The war on cars' war criminals

 

NY Post

The city turned a blind eye for years while a Queen’s tow company monopolized services on many Big Apple highways and ripped off thousands of drivers in the process, a bombshell new lawsuit alleges.

The class-action suit, filed Saturday in Manhattan Supreme Court, seeks more than $58 million in damages for the duped motorists from the NYPD, the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and Runway Towing Corp. It alleges city officials let the company run an illegal “racketeering enterprise” at the expense of unsuspecting motorists.

The suit also accuses the NYPD of repeatedly extending Runway’s contract since 2013 without competitive bidding and, in the process, ignoring many complaints the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection was getting about the company’s alleged lawbreaking, which included underpaying workers and illegally compensating them with cash off the books.

The two city agencies “conspired … to allow Runway to operate … even though at least six years ago motorists were telling them that Runway is overcharging consumers,” said lawyer Gary Rosen, who represents Runway customers and ex-staffers in the lawsuit.

The suit claims Runway has earned more than $200 million since 2010 off its NYPD contract to provide roadside assistance and towing services on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway; Kosciusko Bridge; the Cross Island Parkway in Queens; sections of the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn and Queens; Brooklyn’s Gowanus Expressway and Prospect Expressway; and the Staten Island Expressway, West Shore Expressway, Korean War Veterans Parkway and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway on Staten Island.

It also alleges the company relies on shady practices to drive up its profits, including instructing tow operators to bring vehicles they pick up to the company’s office in Ozone Park — no matter where they break down.

It’s a move that generates hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of extra dollars in unnecessary towing and storage costs for the public per vehicle, former Runway workers and customers told The Post.

Mary Olsen, 62, said she had no choice but to give away her 2000 Nissan Altima to Runway after it was rear-ended and totaled on the Staten Island Expressway two years back. She said a Runway tow truck brought the car to the Ozone Park storage facility more than 20 miles away without her consent — and without providing a cheaper option, such as towing it to a parking space off the nearest exit or a nearby auto body shop.

 

Brad Lander steered a half a billion dollars towards his lobbyist wife's clientele of NPGs

 

NY Daily News

Since Brad Lander took over as the city’s fiscal watchdog in January, his comptroller’s office has approved nearly $550 million in contracts with nonprofit organizations that are members of an umbrella organization his wife oversees, a Daily News analysis of city contracts shows.

Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, is the president and CEO of Nonprofit New York, which serves as a lobbyist and as an advocate for about 900 member nonprofits across the city.

Nonprofit New York is one of the key entities behind a push to ensure nonprofits that do business with the city are paid in a timely manner. Barnette serves on a joint task force focused on the issue that was formed by Lander and Mayor Adams.

More than 35 organizations that count themselves as members of Nonprofit New York have contracts that Lander’s office has reviewed and signed off on since he became comptroller in January, records show.

According to a News analysis of those records cross-checked against the group’s online list of members, those contracts add up to at least $544 million in city business.

The relationships between the umbrella group Barnette oversees, the nonprofits it represents and her husband, the comptroller, raise the question of whether the web of connections represents a conflict of interest or could be construed as one.

Nonprofit New York’s primary stated goal is “member-building,” and one of its main revenue sources is membership dues, according to the group’s website.

Richard Briffault, the former chairman of the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, said that to avoid the appearance of a conflict, Lander should disclose the connections between his wife’s nonprofit and its members publicly and institute an internal policy laying out how he would recuse himself in matters related to Nonprofit New York’s clients.

“It would be wise policy to say, in effect, I’m going to recuse from anything involving these entities,” said Briffault, now a professor at Columbia University Law School. “It would certainly be good of him to make clear he is going to recuse from anything having to do with them.”

A former comptroller’s office official agreed based on the “optics alone.”

“It plants a seed of doubt,” the source said. “It doesn’t exactly instill public trust.”

The trial run Queens Borough Tower Jail

 

Impunity City 

 This scene takes place in Fresh Meadows at this hotel steps away from the Horace Harding Expressway and also a strip mall and public school. This hotel, which has clearly failed to generate any business, was subjected to numerous scoops and solidarity condemnation from the community and elected officials representing the district for it’s use as a homeless shelter for men who were recently released from Rikers Island and was used during the pandemic as housing for a hundred inmates during the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on the island’s facilities. Which was irresponsibly made possible following former Mayor de Blasio and the City Council cronies collaborative effort to shut down Rikers to build four tower jails in the boroughs except for Staten Island. But from the optics of this building, it seems that  this hotel in Fresh Meadows is being used as a trial run tower jail while the official tower jail in Kew Gardens gets developed and which has already started it’s construction.

 It’s utterly amazing that the city approved this hotel on a quaint residential block like this. Who in their right mind thought that tourists would dwell here while vacationing in the city and it’s much to big and out of the way to be utilized for prostitution and sex trafficking.

 Upon close inspection, the optics in the front entrance belie the element that’s being housed here as cars line up on the sidewalk obstructing most of the entrance of the hotel, despite the ample parking in the lot behind it and the garage inside the building, conveying a palpable sense of security for their neighbors across the street and the passerby young and old.

 

de Blasio's Times Square vac site screws up

 NY Post

 This is not the “experience” New Yorkers want.

The operator of the pop-up COVID vaccination site in the former “NFL Experience” building in Times Square sent out an emergency notice informing 899 patients that it erroneously injected them with expired Pfizer doses.

The patients were told by ATC Vaccination Services that they need to get another shot because the firm “cannot guarantee the effectiveness” of the doses they received.

“We are contacting you concerning the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine you received at Times Square – NFL Experience vaccination site on June 5 to June 10, 2021. It was recognized after the vaccine was administered, that it had been in the freezer beyond the approved time frame prior to it being administered,” David Savitsky said in an email to patients.

A dad of two teen daughters who were given the faulty shots last week was left fuming after getting the email and a phone call from ATC Vaccination Services about the mix up.

“The guy who called wasn’t even a doctor,” the dad said.