A portion of East Third Street became a crime scene shortly after 11:30 p.m. last night, after an apparent assault occurred in one of the guest rooms operated by Interfaith Community Services.
The police are not yet able to confirm what happened, but Adi Purusha Das, a director of the organization that feeds the needy near Tompkins Square Park, said that he was told of the incident at 73 East Third Street, between First and Second Avenues, this morning. Read more…
A woman who claims she was subject to an “unlawful and violent arrest” on the sidewalk next to Tompkins Square Park is looking for witnesses to her detention, according to a flyer posted on the door of a building on East 10th Street.
The flyer seeks anyone who might have “witnessed the unlawful and violent arrest of a young Asian woman by two NYPD officers, across the street on the sidewalk next to Tompkins Square Park on late Tuesday night of Jan. 31/ Wednesday morning of Feb. 1 at approximately 1:30 am.”
The Local contacted the woman via a number attached to the flyer, but she declined to make her name or any other details public because of legal concerns related to the alleged incident.
The Police Department said no information about the matter was immediately available.
DNA Info reports that Army investigators have recommended dropping involuntary manslaughter charges against four of the soldiers who are accused of driving Pvt. Danny Chen to suicide. If the recommendations stand, the soldiers will still be court-martialed on charges of criminally negligent homicide.
Neighborhoodr reprints a section of a new National Geographic city guide that gives a shoutout to “Mosaic Man” Jim Power. Read more…
Fox News reports that Hector Xavier Monsegur, the alleged mastermind of high profile hacks under the alias “Sabu,” was a resident of the Jacob Riis Houses. According to Fox, Mr. Monsegur, an unemployed 28-year-old father of two, was arrested by the FBI in June and became an informant who was instrumental in the capture of other fellow “hacktivists.” Sabu was front and center in numerous recent hacks, including the leaking of information belonging to the security company Stratfor, as well as attacks on PayPal and MasterCard.
Here’s The Local’s latest installment of “Police And Thieves,” your weekly roundup of crime. What follows are the latest reports from Feb. 20 to Feb. 27, sorted by the type of incident. Our map of all of crime since Jan. 15 is at bottom.
Robberies
As previously reported, a pair of thieves robbed a woman at gunpoint on Feb. 22.
Two witnesses collared a purse-snatcher after a chase into the subway on Feb. 24. The 25-year-old victim told the police she was at First Avenue and East 10th Street at around 12:15 a.m. when the suspect ran up from behind and tried to grab her purse. When the victim resisted the thief pushed her, ripped the purse from her hand and took off towards the First Avenue L train. As two witnesses gave chase the suspect tossed the purse. The pair then detained the suspect in the subway station until the police arrived. The police said that the suspect had seven prior arrests, including two robberies.
This guy isn’t much of a pal. A 19-year-old told the police she was chatting with her “friend” in the 10th floor stairwell of the Jacob Riis Houses at around 1 a.m. when he grabbed her bag that she had set down on the floor. The victim gave chase, and on the seventh floor the suspect dropped what appeared to be the receiver of a 9-millimeter Smith and Wesson.
A man’s wallet was stolen from Phoenix on Feb. 18. The 22-year-old victim told the police he set his coat down on the floor of the bar on East 13th Street at around 1 a.m. By 9:30 a.m. the next day the thief had made a whopping $8,000 in charges on his account.
A team of burglars ripped off the INA consignment shop on Feb. 20. An employee told the police four women and one guy walked into the store on Bleecker Street at around 3:10 p.m. and then fanned out. The employee noticed some purses missing and said, “Where are the Louis Vuitton bags?” That’s when the quintet took off running. Read more…
In the wake of Retna’s new mural, Complex looks back at some previous installations at Bowery and Houston, including murals by Kenny Scharf and of course the original Keith Haring.
According to SchoolBook, Bill de Blasio and other city officials joined parents in protesting proposed budget cuts to after-school programs.
EV Grieve gets wind of an audio tour, narrated by Jim Jarmusch and featuring music by John Zorn as well as commentary by the likes of Richard Hell and Ed Sanders, about East Village poets and poetry. Read more…
Today the district attorney dismissed the disorderly conduct charge against Jared Malsin, a reporter for The Local and a student at N.Y.U.’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute who was arrested while filming the clearing of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park in November. “The D.A. said that they learned he was working press,” said Gideon Orion Oliver, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who represented Mr. Malsin. “In light of that they couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had a criminal intent.”
The Daily News has a photo of the MTA worker who was treated for neck and back injuries after plunging down a shaft on 14th Street. He gave a thumbs up as he was transported to Bellevue.
The Post reports that bail has been denied in the case of Luis Martinez, accused of firing at police officers on the Lower East Side.
A transit worker fell about 15 feet in a subway ventilation shaft beneath a grate on East 14th Street Friday morning, the Fire Department said. He was not seriously injured.
