kelly said Wednesday that there is no reason to believe an attack is in the works, but they are stepping up police presence to be prepared, as they have in years past.
NEW YORK, NY — The New York Police Department has short-circuited a civilian oversight panel formed in the early 1990s by being blatantly dismissive of the panel’s investigations of wayward officers, according to a new study.
An analysis of the Civilian Complaint Review Board’s performance in recent years “allows for no other conclusion than this: The city’s civilian oversight system has failed,” the report says. ”It has been subverted and co-opted by the police department.”
Both police and CCRB officials called the findings released Wednesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union unfair and too reliant on outdated statistics.
NEW YORK, NY — Sidewalk trip-and-fall cases aren’t all they were once cracked up to be.
The number of claims filed against the city has been dropping dramatically over the past years, a phenomena alternately credited on good law – and good luck.
In fiscal year 2007 there were 2,536 claims filed against the city for personal injuries related to broken sidewalks – the lowest number in a decade, according to preliminary numbers from the city Comptroller’s Office.
BROOKLYN, NY — On August 22, 1978, Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway was designated a scenic landmark. Stretching from Grand Army Plaza through Crown Heights to Ralph Avenue, this parkway introduced some of the advanced urban planning concepts of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the designers of Central and Prospect Parks.
It was planned in 1866 as one of a complex of boulevards emanating from Prospect Park, with a central artery for through traffic and side roads for local use, separated by landscaped malls.
More in the Extended Article!
National Weather Service officials confirmed Wednesday night that a tornado had touched down in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn this morning about 6:30 a.m.
The tornado, which was confirmed by twisting patterns in the debris left behind, was probably moving at speeds of 111 to 135 miles per hour, meteorologists said.
More pictures and videos in the Extended Article!
CHI Ed: The most hated city employees give reason to hate even more
New York, NY — Four NYPD traffic agents were busted yesterday after they were caught writing bogus summonses in Manhattan, police said.
Davey Griffin, 30, Raheem King, 26, Julian Fisher, 24, and Gregory Baird, 56, were slapped with a slew of charges, including forgery, official misconduct, falsifying business records and offering a false instrument, police said.
Brooklyn, NY — Back in the early 1980s, this reporter worked as a housing assistant, or management assistant, on the “Brooklyn Team” of the New York City Housing Authority’s Section 8 program, a federally sponsored program in which the authority pays part of the rent for low-income tenants in private housing.
In those days, the place was hopping — tenants and prospective tenants came in every day, check after check was sent to landlords, new staff were added constantly out of necessity. Our tenant base had many immigrants, especially from Russia; many minority groups, especially Caribbean and Hispanic; and many, many seniors. Among the “big” Section 8 areas were Flatbush, Bed-Stuy, Coney Island, East New York, Borough Park, Bensonhurst and Brighton Beach.
