Department of Buildings blew off vetting of laborers that led to blow ups of buildings

NY Post

The city Buildings Department is turning a blind eye to safety by allowing unlicensed or unqualified laborers to perform gas piping work in new or reconstructed developments, an explosive lawsuit filed by the plumbers union claims.

The Manhattan Supreme Court suit accuses the DOB of failing to comply with a city law that tightened up licensing requirements for gas piping installation following deadly explosions in East Harlem and the East Village in 2014 and 2015.

“DOB’s complete dereliction of its duty to enforce gas and welder qualification requirements has facilitated wholesale non-compliance with these safety rules throughout the City and created a public safety time bomb,” claims the suit, filed by Plumbers Union Local 1.

The 2020 law imposed restrictions on who can perform such hazardous “gas work,” making it illegal to do so without a DOB-issued Gas Qualification permit.

But the 45-page complaint cites examples alleging DOB approved of illegal gas work on taxpayer funded public projects, unlicensed workers performing piping installations and cases of “unverified inspections” by contractors.

Licensed union plumbers provided affidavits as part of the legal action, claiming they witnessed shoddy workmanship being performed in buildings and other workers without a “gas qualification” license.

The union claims the DOB is turning a blind eye while granting hundreds of gas approvals in large residential towers, schools, luxury hotels and other buildings, according to the suit.

Judge calls NYCHA a criminal landlord...then he vanished

  

 

NY Daily News

That was the message from a Queens Housing Court judge outraged by the agency’s failure to provide hot water to as many as 300 tenants in a Rockaway apartment building since November, the Daily News has learned.

“If this was a private small landlord he [the landlord] would be in jail by now,” Judge Kimon Thermos said during a Jan. 20 hearing. “He would have been in jail by now and the fines would have been $500 per day, per apartment. So he would have been in jail and he would have been losing his building too.”

As a city-run agency, the New York City Housing Authority is not eligible for the same penalties as a private landlord who neglects its properties and tenants.

“Why is your crime shielded this way?” Thermos asked a NYCHA lawyer. “NYCHA is dropping the ball big time here.”

Tenants in Carleton Manor say NYCHA did little for months to fix the water problem that makes taking a shower a major undertaking. Dozens of tenants have filed a petition in Housing Court seeking to force NYCHA to make repairs at the 174-unit building on Beach Channel Dr. and Beach 74th St. in Arverne.

“This is the dead of winter,” said Alisha Robinson, 42. “We need this corrected. We need some attention on fixing this.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said. “I have to go to a hotel to take a decent shower.”

 

The legal fight began Nov. 29, when one tenant, Shaniya Callender, filed a petition to get the water problem fixed. That yielded no progress, so on Dec. 28, 45 tenants signed a petition threatening housing court action if no repairs were made by Jan. 10.

That deadline came and went, so the tenants took NYCHA to court. At the Jan. 20 hearing, Judge Thermos was outraged that NYCHA’s work on the building was being overseen by an unlicensed plumber.

The judge said he was considering issuing a subpoena demanding NYCHA Chairman Gregory Russ appear in court. But before he could, Thermos was replaced on the case by a different judge, for unclear reasons.

 

de Blasio's Guardian Dark Angel

 

NY Post

 Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is mulling criminal charges after a city probe found the NYPD inspector running Mayor Bill de Blasio’s security detail “actively obstructed and sought to thwart” the investigation.

Inspector Howard Redmond — who oversees the police department’s Executive Protection Unit, tasked with the mayor’s security — would be subject to obstruction of justice charges, Department of Investigation Commissioner Margaret Garnett said Thursday.

“Inspector Redmond’s conduct has been referred to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for possible criminal prosecution,” she told reporters during a press conference after the release of the scathing report. “The criminal matter that we found in the investigation was … the potential obstruction charge.”

In the 49-page report into de Blasio and his use of the security detail, Redmond was found to have stonewalled DOI investigators, refusing to turn over his phone for months until he was ordered to do so by his supervisor. 

“DOI has concluded that the NYPD inspector in charge of the First Family’s security detail actively obstructed and sought to thwart this investigation, frustrating DOI’s efforts to learn the full facts regarding these allegations,” reads a portion of the probe, released Thursday morning.

In Redmond’s effort, he attempted to scrub evidence by, among other actions, destroying his phone, according to the investigation.

“One former NYPD detective told DOI that Inspector Redmond instructed EPU members assigned to the Mayor and his family to communicate with the City Hall resources to impede the NYPD from getting access to EPU communications when ‘dumping’ NYPD phones and emails during investigations,” reads the report.