Stephen Rex Brown
The worker, in his 60s, was on the ladder built into the shaft beneath the grate in front of the IHOP restaurant at 237 E. 14th Street, near the Third Avenue stop on the L around 10:35 a.m., the authorities said. He was inspecting the grate when he fell from the ladder, said Charles Seaton, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The man, whose name was not immediately released, sustained minor neck and back injuries and was being treated at Bellevue Hospital Center.
NY1 says residents are concerned about a sinkhole on Avenue C near 13th Street. ConEd says it will meet with the Department of Environmental Protection to figure out who’s responsible for fixing the hole.
The Lo-Down reports that a closed section of East River Park, near the Williamsburg Bridge, is now set to reopen this summer.
In The Villager, Jerry Tallmer pens an obituary for Barney Rossett. The late publisher’s wife says there are no immediate plans for a memorial – perhaps around the time of what would have been his 90th birthday in May. Read more…
The police say they’ve arrested the man they believe shot at officers on Monday morning. 25-year-old Luis Martinez, a resident of the Baruch Houses, has been charged with attempted murder, attempted assault, criminal possession of a weapon, and reckless endangerment.
Last night The Local reported from N.Y.U. President John Sexton’s town hall about the school’s ambitious expansion plan. Today, Chabad.org has news of students making some real estate moves: Chabad House has hosted its inaugural event in its new Bowery digs, a “8,000-square-foot space with exposed steel beams, warm wood-toned doors, leather couches and room for everyone.” The space, for which the Jewish organization has raised $5 million, is “divided into a main hall, industrial kitchen, a rabbi’s study, meeting space, conference room and offices, library and synagogue, the building will allow for even further innovation as programs migrate to the new space.”
DNA Info sits in on a cooking class at East Village Community School that’s sponsored by the Food Bank for New York City’s CookShop program. Started in 1994, the program aims to teach healthy choices to students in high-need areas. Read more…
At a planning workshop on Monday night, the Department of Transportation asked residents of the East Village and Lower East Side to help it pare down a glut of suggestions about where it should place bicycles when it debuts its bike-share program this summer – but by the end of the session, its map had only grown denser with recommendations.
At the workshop, sponsored in part by the program’s operator, Alta Bicycle Share – which has launched similar programs in Boston, Montreal, and Washington, D.C. – the department unveiled a map in which its own preferences for kiosk locations were marked in blue and the suggestions of local business owners were marked in purple. The department had divided the map into 1,000-square-foot quadrants. By May, it hopes to decide where each kiosk will be placed – about one per every quadrant, or roughly one every four blocks.
With a multitude of suggested locations and just 600 stations planned in an area that includes Manhattan south of 79th Street and parts of Brooklyn plus satellite locations in the Bronx and Staten Island, the department asked residents to help it identify the worthiest locations and eliminate others. But the workshop’s couple dozen participants didn’t do much to narrow things down. Read more…
Gothamist reports that an estimated 200 people – including Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who performed Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and other songs – converged on Union Square yesterday to protest police brutality. All Hip Hop reported that Dr. Cornel West and Norman Siegel were also expected at the rally protesting the “oppression of the Occupy movement.” You can see more of Scott Lynch’s photos of the event in The Local’s Flickr pool.
The Daily News has a shot of a mural depicting Jeremy Lin that graffiti-artist collective Tats Cru has painted on a wall on East Second Street: “The mural was commissioned by online culture magazine Animal for several thousand dollars, and will be up for at least a month.”
Here’s The Local’s latest installment of “Police And Thieves,” your weekly roundup of crime. What follows are the latest reports from Feb. 12 to Feb. 19, sorted by the type of incident. Our map of all of crime since Jan. 15 is at bottom.
Assault
A early-morning brawl on East Fourth Street resulted in a man being clobbered with an aluminum baseball bat on Feb. 18. The 22-year-old victim told the police he got in an argument with the suspect on East Fourth Street between First and Second Avenues at around 5 a.m., after which the suspect punched him in the face and clocked him with the bat, causing swelling to his face and a cut.
Robberies
A 21-year-old told the police he was on Third Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets at around 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 17 when he was blindsided and knocked out. When he came to, his wallet and watch were missing.
A man was clobbered with a rock in the hallway of the Jacob Riis Houses on Feb. 19. The 39-year-old victim said he was in a building on Avenue D near East Seventh Street at around 1:15 a.m. when two men struck him and stole his cellphone and wallet. The victim would not cooperate further with the police.
A thief confronted a man in a playground of the Jacob Riis Houses on Feb. 18 and stole a whopping $2,300 from him. The 30-year-old told the police he was crossing through the playground on FDR Drive near East 14th Street at around 4:45 a.m. when the suspect punched him in the face and demanded money. The victim said he handed over $40, but the suspect demanded more. The victim then fled into the lobby of a nearby building, where the two wrestled. The suspect — who is said to have brandished a glass bottle — eventually gained the upper hand and stole the wad of cash from the victim’s pocket. Read more…
The Lower East Side Preservation Initiative tips us off to an event, “Germany in America: Kleindeutschland and New York City’s Lower East Side,” that will include an illustrated talk by Dr. Richard Haberstroh, a genealogist, about the East Village’s Little Germany, which was once the third-largest population of Germans in the world. It’s tomorrow from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Neighborhood Preservation Center at 232 East 11th Street, between Second and Third Avenues. E-mail LESPI-nyc.org or call (212) 477-9869 to make a free reservation.
The folks at Horse Trade Theater tell us that some productions from Frigid New York festival – “Fear Factor: Canine Edition,” “Little Lady,” “The Terrible Manpain of Umbertto MacDougal,” “The Rope in Your Hands,” “Missed Connections,” “Coosje,” and “Rabbit Island” – have been held over and Frigid Hangovers will run March 5 to 10 at The Kraine Theater. Tickets can be purchased online here.
Speaking of the Frigid festival, East Village Arts hears from Tim Murphy of “Blind to Happiness,” which “aims to leave the audience questioning their own perceptions and derivations of happiness.” Read more…
Daniel MaurerA fire truck at the scene last night.
A fire in a high-rise building brought engines and ambulances to the Lillian Wald Houses last night.
The Fire Department said that shortly before 9:33 p.m., a blaze broke out in the upper reaches of a trash compactor chute at 950 East Fourth Walk, a 14-story building near Avenue D. It was under control within about half an hour. One firefighter suffered a minor injury but didn’t need to go to the hospital.
The Fire Department was unable to say what caused the incident, but fires sometimes occur in trash chutes after they’ve become clogged.
The police say this is the gun that Luis Martinez fired at two police officers early this morning.N.Y.P.D.
If you were wondering why those helicopters were hovering around the neighborhood early this morning here’s your answer: two police officers narrowly avoided being shot while chasing a man down Columbia Street into the Baruch Houses.
The police said that 25-year-old Luis Martinez opened fire on Officers Thomas Richards and Thomas Dunne at around 1:45 a.m. as the pair approached him on Columbia Street between Delancey and Rivington Streets. One of the shots struck Officer Richards’s spare ammunition magazine holstered to his gun belt, just missing his abdomen.
“It was a very close call for Officer Richards,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement. “The magazine may have well saved his life.” Read more…
Tompkins Square Park looked something like Zuccotti Park in its heyday yesterday, as a giant Statue of Liberty puppet shimmied to a beat thrashed out by a cohort of drummers. Next to them were the People’s Library, a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cart, and a “Parents for Occupy Wall Street” station crawling with children.
Activists said the single-day occupation – the third to be organized by the group Occupy Town Square – was part of the movement’s process of reorganizing in the wake of the police eviction of the original Occupy encampment.
“We lost a few things when we lost Zuccotti,” said Jonathan Jetter, one of the event’s organizers. “We lost a place where the movement could come together to network amongst itself.” Read more…
The video above just hit YouTube and is said to have been made for the PS 122 video workshop. It pairs audio of Paul DiRienzo’s coverage for WBAI of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riots with video of the park ten years later. But the park’s history of protest isn’t entirely behind it: stay tuned for our report from the Occupy Town Square event yesterday.
Crain’s New York profiles Andrew Berman, the head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation who is often quoted in these pages. And the profile isn’t exactly flattering: dubbing him “The Obstructionist,” Crain’s says that “developers may finally be getting the upper hand on their longtime tormenter” (citing NYU 2031, among others) and writes that “Mr. Berman’s outsize personality and nose for the limelight has alienated activists, community board members and other neighborhood groups who have been his allies over the years. At the same time, dustups between Mr. Berman and others have bruised egos and increasingly splintered a fragile coalition seeking to insulate the area from development.”
Speaking of gentrification, The Daily News notes that Life Cafe is for rent, and gets the obligatory quote from the publicist for “Rent,” which was written at Life: “The East Village of ‘Rent’ is a very different place than the East Village of today,” says Richard Kornberg. “‘Rent’ helped gentrify that neighborhood, but unfortunately places like Life which were once institutions could no longer fit in the market.” Read more…
Natalie RinnProtestors held a rally before the Community Board’s vote on the N.Y.U. plan.
The ambitious expansion of New York University faced its first formal rejection last night, as Community Board 2 voted unanimously against the plan, saying it would turn Greenwich Village into a construction site for at least 19 years and fundamentally change the neighborhood for the worse.
Not a single person spoke in favor of the plan during over two hours of testimony in the packed basement of St. Anthony of Padua Church on 154 Sullivan Street. After 115 locals, academics and students skewered the plan that would add four new university buildings and 2.5 million square feet of space just south of Washington Square Park, the board cast its vote in opposition to the expansion dubbed “N.Y.U. 2031.”
“We’re here tonight to firmly reject this plan,” said board chair Brad Hoylman. “It’s clear that there is no support for this insidious plan that would destroy the culture of Greenwich Village.”
Cheers went up from the standing-room only audience after the vote, though its impact is limited, given that it is only an advisory opinion. The project will next be considered by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, the City Planning Commission and the City Council, which will ultimately determine the project’s fate. Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards. Read more »
Daniel MaurerThe crime scene last night.
